Self-Auditing Your Business: 5 "W" Questions That Add Clarity & Focus.

Posted on February 21, 2017 by Zev Asch, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

Human behavior is driven by the Lizard Brain; it is also commonly referred to as the ‘old brain’, a leftover from our days in the wild, the part of the brain whose function is to also keep us alive or reduce stress levels.

Here’s how the Lizard brain works: When we come across a stress-inducing situation, the Lizard brain instinctively changes the narrative in our head away from that topic. A more specific example that business owners can relate to is as follows: Sales are down, leads have dried out, you are starting to freak out about paying the bills. Making cold calls or increasing your marketing spend on Facebook or Google advertising, given your existing reality or a bleaker future, creates an uncomfortable (stressful) feeling.

“I feel out of control, my desk is a mess, I think I have to reorganize my office.” That’s a typical resulting behavior driven by the Lizard brain’s “flight” mechanism; it’s not comfortable or scary, run like hell (or change the subject).

And the same process kicks into gear when we, as entrepreneurs, have to ask a specific, yet scary, question: How are we doing? How is our business? The most challenging step is the first one – committing to auditing your business and a willingness to accept what the results may show – needless to say that if your business is doing extremely well, the process may seem less stressful. But if your business stalled, growth is flat or worse and you are finding yourself scrambling to put out fires instead of being productive, here are FIVE simple questions that, when answered truthfully, will yield an unsophisticated yet very effective business dashboard.

The beauty and brilliance of these five self-auditing questions are their simplicity and how straightforward they are. Here we go:

1. What is currently working in your business? (What are you proud of? What does not need your daily or constant attention? What is running on auto-pilot but is still effective?)
2. What can use improvement? (Those aspects of your business that seem stable, efficient, give you a sense of joy and satisfaction but your gut says, “you’re not there yet” – we can do better than that)
3. What is not working? (Instinctively, activities that seem to occupy a majority of your time will come up first. Write them down and keep going! This is Lizard Brain territory; anything that comes to mind which is not comfortable or you want to avoid is going to get pushed away — resist the temptation. Write everything down. It’s just you, no one (for now) has to see the list, you’re not being threatened or embarrassed by what you write down.
4. Why is it not working? (If you’ve made it through #3, this one is easier; list everything that comes to mind without obsessing about who is to blame (Lizard Brain wants you to point fingers at everyone around you). Any aspect of your business that is not working must have a ‘root cause’ – what is causing the failure? If you identify root causes it is easier to answer the next and final question.
5. What are you doing to change/fix what is not working? (Write it down first, then go back for a second look. Are items on your list actionable and measurable? If have identified a root cause (reason(s) then this part is easy: Have you changed the conditions that cause failure and have you put a process into place to prevent them from reoccurring?

There you have it; a straightforward self-auditing your business Q&A that packs a punch and will give you an objective assessment of your business. Answering the questions is the first step in improving your business. You must follow up and act on items that have ‘action’ attached to them and finally, come back later on and measure how well you or your team have executed.