Mike Thompson, my co-author of Business Diagnostics and I recorded a series of short videos explaining the key elements of the book.
The following is a transcript of my video outlining the elements of the Business Diagnostics Framework. Scroll down to find the video in this post.
How to Diagnose a Business
Hi, I’m Terry Rachwalski, the co-author of Business Diagnostics with Mike Thompson and Rich Mimmick. Together we have worked with hundreds of consulting clients and along with business students (both under graduate and graduate levels). In variably what we find is they not only jump to conclusions but jump to solutions without having a diagnostic process.
To fix this we developed the Business Diagnostics Framework. This framework starts with the external environment and works its way towards strategic planning. With this model we tried to help navigate through the Political, Economic, Socio-cultural, Technological and industry Competitive conditions first. Although there are other models out there, this “PEST-C” model we find is the easiest to work with and will get the information needed to begin diagnosing your business.
The key to utilizing this model is doing a real deep dive ‘connecting the dots’ to help find information you didn’t know and not simply checking the boxes to say “I’ve done this research”. Once you’ve done your compete research, you’re really looking for that ‘aha’ moment; that moment which will really make an impact on your business.
You will eventually get to the point where you stop your external research and begin to focus on your internal environment. The previous external research still remains in the background as pertinent information going forward to help inform decisions as you diagnose your internal environment and move towards strategic planning.
The internal factors to consider are finance, marketing, operations, human resources and technology. it its important to note that all of these internal factors must be looked at prior to any strategic planning sessions.
That is the diagnostics framework, we hope this model will be useful and help you keep your head above water.
You can find the videos on our Business Diagnostics Youtube Channel.
About Terry Rachwalski
Terry Rachwalski founded Front Porch Perspectives, a boutique management consulting firm specializing in taking technology companies to market and served as an executive with multiple Canadian and international technology firms in progressive management, sales, marketing and operational roles. She is an award-winning Certified Management Consultant (CMC) and holds an MBA from Royal Roads University, where she is Associate Faculty running the problem-based learning, live consulting cases. In 2016, she joined Alberta Innovates and currently serves as Executive Director for the Entrepreneurial Investments business unit.
Leave a Reply