List Your Top Ten Problems

Business leaders have to deal with problems in their businesses every day, they call them challenges or obstacles, that are stopping them from being able to obtain a more successful business.

But, whatever they call them they are still problems that have to be solved as quickly as possible, so that they can turn their focus back to running their businesses smoothly.

As a business coach, when I meet with business leaders in the privacy of their own companies, one of the first things I will ask them is to list their top ten problems that they have with their business.

By writing the top ten problems, that you have, as a list on a whiteboard it is visible for you to see and discuss.

Then prioritize this list of problems, by which is the most important for your business to be solved, by which is the least cost to solve, or by which is the most resources needed to solve and by which are the most needed to be solved problems to give your business more success.

After that take the number one priority problem and drill down to the cause of the problem, not the symptoms, until you identify what is needed to solve it.

The rest of the problems in the list are treated in the same way, until you have discussed and analysed each problem in priority order.

Then look at the cost and resource implications for each one of the problem solutions and again, prioritize the problems, depending on the level of cost and resource that is involved in solving the problem.

Lastly make an action plan of which problem solutions can and will be implemented within your business, again in a prioritized order.

By prioritizing the problems like this, you will finish up with an easily manageable action plan, which you can immediately start to implement within your business.

Make each problem solution a specific project that can be implemented within your business that either you, as the business leader, or one of your management team can lead.

Make the decision on the cost expenditure, allocate the resources and delegate the responsibility, then watch each of the problems being solved.

Yes, there are challenges and obstacles that you will encounter in business, but they soon melt away when you prioritize the problems.