Are you running your business, or is it running you?

  • Do you plan and manage how you spend your time, or do you just respond to whatever arrives?
  • What percentage of your week is spent on work that specifically requires your judgement and expertise?
  • When did you last spend two uninterrupted hours thinking about where your business is going?
  • Is everyone coming to you because you’re the most valuable person in your business, or just the most available one?

What is your role, and what should it be?

  • Did you consciously choose to focus primarily on managing emergencies and handling what’s in front of you?
  • What decisions are you making regularly that someone else could make (with some investment in training, systems, or trust)?
  • Have you ever defined what your role should be: not the job title, but the specific things you personally should be doing?
  • What would it mean for your self-identity or sense of purpose if you evolved from reactive mode and became less obviously “busy”?

Are you making time to think?

  • How much of your time and energy goes to running the business versus building it?
  • What strategic work doesn’t get done because you’re concentrating on reactive work?  What is that costing you?”
  • What would you have to stop doing or delegate if you wanted to treat strategic thinking as a fixed, non-negotiable weekly appointment?
  • What would you be focused on if you weren’t dealing with what’s in front of you?  Which is more important?

What are you avoiding?

  • What is the single most important problem in your business right now, and when did you last dedicate real time to thinking it through?
  • What’s the most important conversation you keep not having with yourself about your business?
  • If you disappeared for 30 days, what would break first?  What does that tell you about how your business should be structured?
  • What work patterns or habits are actually holding you back?

Are you building the business you want?

  • If you designed your role from scratch, with the goal of getting your company where you want it to be in three years, how would it differ from what you’re doing now?
  • Is your current role the one that gets your business where you want it to go?
  • If you allocated four hours a week to strategic planning, what could you do that would meaningfully change where your business is in 12 months?
  • How do you want to be spending your time three years from now?  Does what you’re doing help you get there?