Scrutinise: Drivers

If you want to equip your business for success and to grow strongly you need to look at certain areas of the business itself. You will need to scrutinise your business, and in particular, scrutinise drivers.

This is all about knowing what to focus on and drilling down with ruthless efficiency to the absolutely critical drivers of successful.

"Starting a business from scratch and having little money in the bank focuses your mind in a way that running a multibillion-dollar business never does. It brings the key drivers of performance into sharp relief. I promise.” According to Sallie Krawcheck.

The frustration here is that there are so many possible things you could look at in your business, and yet you have limited time, resources, and opportunities. What you want to do is focus only on those things that will drive your success. The answer is to be ruthless with those things that should not be taking your time, focus and attention. What will drive your future success? Scrutinising that, knowing where to invest, is critical, if you're going to grow and breakthrough your limiting ceilings.

If you get this right your organisation will move surprisingly quickly. If you don't identify that which will truly drive your future success, you'll be constantly hamstrung with resources in the wrong areas, people focused on distractions, or at least well-meaning projects that won't actually make the big difference that you're looking for.

The principle here is to scrutinise your drivers to focus your resources on what will bring success.

It’s like finding keys that unlock a new room you didn’t know was there. Suddenly you're in a world of new opportunities. Get this right and your biggest issue will be dealing with the growth. We'll cover those constraints in another session.

Many years ago, I ran a small textile business that was very commodity and price focused, competing with other similar organisations. Growth had stalled and margins were low. We worked out that in the industries we were serving people would pay more for the right designs, and that when they wanted something they wanted it immediately, so our key drivers were, being on trend and deliver on time. Great designs available when you need them. We brought people into the business on this basis, invested in our design capability, and our supply chain augmentation to deliver quickly. Just these two simple things differentiated us from the rest of the field, and we started to grow quickly not only revenues but also margin. Within two years of profitability was up 600%.

What are your key drivers? It's usually doing the simple things well. What are your customers or your consumers asking for? What do you know they need, even before they know they need it? What capabilities do you need to build in your business for your future success?

Take a moment, jot down some ideas, put some smart people in a room and ask them. Can it really be that simple? Yes it can. We make business so complex, for no good reason.

So, if you want to grow and equip your organisation for growth, scrutinise the drivers and grow those capabilities.