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… is an affordable business diagnostic assessment used by business leaders, process managers, internal change agents, and team members who look to identify, learn about, and improve vulnerable business processes.
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Business Process Improvement
Your improvement path often requires business process reengineering. But which path should you take? How do you know which processes and in what order they should be addressed? The VIA·Business report provides both answers.
Business Success Path
Background context
We know the path to success is not straight—it twists, turns and does what is needed to avoid and overcome obstacles and challenges along the way.
The Small Business Administration (SBA) defines a “small business” as one with less than 500 employees. However, that size range includes companies possessing significantly different capabilities from one another. For example, a company with 400 employees might have departments whose responsibility are to identify and make change improvements. But small businesses can’t afford that kind of work yet.
All your business processes have to simultaneously work well together. It has to do that in a robust and reliable way that produces the desired outcomes.
Processes that work together in an aligned way helps build a smooth path to success. That said, almost no one achieves that. It is always a bumpy road, but as an existing business, you likely already know that.
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Business failure vs. business success
Small and very small businesses are the biggest economic engines in the United States. When small business succeed they create jobs, facilitate insurance for their employees, create wealth, create economic growth, contribute to the community they are in!
Success does not mean the absence of failure. Failure does not mean the absence of success. In a way, they are the opposite sides of the same hand. One almost needs failures to inform the meaning of success.
However, we want some mistakes and failures to happen because that is how learning occurs. But we need to keep the impact of those mistakes and failures small, so that it becomes a lesson and not a complete disaster.
“Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.”
John C. Maxwell
Yet, when businesses fail they often do so in a particularly bad way. Instead of having failures in small manageable bite-sizes, they turn failure into such large amounts of additional work that it becomes unrecoverable and the business dies!
Businesses fail at the surprising rate of:
- 20% by their first year
- 50% by their fifth year
- 66% by their tenth year
In the United States, in spite of the amount of government help to guide entrepreneurs and small business leaders, and funding for free and helpful services, the best we are doing as a nation is, in our opinion, awful.
How is this acceptable?
Business failure lists are not root causes!
Let’s take a look at the typical explanations and reasons given when a business fails.
Solid explanations for business failure
There are some explanations that the business encountered a situation that the owner had no control over—these are often bigger picture problems. Here are a few selections from the list that really was beyond anyone’s control:
- Death,
- Economic downturns,
- International negative events,
- Tariffs
- Policy changes, etc.
The list suggests sometimes there is unlucky timing for business endeavors.
Less solid explanations for business failure
Please consider the following metaphor / story: When showing symptoms of pain or discomfort we go to the doctor and say, for example, “My leg hurts.” You want the doctor to focus upon your pain and getting your leg fixed. But the doctor says, “Let’s do some tests.” And perhaps that revealed an issue somewhere else was the problem, in this case, maybe a pinched nerve that created the sensation of pain in the leg, and that indicated a different solution would be needed.
We have supported many projects and small businesses over the years and we noticed a bit of a social norm of acceptance of business failure as if it is a matter of “fact” for so many. It is almost as if society says, “It’s sad, but okay, because those things happen” and are taken as familiar and valid reasons for failure.
Other reasons listed for business failure:
| Insufficient capital | Failure to understand customer behavior |
| Poor management | Ineffective marketing |
| Business plan problems | Poor sales |
| Cash flow problems | Not the right team |
| Lack of planning | Credit problems |
| Finance | Ignored their customers |
| Poor location | Failing to budget |
| Bad marketing | Expanding too fast |
| Poor management | Single customer reliance |
| Lack of experience | Burnout |
| Personal use of business funds | Wrong business model |
| No market need | Competition |
| Poor inventory management | Failure to understand customer behavior |
5-Why root cause analysis on preventing business failure
Internet searches on why businesses fail typically list insufficient capitalization at the top. Many other reasons follow that top item (as shown in the table above). Vector Reports has taken time to examine the general acceptance and thinking behind business failures. We have some startling conclusions to share.
When we conducted a 5-Why mapping exercise on the other reasons (leaving out the non-controllable), the results often ended up pointing back to the listed reason we started with! The analysis became a circular referenced map!
In accordance with lean thinking principles if a cause analysis map is circular it means the reasons being evaluated cannot be root causes—we are seeing a symptom of something else going on.
Example 5-Why analysis leading to root cause
We believe that business leaders do not intentionally create failures, so that means something else is going on.
Consider the “insufficient capitalization” reason mentioned above as the “Why?’” questions are asked of a former leader of a failed business (as an example):
- “I ran out of funding.“
- “Why did they run out of funding.” Their reply may be, “The bank/seed round failed.”
- “Why did the bank fail to give you funds?” And the reply might be, “They were concerned about our ability to pay it back.” That honest answer leads to a tougher question,
- “Why didn’t you create a plan and put in place implementations that would prove your ability to pay it back and be successful?”
You can probably see where this is going …
5) “I believed what I was doing would be successful.”
And there it is! Belief is not the same is “knowing.”
Now we have the main difference of the two lists above. The first list was un-controllable by the business leader. The second list of reasons for failure are actually controllable by the business leader.
Now that conclusion is a bit unnerving. It suggests that decisions were taken that actually led to those symptoms.
If a person, the leader, the entrepreneur, the change agent, is honest with themselves, there is a good chance that the 5-Why root cause analysis for all those symptoms will eventually lead to—”Not Knowing” as the root cause. Something along the way could have been done that wasn’t done, or someone was not aware of something important and couldn’t act upon that missing knowledge.
That suggests that focus by the busy leaders were on the symptoms, the immediate hurt, instead of taking the time to think, analyze, question, investigate, learn, etc.
In the end, the uninformed road was taken.
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Not knowing the root cause
At Vector Reports we believe “not knowing” is the root-cause challenge for businesses to overcome. The failure rate suggests many don’t. And, ironically, it is actually one of the challenges with a clear solution. Go learn.
It may come as a surprise, but entrepreneurs and business leaders tend to be risk-averse. They are always seeking information to reduce risk and make better decisions. Otherwise, it is like being in a dark room feeling the way forward.
Johari Window
The window helps explain unknown unknowns. “Not knowing comes from:
- Not knowing what to do
- Leader not knowing
- The organization not knowing
- Your team not knowing
- Your team not sharing
- Outsiders not saying
- Complete surprises
If you did know, chances are you would already be taking action to fix the problem or preventing the problem from forming in the first place.
Now, multiply not knowing across the multitude of business processes and the number of people on your team, and see how it easily becomes one of the most common, and perhaps the most difficult challenge, to overcome for small business.
Typical answers suggest a path, but not a solution. Have you heard the following before? Do the research and learning on your own. Go get training. Hire better employees. Seek help from your area SBDC or SCORE advisors. Hire a consultant. All of these pathways cost time, and most of them cost money. It can become a Catch-22 situation: You almost need to already know what you don’t know to be able to ask for help on what you don’t know!!!
VIA·Business diagnostic helps you reveal unknowns in a fast and very efficient way. At a minimum, you will know what help to ask for in those other paths!
That is our value proposition to you.
The assessment is a decision-support-system that helps you identify unknowns so you can make informed choices that result in better process outcomes that typically lead to better business outcomes.
Business solutions in the light of information
There is nothing like the relief that comes after being stuck in the darkness and finally finding clarity—lighting a welcoming way ahead— and the treacherous climb of the unknown is gone.
The VIA·Business assessment methodology, plus your efforts, puts your organization on a disciplined, prioritized path of positive change.
Look at the characteristics in the table below. If you have any of them, you may want to learn more about what the assessment can identify and inform you of solutions for them.
a
VIA·Business can help you reveal and analyze previously unseen problems
Consider some typical problems businesses face without mature capabilities:
Think about how hard it would be to solve any of these problems without:
- Knowing you have that problem, and
- Knowing how to deal with it.
| Product | Market | Business | Implementation |
| Product problems | Guessing needs | Opinion based choices | Staleness |
| Usefulness being questioned | What we think they want | Abandoned plans | We simply launched |
| Value confusion | Cost issues | Poor support | Cost surprises |
| Failures show up | Market not aligned | Going it alone | Built to our spec |
| Hard to deliver | Competitors | Reactive | Hope to be found |
| Hard to support | We’re like others | Short term focus | Revenue down |
| Breakdowns occur | Company vs customer focus | Staffing issues | Sales down |
| Reactive changes | Inadequate advertising | Operational chaos | Surprises are the norm |
If you have seen any of these behaviors, then you likely know the impact is not good and is often painful. A better kind of change is needed—an informed change. And given half of all new companies fail after five years, it means a death spiral if not identified and corrected early before it becomes too large a problem to solve.
Consequently, these problems are not only solvable, but are often preventable!
At Vector Reports, we don’t give you a formula or a template and say, “Here is our program for you to improve.” You likely already have access to, and “know” those. And who better than you already knows your limitations. Online searching tends to produce obvious and generic results. Often they are incapable to present an actual recommendation you can act upon for your specific circumstances. We are not throwing rocks because at some level they contain good lists of things any company should work on and improve. They are, after all, only generic lists for a topic, and you may not know the topic to search for or know if you are working on the right root cause problem.
Four key business capabilities you need
What we recognize is that there are overarching stepped goals for existing businesses: Survive, Sustain, and Succeed!
Those goals require four common, mature, and interdependent business capabilities that enable your actions toward success. Your likelihood of achieving success depends upon how well you can access and leverage your own processes and capabilities to:
- respond to market demand
- develop an offering
- generate revenue
- establish a business model
What you do to achieve success using your current-state capabilities is as unique as the DNA of your business. Yes, you use business processes, but how you do it, in what order, and to what level, given your market, customers, technology, resources, and business process maturities, is likely unique to you.
The VIA·Business assessment contains standards of influential business processes that work together in an interdependent way, set in a process maturity model, that helps surface what isn’t known so you can start building operational efficiencies.
In short, the diagnostic quickly increases what can become KNOWN to your organization while reducing the size of the “unknowns” in the Johari window. And it is completely customized to you! There are hundreds of thousands of permutations of what the report can contain. So, results are truly yours, and for you alone!
Help yourself, your employees and your customers
Going through the assessment supports both you and/or your team to:
1) Surface business process vulnerabilities, and
2) Provide report recommendations that help serve as a decision support system for you, or your process owners / leaders in the business.
Help Yourself
Small and very-small businesses will often have multiple roles assigned to each employee. This suggests small companies may need help to quickly analyze the complex maturities of multiple processes and their needed improvements. Small businesses will benefit from obtaining cost-effective advice to make influential improvement implementations for growth and development.
Due to its virtual consulting design, the VIA·Business assessment offers small businesses a do-it-yourself method to gain rapid access to high-quality cost-effective improvement and growth recommendations that you can implement to mature your business processes. And it is available wherever and whenever you need it as long as you have a computer and internet access, 24/7.
Help Your Employees
Review the VIA·Business report with your process owners throughout your organization to level set and create alignment and balance. The discussions that come naturally out of examining an organization’s maturities (either as a member of the Assessor team or in staff meetings where the results of the report are shared) help get everyone on the same page. Sometimes reading report outcomes might validate what employees were feeling all along, but were unable to put into words, or didn’t know how to voice them to leaders.
Other readings of the VIA·Business report may be the first time employees become aware of the influences of performance gaps—forces that are so important to the company’s success that they must be addressed.
Let any gaps or imbalances in the results serve as an “attention-focusing device” for change.
Help Your Customers
As you improve your processes—and align them with your purpose and goals—your employees or team will likely find they are better able to accomplish business (and their personal) goals of serving your customers, which can facilitate growth.
When customers see their concerns reflected in your actions and metrics, they are more likely to feel listened to and much more likely to do future business with you.
Please know the report you receive is customized to your unique current-state conditions. There are hundreds of thousands of permutations of what exactly is shown in a report. It will then suggest both “what” and “how to …” steps for your particular vulnerability. It will also suggest a sequence of improvement efforts that have more influence for change than other efforts might have for your unique set of circumstances.
The business impact of not knowing
Those above listed symptoms are discoverable, actionable and preventable. When one “knows” better or information exists to make an informed decision, the rational choice is often made. Otherwise, it becomes leadership by feel and guessing. If this was not true, one would be able to point to the data as the basis for each decision being made. So, when leaders “don’t know” they depend upon their team.
Lack of communication is a team sport
The other surprise about the “not knowing” root cause is that this is actually a team sport, so-to-speak. There are always other people around the decision maker. Maybe they knew and didn’t say anything. Maybe they knew and did say something and the decision-maker didn’t listen, or the decision maker dismissed the message for some other reason (wrong time, wrong messenger, bias, disbelief, blinders, how it was interpreted, etc.). Note we used the term “decision maker” because leaders cannot do it all and even very small businesses learn to delegate.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming concepts suggest to us that “The meaning of your communication is the response you get, regardless of your intention.” And, “We never know what we have communicated and we never know what the other person ‘heard.” The only thing we really know is the response the message evoked.
We have seen this example in EVERY business we have helped. It is everywhere! Sorry, once you understand this and its implication, you will never not see this again in any business as evidenced by the behaviors and characteristics it displays.
People act because that is what is in our nature! Many people don’t like sitting around and would rather act than think. We guess it feels good to be moving, even if it is the wrong direction.
There are countless times the phrase “fake it ’til you make it” is advised for success, but that often ends up actually becoming “fake it until you break it.” Or in other words, the business continues their course of action, often heroically … until they can’t … and then they fail.
Don’t fake it!
Get in the know! Act credibly! Build and use robust processes! Elements of your business may still end up failing in some ways, but don’t you want your failures to be as reflected in John C. Maxwell’s quote above—bite-sized lessons?
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