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Guest post by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith Become an Author

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This third article in the series on Coaching Your Business to The Next Level.

Article #1 was the "Top 7 Tips to Avoid the Top 7 Mistakes Small Business Owners Make."
Article #2 was "Coaching Your Business to the Next Level Series Part 2."

Tip #2 - Assess your business both externally and internally
Mistake: Don’t presume that you know what is going on in your business. Take the time to assess your business both externally and internally. Using an organizational assessment based upon proven criteria such as Baldrige may help you to focus on the directionally correct actions.

Many business owners resist assessments because they take time, cost money and potentially reveal what the business owner fears. And fear in many instances is just false evidence appearing real.

If you as a business owner, entrepreneur or department manager were to survey your employees and ask them to list the top 3 goals for the company or department as they believe them to be, would you receive the same EXACT answer from each employee? As a small business coach who works with entrepreneurs to even large corporations, I have asked this question and have yet to receive exactly the same answers from all employees. The next question is the real shocker for the organization’s leadership. What are all of these missteps, misdirections, costing you?

To avoid these unintentional mistakes, using an organizational assessment is one logical solution. The assessment should be have the following characteristics:

1.Based on nationally recognized criteria such as Baldrige
2.Be easily and quickly delivered such as via the Internet
3.Provide a paper based instrument if Internet is not available
4.Have a history of proven use (Customized solutions in many cases are expensive and build the income of the vendor at the expense of the client.)
5.Tailored to industry needs such as manufacturing, professional services, health care or education
6.Be affordable (Estimated range of $20 to $50 per person depending upon number of employees for the instrument only. Analysis not included)
7.Include one on one confidential interviews to confirm or validate individual collected data using a cross section of the employees
8.Provide a comprehensive report broken down by individual criterion, reporting groups, total responses and linked to current strategic plan
9.Be timely from collecting responses to delivering a final comprehensive analysis
10.Provide a simple action plan for immediate action
11.Include a detailed debriefing with the decision-maker and the vendor
12.Can be replicated in one year as a check up

Assessments are indeed necessary to quickly turnaround current actions and to ensure alignment for all shareholders within any business or organization. By investing time to assess or survey where you truly are right now, will help you, as the small business owner to executive, avoid this top mistake that many make. After all, you don’t agree to major surgery without a series of tests to determine what the real need is, then why should your business be any different?

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