Jumpstart the Year With a Health Checkup on Your Business

Lose weight. Exercise more. The new year’s resolutions are in full gear right now. Whether it’s getting to the gym, reading more, or eating more greens, January usually begins with a reflection of how we did and what we can do more, better, faster this year.

We focus so much on being proactive in our health and personal care. But what about our business health? Is it just business as usual, again? Or do we have bigger business goals for the year ahead?

Talking to company owners and investors over the years, we have discovered a lot less proactivity than you’d expect and a lot more complacency. We don’t mean activity – everyone has lots of to-do lists – where busy work mask over big or growing problems.

We often get calls when the house is on fire: cash is draining away from the business, employees are jumping ship, frustrations are mounting, or lack of fresh thinking, innovation and true leadership have led to stagnation in the market. Owners say to us my ‘business is failing, what do I do’.

It’s hard not to think how many sleepless nights could have been avoided for an owner if they would have just acted sooner. We mean solve the issues not just by trying to dive in themselves or harangue the management team more, but instead through resources or tools that could extend their capabilities and help make vision a reality.

Just like you go to your doctor for a checkup, we designed a tool for owners and investors to assess their business and give a health report on how the company’s front stage, operations, and back office are running. It’s a deep dive in to finance and accounting, operations, IT, marketing, and business development. Is everything running smoothly and optimally? What can be improved? What KPIs should you have in place to best track operational and financial performance?  Is your organizational design fast and efficient?

Lots of questions can keep us owners up at night, but the beauty of an Operational Roadmap – a health checkup for your company – is that by bringing in an operating executive who has run, grown, and turned around businesses, you get the tools and plan you need to run for 2019 and beyond. On demand is not an increase in permanent overhead, but rather just the resource you need when most needed. If you find you need help executing on those initiatives…these on-demand executives can scale up or down as need be.

Case Study: Setting Goals and Objectives for Energy Company

The senior partner from an investment fund called because he was concerned. Their portfolio of 11 companies in the energy space was good, but one company just kept missing the mark. The CEO exited. The CTO stepped in, but with a team of primarily engineers and a product line that wasn’t gaining traction, they knew something was missing. There were lots of open questions and not enough good answers. An InterimExecs RED Team leader jumped in to work alongside the founder and complete a rapid assessment and Operational Roadmap.

The Interim CEO went quickly into action and the investors were excited to see collaboration taking place with the founder and team. While the company had been targeting the oil and gas space, after many interviews with the team, industry trade shows, and conversations with customers and potential customers, the executive set out a game plan for a much larger play taking the company from a widget to a full-blown standalone company. New applications blossomed to take their technology from aerospace to defense to automotive. Once the investors and founder saw the plan, they decided to bring on the executive as a partner who dove in, reaching out to defense contractors to forge new business relationships while also securing additional investment.

What do you want to achieve for your business this year?

Do you have an ambitious, seemingly impossible goal? In the world of leadership on demand – bring it on.