Diagnosing the Business

In the February 2008 edition of the Harvard Business Review, Mark Gottfredson, Steve Schaubert, and Hernan Saenz have summarized their techniques for diagnosing the health of a business. While there's nothing especially new here, the three have done a nice job pulling together the "good old stuff" in one handy place.

I've mapped the article's key elements below (just click for a better view) and can think of a few places where they might come in handy: evaluating an investment, evaluating an acquisition, writing a business plan, or as a self-exam in the 90 days prior to updating an operating or strategic plan for an existing business.

In fact, if you couple this diagnosis with the old trick of walking out your front office door, turning around, and walking back in as a "consultant" to your own business--well, the results might be startling.