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Practical Questions for
Successful Business Assessment

  Jun 98


"The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions?"
- Claude Levi-Strauss

By category, here are the questions YOU need to ask (with some suggested answers when you drill down).

Performance Areas

Some Suggested Answers to the Questions
Business

Issues

Strategy

Culture

Change

Effectiveness

Results
Customers What customer needs are you trying to satisfy? Do you make customer satisfaction a total concern? Do you carefully track changing customer needs? Is your job tied to customer satisfaction? Can you consistently get and keep customers?
Quality What level of quality are you really after? Are you delivering the quality you promised? Do you continuously improve quality? Can you get each individual to improve quality? Do you always deliver above-standard products or services?
Service Do you segment markets by service expectation? Are you providing the service/s customers want? Should you change the type or level of service you provide? Who assumes responsibility for service/s? What does service/s really do for you?
Advantage Do you fully exploit competitive advantage? Do your advantages match your values? Can you sustain you advantages? Does everyone work to sustain your advantages? Are your advantages paying off?
Talent Do your recognize your own genius? Do you fully appreciated everyone's talents? Can you find new ways to apply existing talents? Are you maximizing talents? Do you have the right talents to succeed?
Motivation What strategice priorities motivate you most? What values do people hold widely and feel deeply? Do you resist or relish change? Who's motivated and who's not? Does your motivation get results?
Trust Do you maintain clear strategic vision? Are you trustworthy? Do you keep the borders to change open? Do you strive for consistency and reliability? Does trust produce results?
Technology Do you apply strategically appropriate technology? Does your culture embrace new technology? Are you ahead or behind the tecnology wave? Does technology empower you? Can you evaluate the worth of your technology edge?
Alliances Do you know how to locate new allies? Do you form long- or short-term alliances? When should you change alliances? Do your alliances make sense to everyone involved? Have alliances increased your competitiveness?
Costs Can you define your strategic costs? What's your attitude toward costs? Do you practice the new art of cost cutting? What can you yourself do to cut costs? Are your profits cost effectives?

Customers

Before you launch any kind of customer satisfaction program, you should consider the following guidelines:

  1. Think constantly aoubt your customer's specific needs.

  2. Be realistic about which customer needs you can satisfy and which you can't.

  3. Remain flexible and creative.  Changing customer needs require innovative approaches.

  4. With both old and new campaigns, steadily monitor the degree to which you really do satisfy your customers.

Craig Hickman, author of Practical Business Genius, has developed these ten prescriptions for creating and maintaining customer-oriented cultures:

  1. Develop a gut feel for the "customer" and the customer's needs, no matter what your specific job.

  2. Include information about satisfying customer's needs every time you consider or discuss business issues.

  3. Plan strategically, operationally, functionally, and financially to better satisfy current and future customer needs more fully.

  4. Make sure any statement or campaign promoting corporate values includes values dealing with customer satisfaction.

  5. Under construction -

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