Built for owners with five to twenty people. Pick the one that fits what is on your plate right now.
Which system is the reason everything still lands on you?
Nineteen questions from the book Becoming Scalable. It scores your seven systems from 1 to 10, names the one to fix first, and gives you the first step.
You walk away with: the one system to fix first
Your people are guessing what you want.
Twenty-four questions about how you work. It writes two pages in your own words that you hand to the crew: what you are like under pressure, what it means when you go quiet, what they can count on from you.
You walk away with: two pages your crew reads so they stop guessing
See a finished one firstHow are you holding up?
You check the numbers every week. When did you last check on yourself? Rate yourself on eight things, like how clear, focused and energized you feel, against where you want to be. It tells you straight where you have slipped and the one thing to work on next. Come back each week and watch it move.
You walk away with: where you are slipping, and the one thing to fix first
How long would this company run without you?
Twelve questions about what only lives in your head. It answers in days, and names the one thing to hand over first.
You walk away with: the first job to hand off
What is this work actually paying you?
Revenue, hours worked, and what you take home. Most owners have never done that math.
You walk away with: a straight answer on whether this is worth it
Where does each person stand?
Ten questions per person. Everyone ends up ranked top to bottom, no ties, and one thing to do about each of them.
You walk away with: the people decisions you have been avoiding
Who is carrying this company?
Add each person and who they answer to. Leave a box empty for the seat nobody is in yet. It flags the person with too many people under them, and it prints.
You walk away with: the chart on one page, and the one person with too many people under them
One page that tells you if the business is okay.
When you're on vacation, could one page tell you whether to call in? Tell it what you sell and who is on the team. It drafts the one page: how a sale turns into cash, one number for each step, one name on every number. You fix what it got wrong, and it shows you which numbers nobody tracks and which ones still land on you.
You walk away with: one page that says whether today is fine, and who to call when it is not
What are your meetings costing you in a year?
Check off last week's meetings from a list, then three questions about each one. It sorts them into keep, fix, hand off and drop, and puts a number of hours a year on the ones you can take back.
You walk away with: the hours a year you can take back, and the meeting to end first
Which of your hours are cheaper to hand off?
List the jobs you do in a week, put a price on each one, and fill in your hours. It shows what your hour is worth, what doing the cheap work yourself costs in a year, and where the freed hours should go. Your answers save to your email.
You walk away with: what your hour is worth, and the first job to hand off
Your post, rewritten so the customer is in it.
Paste something you wrote for Facebook. It comes back about your customer instead of your company, plus a note on what changed.
You walk away with: something worth posting, and why it works
If you have fewer than five people, there is nobody to hand the work to yet, and none of this will help. If you are past twenty-five with a real leadership team, you need more than these. If what you need is more leads, that is a different problem and a different person.
A note from Max
I have spent seventeen years working with small companies, and every one of these came out of the same thing: everything still comes back to the owner. Take whatever is useful.