Positive business change starts with a full and complete 
understanding of what the bottlenecks to positive change are and what can/must be done to remove them.
This may seem obvious, but I am constantly surprised by how many otherwise experienced executives invest time and resources into mission-critical initiatives without understanding the right business levers to pull (and how to pull them!) to transform the mere hope of positive change into its actual reality.
This process of understanding I call the "Business Physical" and like a personal health physical when done right it:
1. Identifies the Green, those areas that are working - i.e. things like good exercise and diet habits in a personal health physical that should be maintained and built upon.
2. Identifies the Yellow, those areas where as a business we are falling short and corrective measures are needed - i.e. like when a health physical comes back with high blood pressure, high cholesterol readings, etc.
In a business physical, green and yellow areas include things like:
- Company culture. A reading of the qualifications of the people in the business, their work ethic, and their alignment with and excitement for the overall goals of the enterprise.
- Client Satisfaction. A reading of its highness and sustainability, and of the business processes and disciplines in place to keep it so.
- Market Dynamics. A reading of to what degree is the market in which the business competes conducive to success: it is large and growing (or smaller but well-protected)? Do its competitive dynamics allow for profitable client acquisition and servicing?
And as in a health physical, these green and yellow areas yield mostly “keep on keepin on” suggestions. Keep leading with ethics and enthusiasm. Keep satisfying your customers. Keep close to the pulse of your market.
3. And most importantly, the business physical identifies the red areas, those heavy matters that if not fundamentally addressed will lead to the business' demise and death.
Here the analogy would be as when a health physical so very distressingly turns up life-threatening conditions like heart disease and cancer.
Now it is in these red areas where the analogy between a business physical and a health physical needs an important clarification.
You see humans are incredibly resilient beings. We can take hard punches, stay standing and when all is said and done recover pretty darn quickly.
Businesses are more fragile - they stop breathing when the cash runs out, which can and does happen to even the strongest of companies.
This fragility is heightened by the nature of modern business competition.
Blessedly unlike the vast majority of human beings on earth every modern business has dozens, hundreds, sometimes thousands of other businesses out there relentlessly trying to kill them!
Because of this fragility and the “only strong survive / fight to the death”nature of our modern marketplace, as business leaders we must always be super vigilant to the “existential” business threats surrounding us always.
Identifying these threats is core to a quality business physical - even to the point that if those threats are deemed too great to overcome the recommendation can be to sell or close the business.
But far more likely will come a series of recommendations and suggested tasks and projects that can and will make things better.
Some of these will be “Business Internal” - like tending to our financial health, to our culture, to the satisfaction of our clients, to the effectiveness of our organizational processes and accountabilities.
And some will be “Business External” - like tending to the positive attributes of our brand and reputation, to the “conversion efficiency” of our marketing and sales regimes, and how we leverage these assets in toward healthy growth.
When done right, a quality business physical spits out a list of specific projects and to-dos for executives to work on right away to make things better- more profits, more assets, more overall sustainability and longevity.
I encourage all executives and business leaders of ambition, especially this time of year, to submit their companies to a thorough and complete business physical.
It is almost always transformative and revelatory in its own right, and can quickly put a business on the correct path towards improved shorter term results and longer term health and growth.