Recently, I talked about the importance of considering cash, not just the profit and loss statement, when running an organization. As a result, I was asked by a business owner: “What financial reports should I be looking at?”

Again, I am not an accountant. But I work closely with a trusted team of seasoned accounting professionals. And I highly, highly recommend that any business owner takes the time to work with a trusted accounting professional.

They are not all created equally, so take your time and find someone that you get along with, and answers your questions in a way that makes you feel as though they will be an awesome partner in helping you grow and sustain your business.

Even though, as business owners, we're not accounting professionals, and we're not expected to have the depth of knowledge that accounting professionals have, it's still essential for leaders to understand the basics of accounting – the basics of financials – to be able to make...

It's great when we get lots of time to dig into a problem before having to choose a solution to implement.

I love it when that happens!

Except that, in my experience, it rarely ever happens. In fact, in my experience, leaders usually have to make decisions essentially while still processing incoming information.

More than once, I have found myself having to stop and refocus because my mind was wandering off in “analysis land” in the middle of a meeting.

So, what process could we follow if we wanted to do a rapid risk forecast?

Ask yourself four simple questions

The first thing we could do is ask ourselves for simple questions:

• What could go wrong?
• What is the likelihood of this happening?
• What would be the consequences if this were to happen?
• What is the level of impact of these consequences?

Write it all out.

If you have something that is likely to happen and the consequences are low, consider whether it is something that is extremely risky that you need to address...

Your fingers are typing, your eyes are scanning, your mind is racing.

Despite your impressive speed, you’re barely making a dent in that ever-expanding task list.

You push on. More gets added. “No worries,” you think, “You got this.”

Except that you’re constantly short on time, forever exhausted and you promise yourself that as soon as you finish that next “thing”, you’ll get a handle on this out-of-control hamster wheel. You may even take time off!

Until the next week. Where it’s more of the same.

And the following.

And the one after that.

And the cycle continues.

Although there are times when it is necessary to go heads-down and push through to get unstuck, it shouldn’t be that way all the time. That feeling of “survival” is draining, and our bodies are not a fan. Soon enough, you’ll start experiencing physical and psychological symptoms of “keeping on keeping on.”

So what do you do...

Nintendo started out producing handmade playing cards. Netflix was selling and renting DVDs by mail. Starbucks used to only sell high-quality coffee beans and equipment (no brewed coffee or delicious handcrafted espresso drinks!).

As different as their businesses were – and still are – they all managed to pivot/strengthen, expand and thrive. Even without firsthand knowledge on the details of how they went about these changes, it’s not hard to imagine that experimentation and a desire to constantly improve was somehow involved.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time visiting the Corgibytes website (where I am COO), reading the blog or listening to our podcast (Legacy Code Rocks!) knows that we’re constantly talking about reducing technical debt to make codebases stable, scaleable and secure.

What you likely don’t know is that we also apply those same concepts to our operations.

Just like we do code health checks, we do operational health checks....