Finding the key strengths of your business

More than likely you have explored your company's strengths at least once over the last few years (or several times if you have ever hired a consultant).Embracing business bestpractices guides you to look at the strengths of your shop, especially as you put a 2006 strategic plan together.

But from a strategic perspective, you are not interested in a laundry list of everything your company does well.

In fact, sometimes this can bog the planning process down.

You want to identify the strengths that matter.

(Let's call these key strengths.) Everything else is just icing on the cake.Here are four different places to look for your key strengths.

Start by finding meaning.

Do not be scared away.No intense therapy session is needed to dig into defining the purpose of your business.

You may or may not have a mission statement for your company, but somewhere on paper, or in your thoughts, you know why you started your business.

Here are a few questions to get you started: What is the purpose of

your business? What business are you really in? Why does your business exist? Challenge yourself to answer the above questions honestly and with conviction.

To jump-start your thinking, here are some examples from organizations large and small:

* To solve the growing diabetes crisis

* To capitalize on a real estate growth trend

* To work for myself

* To provide quality window and door products better than anyone else

* To make fitness a way of life for everyone by making it fun, easy, and accessible to all

* To provide people with a great place to work Putting all the semantics and flowery words aside, state the purpose of your business in a few short sentences.

Then, look at motivation.

An intangible, but powerful, force in all companies is the motivation of its employees.

Nothing gets accomplished without some sort of human intervention.Most likely, your employees have the choice, or the opportunity, to work anywhere.Yet they work for your organization.Why? What brings them to work everyday? What brings you to work everyday? What are you passionate about? Without passion or motivation, nothing gets done.

Consider the example of a small, privately held construction company that specializes in the construction of water and wastewater treatment plants.

The company's employees are passionate about building world-class water facilities.

In fact, one employee told me he loves going to work every day and could not imagine doing anything else.

Because of this key strength, the company is the "contractor of choice" of many public agencies in its region.

You and your employees are the organization's biggest assets.

Find out what keeps them going so you can feed that fire.Here are most important questions to ask: What do you pound the table about? What motivates you to do your business? What makes you get out of bed in the morning? Why do your employees work for you? Money is next.

If I asked you how you make money,more than likely you would reply by explaining the types and number of products or services you sell.

Look at your revenue generation from a different perspective.

Resist looking at your income statement for the moment.We will look at a strategy best-practice to gain some insight into what really drives your profit engine.

The best-practice is to think about your revenue in terms of profit per "X" such as profit per customer or client, profit per employee or profit per billable hour.

You might be tempted to decide that several of these are your profit engines.

The challenge is to determine which one is actually the best revenue driver for your business.Which will have the biggest impact? Looking at your revenue generation from this perspective is like panning for gold.You do not need to do change your activities, but you might need to look at your pan from a different angle to see the nugget.

Consider a regional retail chain, which focused on the individual revenue and margin of each store.

Therefore the owner thought his profit engine was simply profit per store.

Of course the individual profitability of a location is critical and makes sound financial sense.

But from a strategic standpoint, think about how shifting from the perspective of profit per store to profit per customer might change some activities.Now instead of stores competing, they collaborate.Not only do the employees behave differently, the customers feel a difference and so does the bottom line.

Now, key in on your resources.

The sum of all individual resources is what combines to make up your company.

Things such as skills, assets, capabilities, competencies and so on are all the resources you use to deliver your product or service.What unique skills, resources, capabilities and assets set your company apart in the marketplace? How can these skills and resources be used to create value in the marketplace?

Here are some areas to consider when looking for your key resources:

* Knowledge/Expertise: All the information you have in your organization such as operating history, customer profiles, knowledge of buying trends and good old-fashion wisdom.

If someone were to start your company from scratch, what would they have to know to get to where you are now?

* Processes: All the systems, formal and informal, that keep your company alive such as operations, distribution, marketing, and the like.What key processes allow you to deliver your product or service with the highest quality in the most efficient way possible?

* Products or services: The output of your process, which is based on your unique knowledge and expertise, is potentially a key resource.Your method of production, service delivery, product components or service approach may add up to something no other company can produce.

* Relationships: This is a great area to look for intangible resources.We often overlook how much impact our business relationships (vendors and suppliers) and employee relationships have on our business.Who are some of your key relationships?

* Intellectual property: Any of your trade secrets, protected or not, are a potential source of key strengths.

The special activities or processes that you keep within your company are the intangibles that are your special sauce.

* Personnel: Your employees most likely are an important key resource.Do you have a staff with skills and capabilities that would be tough to replace? Or a staff whose teamwork makes the organization great?

* Assets: Assets can be anything from your kitchen sink to your bank account, depending where your office is! But are there a few key assets that make your business hum along easier , assets such as retail location, financial standing, brand, or specialized equipment? After you have listed your company's purpose, passion, profit engine and key resources, review your list for common threads.

Then synthesize your list of strengths down to your top five key strengths.

Remember - be specific so the list is useful.Make your organization stronger in 2006 by strengthening your key strengths.

Erica Olsen (Erica@m3planning.com) is a principal of M3 Planning, making strategy a reality for entrepreneurial-spirited organizations.

Her company launched MyStrategicPlan.com, a web-based strategic planning site for small and medium businesses.

She is also an instructor and a writer.