As someone who encourages business owners and decision makers to take a look at what is swirling around their businesses, it seems natural to take stock of what happened in 2011 and to take a guess at 2012.

What just happened? 5 of the many 2011 trends

1. Daily deals- This trend seemed to gain a lot of momentum in 2011. Many of the companies offering these deals got funding in 2011. Groupon, LivingSocial and Coupons.com have given both businesses and customers opportunities to meet one another. It certainly doesn’t seem to be a trend that is going away any time soon.

2. When I asked for trends from 2011,  Christina Giliberti of CG Online Marketing responded with enthusiasm on how video and podcasts grew in popularity over the year.

3. Another trend Giliberti pointed out was how local business groups formed groups to encourage support and business growth. One example of this is Small Business Can.

4. QR codes – Are you seeing these everywhere? I sure am. Some small businesses have them as part of their contact information and they are ubiquitous in print ads for all products. They may be abused as Jim Nichols posited in his post or maybe a transient trend.

5. Apps – Sticking with the theme of mobile devices, there are apps for everything and multiplying by the second! Amanda Webb of Spiderworking.com described them as the “new niche social networks.” Mobile applications like Instagram, Goodreads and iMapMyRun combine both an interest or activity with networking with others.

 What’s coming in 2012?

1.  Social media- This is a large topic but there are a couple of trends worth noting. Influence sites, such as Klout seem to be gaining currency as a measure of one’s expertise and ability to engage with others. Some people are even including their Klout score on their resumes.

2. Gamification is another social media trend of people adding games as a marketing tool. One example of this can be seen at Sage Ireland.

3. Another emerging trend is the shift from ownership to access to goods or services.  ZipCar, Airbnb and cloud services allow you to have something you want without the details of ownership.

4. But it’s not just marketing, goods or services or even social media that has emerging trends. The workplace has some changes that could very well become sticky in 2012. One trend that seems to be gaining ground is working remotely. As mobile devices and networking sites (including Skype) make it easier to stay connected to the office, collaborate with colleagues and get work done, more people will opt to work from home or other off-site locations. Deborah Busser has some other interesting predictions for 2012 in this post.

So what do you think?

In this week’s Twitter chat, #kaizenblog, we’re going to take a look back at 2011 and try to peer into the future of 2012. Please join us on Friday at 5pm GMT/12pm ET/9am PT and share your observations.

Happy New Year!

What trends did you notice in 2011?

What trend surprised you the most?

What didn’t happen in 2011?

What do you see emerging in 2012?

Do you focus on the long horizon or the short horizon? There are limits to doing either strategy exclusively. However, the short term business vision of 1 year is a building block to making your overall vision an everyday experience. How do you make sure that your current actions will lead to the big prize?

Using a PESTEL analysis or a SWOT analysis is a great way to highlight what is going on in and around your business. You need the data. It is easy to assume that the data will point out just the weaknesses or challenges. It also illuminates the strengths and opportunities.

This is the stuff that affirms your organizational vision

When you see what is working, it reminds you that you are on the right path. It’s that simple. Staying aware of the overall vision of your business is part of your foundation.

Take a moment and make the lens a little smaller. What about 2012?

See, when you engage in strategic planning for the coming year, you’re really articulating your vision for that year. Done right, it provides a stepping stone to making your overall organizational vision an everyday experience.

To make your lens a little smaller, start by answering the following questions:

1. What will be accomplished as of December 31, 2012?

2. Why is this so important?

3. Why now?

“Because the business is supposed to make money” is not an answer.

That’s a given. Any business can say that. Well, any business should say that. You have a a variety of choices of what you can offer, which service or product gets a certain focus and how you will market and sell your services and products. Why are you and your team making the specific choices you’re including in your strategic plan?

What do you see for 2012?

How is this part of your overall vision for your whole business?

*If you would like to learn more about the Ability Success Growth approach to strategic planning for your small to mid-sized business, please contact Elli by going to the Contact page or by telephone at +1.781.258.9952. Start your new year with growth in mind!

Skip the whole half-empty or half-full glass.  Economic news is so mixed that it is easy to paint everything with the same paintbrush. Depending on where you are, you could be optimistic that things are looking up or be convinced that the economy will never improve.

However, that’s unlikely to make your strategic plan useful. You can’t write, “It just all stinks” in big letters (even if it does). As you do a SWOT analysis, how can you get a grip on all of the factors that have an impact on your business?

Use a straightforward tool to take a snapshot of your world

That’s all a PESTEL analysis really is. You may already be familiar with this analysis as PEST, STEEP or STEP. Or maybe you do this informally within your SWOT analysis. Given all of the turbulence small to mid-sized businesses have encountered over the last 3 years, staying aware of your business environment can help you prepare for changes in regulations, respond to your customers more readily or identify emerging trends that your business is well suited to capitalize on. And like a lot of my recommendations, keeping it simple and straightforward is best.

What factors are identified in a PESTEL analysis?

Political- This is how the local and national government might intervene with tax policy, laws, trade policies, subsidies for certain industries, industry-specific regulations, infrastructure and political stability.

Economic- It’s a given that whatever economy (or economies) that you do business in is a factor. Other things to identify within the economic factor are interest rates, changes in taxation rates or policies, inflation and currency exchange rates.

Social- Spells out demographics (age, gender, race/ethnicity, location), employee/career expectations and tolerances, population growth and national cultural trends. Keeping track of these may point to customer wants/needs or finding potential markets.

Technological- This factor includes how quickly technology changes and how your customers use technology to buy from you, technological options (mobile device applications, cloud computing, collaborative tools) that make it easier for you to get the work done internally, social media, e-commerce, research and development and manufacturing practices.

Environmental- There is an increasing emphasis on using more environmentally friendly practices and products. It may be important to your business and your industry to keep track of weather or climate changes.

Legal- Awareness of consumer laws, health and safety regulations, employment law, competition laws, international law, electronic data laws and privacy laws among others may be necessary for your business.

Not all of the factors will apply to you

As you go through each area, you and your team will notice that not everything included in each factor is applicable to your business. This is to be expected but still well worth having a complete picture of the business environment in which you are involved.

Highlights questions you need to answer

 Reviewing each factor supports finding what you and your team don’t know. It’s not unusual for a new regulation to be put in place and questions about compliance and potential penalties to come up in discussions with your team. When it comes time to do your SWOT analysis, you will be able to just plug the information into the Opportunities and Threats categories. This snapshot of your world will remove the emotional overtones and make it easier to design your strategic plan and determine which goals to act on.

*If you would like to learn more about this analysis and the Ability Success Growth approach to strategic planning for your small to mid-sized business, please contact Elli by going to the Contact page or by telephone at +1.781.258.9952. Start your new year with growth in mind!

It is my pleasure to introduce you to guest blogger, Joe Sanchez. A great member of the Twitter chat community, #kaizenblog. Joe Sanchez has served as an Army officer and business and information technology consultant in the private, public, and non-profit sectors.  His interests are making a difference in organizations, communities, business, and government via leadership, strategy, communications, marketing, performance management and the effective application of technology to solve problems.

 Risk management is discipline that should be viewed as an enterprise core competency. This means that organizations should review how they manage risk at the project level.

Gartner Group stated @ http://ht.ly/5Ek30 that “a ‘new normal’ business environment is emerging, and most organizations are misaligned in some way.”  The key to succeeding in this new environment is to “balance IT cost, risk and innovation to drive business growth.”

Project risk management plans are developed to mitigate risks to projects.

Usually the risks are identified, assessed on their probability and impact, and mitigation actions identified.  At this level, it’s important to recognize that risk management is not a one-time identification of project risk.  Just as a project’s business case should be a life-cycle document that is regularly updated, the risk management plan should be updated on the same schedule.

Risk management plans should receive inputs from other sources as well like the project’s change management plan.

A change management plan addresses organizational structure, communication, training, and incentive actions, to name a few – all focused on addressing an organizational culture that will enable the achievement of the project’s goals.  Numerous studies have shown that projects often fail, not because of technology issues, but because of cultural ones.  Hence, what are the risks inherent in the change management plan that should be factored into the risk management plan?

Another source of risk management input should be an organization’s lessons learned. 

Ideally, these are in an information repository.  If not there, there may be people in the organization who have had experience with similar projects.  One of the first actions for any project should be to review these lessons learned – ideally for projects that have had a similar scope and scale.  That review may identify potential risks that that project should consider.   Two excellent articles that discuss this approach are “Strategies for Learning from Failure at http://ht.ly/4o6rt and “The Danger of Missed Warnings” at http://ht.ly/4o6ru.  A key point here is that if an organization has a knowledge management / sharing program in place, that project should support how the organization manages and mitigate project risks.

The increasing use of data and analytics is also resulting in management focusing on three categories of data projects:  Generate additional revenue, reduce costs, and mitigate risk.  As organizations develop their analytics capabilities, they should also focus on how to use data to mitigate risks at the project level.

Risk management also drives innovation. 

As Mark Johnson states in “Risk Management and Innovation” at http://ht.ly/36Xeg, “How an organization conceives of risk management will in large part determine how effectively innovation is pursued. … the core competency of the most effective and successful innovators is risk management. … They approach risk management not as a safety procedure but as a learning process.”

Adaptation and learning are the new business imperatives per  http://ht.ly/7MqWi  – more important today that ever before.  This applies to how organizations adapt to managing risk and learning from that adaption.

What are the most frequent risks to projects in the current biz environment?

How would you describe the connection between risk management and change management?

How do you use risk management as an opportunity to learn?How does your organization manage project risk that may be different than what is in today’s post?

What is the relationship between risk management and innovation?

Ready to close 2011 and prepare for 2012?

It’s likely that you’ve already started thinking about how your small to mid-sized business will perform in 2012. Planning is an act of imagining what could be and letting go of what is. Are you coming to the planning meetings full of confidence or dread? Or maybe somewhere in the middle?

Weirdly, any of these attitudes could create a rose-colored strategic plan.

You know this already but how you see the world influences how you act. That’s why a paradigm shift feels so powerful. The very essence is that you have to change how you act.  Our mindsets create expectations, blindspots and beliefs that color what information we absorb and which we ignore or downplay.

• Overconfidence leads to oversights or simply blindness to threats or opportunities. “We don’t have to worry about that”
• Dread leads to analysis paralysis, self-doubt and focus on possible threats. “This has got to work”
• The balancing act gets skewed by the day-to-day duties and not making time to maintain a global perspective. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”

See through a clear lens with these 5 tips

1. Business analysis. Schedule quarterly reviews including a SWOT analysis so you can take a step back and be more objective about how your business is performing.  With the new year almost upon us, you may have to comply with changes in regulations or other variables that require adaptations. To make this easier, use a PESTEL analysis to more clearly identify potential threats and opportunities. Another possible analysis that will illuminate how your business is functioning within economic turbulence is Ansoff’s Strategic Success Model (check out page 3 for chart).

2. Communicate clearly and often. Make time to speak with your team and/or business partner as a group. This avoids wasting time running from one person to another to give the same message. It means you stop and listen to what they are actually saying. This is  your opportunity to gauge the morale of your organization as well as getting information for the business analyses. Even a 5-15 minute group meeting can be very productive when you keep it focused on 1-2 topics and schedule follow ups when issues need more attention.

3. Mentors, coaches, mastermind groups and/or trusted confidant. No matter the size of your organization, it helps to keep your head clear. As a leader, it is important to have a safe place to sort out your thoughts and feelings. Mentors, coaches, mastermind groups and/or a trusted confidant gives you that space so you can interact with your employees, vendors and customers effectively.

4. Know the difference between “nice-to-have” and “must-haves”. Sometimes strategic plans become wish lists. While taking audacious ideas and setting them as targets is desirable, it is also crucial to keep your “bread-and-butter” targets active. You can use the things that produce a steady revenue stream as a means to invest in your next “nice-to-have”. The tried and true parts of your business are the foundation. Be aware of how much energy and resources are needed for your newest offering so you can plan for them appropriately.

5. Take care of yourself. Thinking and the ability to keep emotions in check deteriorate when we don’t eat healthy foods or get enough sleep. Lack of sleep alone can lower your cognitive abilities. When we feel run down, it’s tempting to go with what makes us feel good. Exercise or just simply moving more is a great way to clear your mind so you can cope better.

Avoid the rose-tinted strategic plan.

The willingness to seek accurate information and use it to create your strategic plan will pay off. It all starts with your desire and commitment to see your business as it truly is.

 What tips would you add?

Business owners and decision-makers are used to reading financial reports to analyze the performance of their businesses. So, with all of the advice that businesses should be involved with social media, it seems logical to want to measure how it works. But what do you measure? And do these measurements mean anything?

So, if social media is about relationships, then…

You can say you’re using social media for marketing, customer relations or what have you. But you are really having a lot of conversations with a variety of people. So you spend time blogging, chatting with people on Twitter, posting interesting things on Facebook or answering questions on LinkedIn. You build up relationships but there must be some sort of purpose.

Is it about influence or sales?

In a lot of ways, using social media is a big experiment. There are those who try to game social media by finding certain keywords that attract people. So people will write posts about, say, Steve Jobs so you look at them.  And others use lists that increase the numbers of followers. It doesn’t appear that this is truly about influence so it’s got to be about money.

For the rest of us, it becomes more of a question if you’re seeking to be a thought leader or an expert in your field who shares valuable information. Either way, you are building trust with your friends, followers and fans. The people who tweet or post for you communicate your brand and people make associations with this.

What kinds of tools show that people trust you?

There are loads of tools! It’s mind-boggling, to be honest. Here are 10 that are interesting:

• HootSuite
• Klout (check out this clear explanation from Amanda Webb)
• PeerIndex
• Awe.sm (hat tip to Ivan Walsh for sharing that one)
• Digg
• Bit.ly
• Hubspot
• Kontagent (one of their specialties is the mobile web)
• Trendrr
• Even Google Analytics has a tool for social media (thank you to Krishna De for the heads up)

And there are even more tools not even named here. But…

What’s the point?

There are more than enough tools to measure whatever you want. You could monitor:

• The frequency that your posts are shared
• The methods used to share your posts
• The number of friends, followers or fans
• Your ability to reach beyond just your friends, followers or fans
• All of the above

However, it all comes down to defining the purpose of your monitoring. The reasons you are using social media are your benchmarks for the  monitoring. It seems very clear that there is a lot to learn to make these tools useful to you. Identifying which tool (or tools) will serve your purpose triggers the question, “are these numbers meaningful?” Getting usable information that lead to goals in your business plan is paramount.

What are the most important things to look for when you’re monitoring social media?

Why is this information important?

When would you ignore data from your social media monitoring tool?

How would you describe the ROI of social media?

*Please join us on the Twitter chat on Friday, November 18th at 12pm ET/5pm GMT/9am PT to discuss “Social Media Analytics: Useless or Meaningful”

Twitter, cloud computing, virtual collaboration, telecommuting…what makes a social organization? It’s safe to skip that everyone is friendly or simply civil to one another. So that’s not it. According to Dan Schwabel, a social organization “applies social media and mass collaboration as strategic to new challenges and opportunities to rally communities of people and engage them to deliver business value.”

Tools, technology or something more?

With variable adoption of social media and technology that supports collaboration, creating a social business may be an anomaly rather than an emerging practice.   I was talking with someone at a networking event who works with businesses around the world who declared that nothing has changed and large corporations don’t consider the digital lifestyle to be significant.

So which is it?

In the Hay Group Leadership 2030 research, it is noted that “digital tools offer cheap, easy and fast communication, co-operation, organization and production, and workplaces are no longer tied to to bricks and mortar locations.” This seems to point to organizations having all the necessary ingredients to create a social business. But having the tools ready and waiting isn’t enough. As Anthony Bradley and Mark McDonald pointed out in their HBR post, All Organizations Are Social, But Few Are Social Organizations, the way the business is organized (hierarchies, business processes, management styles) illuminates how connections are fostered.  In a previous #kaizenblog chat (Collaboration in a Multi-Cultural Environment), Ritu Raj defined “Collaboration… includes working together, brain storming, creating a common vision, bringing people on the same page or coordinating with each other to fulfill an objective; a mission where tasks are interdependent, or…that they are all cooperating.”

What if we left out the large corporations?

A client of mine often talks about his business as primarily a social construct that sells stuff.  This is a very different business mindset. If the person I spoke with at that networking event is right about large corporations simply ignoring social media and other collaborative technology, this is an opening for smaller, more agile companies to take advantage of. I keep thinking of Stephen Denny’s book, Killing Giants in which he talks about strategies that smaller competitors can use to bypass or beat larger companies to gain new customers and market share. Couple this with employees desiring greater work-life integration, meaning and purpose in their work, a social organization could be a model that promotes a different way of responding to business challenges and opportunities.

Try this scenario-the business owner/management notices that revenues are trending downwards and are wondering what is creating this situation. By collaborating with the very people who are in the field doing business development, customer service, customers and the in-house widget maker/service provider, information could be shared in real-time via documents (Google docs, document-sharing cloud apps) and conversation (in-person, virtual meetings via Skype, intranet chat networks, social media) to pinpoint the disruption, identify possible solutions, create a plan, take action and follow up with scheduled reviews.

Maybe nobody will be left out?

With the recent economic upheaval, the environment has changed quite a bit. It is much easier to build a strong regional, national or global presence with social media and other technologies. You don’t even need to be in the same building anymore to get your work done. On top of that, most of us are knowledge workers in one form or another. An interesting observation was made by Taleo Research, “To attract the best knowledge workers and keep them engaged, companies must constantly and aggressively evolve how they engage them with mobile, social networks and other digital tools. In this atmosphere of individual empowerment, companies that embody ‘old school’ top-down corporate structures and communication methods will grow increasingly irrelevant to the knowledge workers they value most.”

Research is pointing the way…is this what’s happening?

When you’re already involved in social media and using the digital tools, it is easy to say that everyone is doing it. This may not be true in all sectors. However, the ways business was conducted in the past are changing. I hear a lot of experienced business owners and leaders trying to determine the “right” path for their organization. It is possible that whoever is leading your organization (this may be you) may find that he/she will find the “right” path by collaborating with all levels of his/her organization rather than in high level meetings.

How are social organizations making their presence known currently?

What would an organizational chart look like if the business is a social organization?

How does creating a social business affect leadership styles?

What types of business models could be created from a social organization?

How would you describe the relationship between healthy revenues/profit & a social business model?

What tools/technologies do you see gaining prominence as social organizations become the norm?

*Consider yourself invited to discuss this topic of “Creating Social Businesses – Business of Now Or Future” on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog on Friday, November 11th at 12pm ET/5pm GMT/9am PT so I hope you can join us. If not, please add your thoughts below.

Imagine this scenario:

As owner/CEO of a small company, you and your team have been coping with difficult economic pressures but it’s clear that keeping the business afloat isn’t enough. There is enough revenue from existing customers to pay overhead and salaries. However, developing new products has been slow and it’s clear to you that the current business model is unsustainable, particularly if the economy goes into another recession.

Earlier in the year, you and your team hashed out what the ideal customer looks like. It’s clear to you, as the leader, that the organization is going to have to change if you work with this ideal customer. When you try to have this conversation with your staff, Jane expresses concern that the easygoing collegial feeling will go away and it will feel “just like any other business.” Bob wants to know what your vision is and why it has to change now. He asks, “It’s all well and good that we’ve identified that we want to work with Big Firm in Nearby City but what’s wrong with our current customers?” Other staff members say nothing. Fred has made it clear that he thinks you are nice but too unrealistic to take the company to a more sophisticated stage.

Making this transition isn’t easy for anyone.

As anyone who has led a business will tell you, there has to be a process to managing change or the organization will become (more) dysfunctional. In larger organizations, it is easier to assign roles and tasks to the C-level team. However, in smaller organizations, the process is much more intimate.

Basic model of managing organizational change

1. What needs to change? Without identifying what is outdated, wrong or broken, there is no compelling pain or impetus to do something new.

2. Why now? Making changes without a reason is basically shooting an arrow into the wind and hoping it hits the target.  There are so many other questions to ask but it can be summed up as “why is it important now?”

3. What is getting in the way? These barriers can be internal and external. People’s attitudes, market conditions and a host of other things can be obstacles.

4. How can we overcome these barriers? Identifying the strengths of the organization and the individuals involved can provide solutions to removing any obstacles. Couple this with identifying weaknesses and figuring out ways to manage or eliminate these and you will find people are more likely to cooperate.

5. Measuring the change process. Like everything else about your SME, how do you know if it is working? Taking the time as a team to set up milestones gives you two benefits. First, change is big and you’re not going to make it all happen overnight. One step at a time is a good perspective. Second, you can adapt the plan as needed to make the change process successful for everyone.

But…we’re back to our original question. Who gets to manage change in SME’s?

In the opening paragraph, I gave you a scenario. It’s actually a composite of the change projects I’ve done with my coaching clients. Time and time again,  identifying which person will inhabit specific roles, who facilitates the process, who has ultimate responsibility and availability of unanimous support for the change project are essential.

What did you notice about this organization in the scenario?

If you were the leader, what kind of conversation would you have with your team? Why?

When would the business owner/CEO of an SME not be ultimately responsible for a change project?

What level of responsibility would you assign to the team members and/or employees?

When is it most beneficial to bring in a consultant/coach to assist with the change project?

We’ll be discussing this topic on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog on Friday, September 2nd at 12:00pm ET/5pm BST/9am PT. Please consider yourself invited to join our discussion. If you can’t make the chat, add your comments, thoughts and opinions here.

*I wanted to cite who created the drawing used as a graphic for this post. However, I wasn’t able to find the origin of the drawing. I found it on the site for the Christ Church Northern Beaches. My apologies to the artist.

Innovation never seems to become a dead topic. However, lately it seemed to be less favored by business leaders. And yet, it is becoming clearer that our understanding of innovation is changing. Just yesterday, a client was emphatically telling me that he’ll know his product will be innovative when people buy it. So, maybe innovation is defined by our customers?

Is it who defines it or the process that creates innovation?

In a post from the Ivey Business Journal, Henry Chesbrough posits that how innovation will be managed is evolving as new technologies allow us to connect with one another. Think about where you work. How many innovation sites have been opened over the last few years? In the Greater Boston area, it seems like one is opening all the time.

Chesbrough’s point is that it’s the process that creates innovation but there will be several changes coming in the future.

1. Innovation will be more collaborative. Collaboration will come in many forms. Between technology advances that make it easier to collaborate virtually to including customers in the iterative process of a new product, there will be ideas and opinions exchanged making fora richer experience.

2. Business models have to be adapted. Chesbrough predicts that simply having great ideas is not going to be a sustainable model for a company. He writes, “[t]hrough devices like the business-model canvas of Alex Osterwalder, organizations are learning techniques to visualize both their current business model as well as possible alternative models.”  The effects of the global recession include a re-balancing of where economic growth will come from which will also influence how business models are designed.

3. Service economies and innovation. In his last prediction, Chesbrough notes that the majority of established economies are more geared to services than products. This means that how services are created and provided to the customer must be innovated. Some companies (e.g. Lego) are already moving in this direction. Another thing that Chesbrough notes is that service companies need people but also other options to serve their customers in the best way. He suggests that creating a platform that others can use is a viable way forward in managing innovation.

What do you think?

The way we produce actually may come from how we innovate the process of innovation. This could change the business landscape quite a lot! In the next Twitter chat, #kaizenblog, the focus will be on Chesbrough’s predictions. Some of the discussion questions will include:

• How do you define innovation?
• Assuming innovation is always about new things (e.g. the iPad), are we emphasizing innovation to the detriment of satisfying customer needs?
• How will partnering with customers make innovation more possible? What is the possible downside to this collaboration?
• What could one of these future business models look like?
• What could it mean for a business to service/support their competitors’ products?
• What changes will emerging economies introduce?

There are many more questions to pursue with this topic. I hope you’ll enjoy the lively and thought-provoking conversation on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog on Friday, July 22nd at 12pm ET/5pm BST/9am PT.

Uncertainty has been on my mind a lot lately. I’ve had a number of conversations with people and not just in the US. Very little is standing still anywhere. It’s the everchanging and disruptive technology making science fiction part of our everyday lives or the will-it-won’t-it economic recovery. And then there are the dramatic natural disasters along with personal dramas no one hears about. There are things swirling around us that are unsettling.

Uncertainty creates questions

Trying to lead your business through unknowns and partial-knowns naturally leads to wondering what is true and what is likely. It is the questions about what is likely that can be most perplexing. Most businesses are looking at past performance and the types of interactions they are having with customers.

The temptation is to pull back and stick with the basics. And let’s face it, prudence can be a good thing when you’re not sure which way to go. Beyond the hard numbers and other measurable aspects of your business is your own tolerance for unknowns and risk.

Determining what is risky

The thing with planning ahead is that you have to take guesses. Sure they are educated guesses but they are guesses. But it starts with a few questions:

1. What is the risk specifically? Is it in reference to how I run my small business or am I looking at the environment in which my business exists?

2. What is my current tolerance for risk? Why am I inclined to take or avoid risk right now?

3. Why now?

4. What can I anticipate and prepare for?

Restricted movement or go whole hog?

It should be said that different industries have been affected by the recession and inconsistent recovery in an uneven way. So, while the small business sectoras a whole is up and down with optimism, it is clear that many specific businesses are doing all right. But you might ask, what about my experience? The way forward has to lie in answering the questions.

Where do you focus when you do a risk assessment?

*We’re going to take a deeper look (or as much as 140 will allow) on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog on Friday, June 17th at 12pm ET/5pm BST/9am PT with this topic. Please consider yourself invited to join in the conversation “Risk Taking and Uncertainty”