Most owners review the business when something goes wrong. A short, regular review catches problems while they are still small. It does not need a dashboard. It needs the same six questions, every week, at the same time.
The six questions
- What came in? New enquiries, new customers, money received.
- What is stuck? Orders, quotes, deliveries, approvals that have not moved in more than a few days.
- Who owes us? Unpaid invoices and fees, oldest first.
- Who did we forget? Enquiries without a reply, customers due for follow-up or renewal.
- What went wrong? Complaints, mistakes, returns. One line each, with the cause.
- What is one thing to change next week? Only one.
How to run it
Pick a fixed slot, such as Saturday morning. Keep a single page or sheet with six headings. Fill it from your sheet, your bank and your WhatsApp. The first few weeks will be slow because the information is scattered. That is the finding. If you cannot answer question three without an hour of digging, the real problem is that the information is not in one place.
What to do with the answers
Do not try to fix everything. Pick the one change and write who will do it and by when. Review last week’s change first next time. After a couple of months you will have a record of what you fixed, and a clear picture of what keeps recurring.
Anything that recurs for four weeks in a row is a candidate for a system: a checklist, a rule, a reminder, or automation.
Later, let a tool prepare it
The preparation is the tedious part: pulling numbers from sheets and chats. That is the sort of job an assistant can do, such as the end-of-day summary vv is designed to write. The judgement, though, stays with you.
See also: signs your business depends on you.
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An Operational Audit sets up what to track and why, for your business specifically.
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