20 Questions

There are an infinite number of questions you could ask about any business. How many actually provide the answers you need, in a way you can easily understand? The answer is 20. Obviously, there may be more and there may be less. If you can easy answer these questions, you will have a great understanding of how your business is operating. 
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One thing to note, these questions are roughly broken into three categories. First, companies (or profit centers) who are not yet profitable. The second group represents most companies. You are making a profit, but it fluctuates from period to period or is starting to reliably grow. The final group represents companies who are in the enviable position to be able to consider significant expansion and investment in new opportunities.

If you are currently creating metrics, reports, and dashboards, how many of these questions are you answering? It might be time  to reassess the value of your current reporting. In my experience, we develop the metrics we can derive from the data we can easily access not the metrics that reflect the value we bring to our customers.

Can you quickly answer and act on these 20 questions?

For a new company or profit center:

• How quickly are we turning the money we spend into cash?
• How long is our cash runway?
• Are we being paid on time?
• Are we paying our suppliers on time?
• Are we delivering late or incomplete orders because we can not afford the raw materials? 

For a growing company or profit center:

• Are we making money (profitable)?
• Are we meeting our customer commitments?
• Where is our greatest return on current operations?
• Are we making the right thing, at the right time, with the right quality?
• Could we take on 20% more business without affecting on-time delivery, lead-time, or quality?
• Where could we make dramatic price reductions?
• Where could we make dramatic delivery time reductions?
• Which team is over worked?
• Which decision takes the longest to make?
• Who is our most important supplier?
• Who is our most important competitor?
• What is our largest externality? 

For an established company or profit center:

• Where is our greatest return on new investment?
• Where should we be investing next?
• What is our greatest competitive risk?

How did you score? I'm going to guess poorly. If you are not an executive in the company, or your company has adopted an "open book" policy, the answers to most of these questions are hidden. Feel free to share these with the Executives you know and have them reach out to me for additional questions.