What if…your corporate coach urged that you question your approach to your business?

As a strategy consultant to many senior business people, I know that during the past year or so many CEOs and owners have felt trapped in their companies, as they struggle to survive and change. This is prompting many to question whether they’re in the right place.

With the worst possibly behind us and some new challenges ahead, now may therefore be the time for an executive coach to suggest that you ask some serious questions. These are:

• Is your business an investment or a job? Are you working for the salary or is it the ‘buzz’ that does it for you?  What if you considered the business an investment and saw your challenge as creating and growing the wealth for yourself and/or the owners? How would that change things for you and the way you operated the business?

• What’s your exit plan? As the CEO and owner, do you know when, how and to whom you would dispose of the business and for how much? The value of most businesses is built around future earnings and cash-flows, what would be your plan to build and sustain these?

• Do you have a Return On Assets (ROA) goal? Increasing net income – profit after tax – is often an adequate goal for many CEOs.  But it doesn’t reflect how well the assets of the business are being managed and used. What if you set a target rate? How would this alter the way you operated the business, if you were aiming to achieve the cost of capital plus inflation and a risk premium?

• Stop doing it all yourself. You start the week refreshed and full of ideas, then problems come crashing through the door and new initiatives are out of the window by mid week.  Issues seem more complex and take longer to unravel and nagging doubts about having the right answers start draining your drive and ambition. You end the week wondering where they went. If all this sounds familiar, what if you restructured, upgraded and refocused your management team to manage, instead of just follow your lead?

Running a successful business in these uncertain times calls for a different outlook and set of skills than were needed in the past. It requires:

• More discipline, greater analysis and less gut feel
• Enhanced focus on process and reduced stress on output
• Increased emphasis on the bottom line and lower concentration on the top one
• Augmented attention to skills, capabilities and qualifications and minimised reliance on instinct

If you’d like more top tips and techniques to help you change the way you think about and operate your business, send a direct message on Twitter to @richardwhatif.