26Point Checklist

The framework · Direction

02 Strategy

10 sub-categories. The three numbers on each are the typical opportunity in that area across businesses — not your result.

Time6.1/10Financial8.1/10Automation4.5/10

These three numbers are researched cross-business benchmarks for the area — the typical opportunity available in it. They are not your score, not a forecast, and not a promise. What is actually critical depends on your business, which is what the audit is for.

2.1

Business model

Time6/10Financial10/10Automation4/10
What this is
How the business creates value, delivers it, and captures money for it — the shape of the engine.
Why it matters
The single highest financial-leverage line in the framework. A weak business model cannot be rescued by good execution; two businesses doing identical work can differ tenfold in profit purely on model.
You have a problem here if
Revenue only grows when headcount grows, or margin falls as volume rises.
What to automate
Model design is human work. What software should do is show you the model working or failing: revenue by type, margin by delivery method, cost to serve per customer. Most owners are guessing at these because the data lives in three systems that do not talk.
2.2

Strategic objectives

Time6/10Financial7/10Automation4/10
What this is
The specific outcomes strategy is meant to produce this period, each with an owner and a measure.
Why it matters
Strategy without objectives is a document nobody reads. Objectives are what make it possible to stop doing something because it is not working.
You have a problem here if
Your strategy document has not changed a decision in six months.
What to automate
Automate the reporting loop only. Pull actuals into the objective record on a schedule so the strategy review starts from facts rather than from someone spending a day assembling them.
2.3

Competitive positioning

Time4/10Financial8/10Automation4/10
What this is
Where you sit relative to competitors in the eyes of a buyer — cheaper, faster, safer, more specialist, or indistinguishable.
Why it matters
Positioning determines what you can charge. Businesses that cannot articulate their position compete on price by default, which is the most expensive strategic accident available.
You have a problem here if
Prospects routinely ask you to match a competitor quote, and you do.
What to automate
Automate the evidence gathering: scheduled capture of competitor pricing pages, positioning language and review themes, summarised for a human. The judgement about where to stand is yours; the monthly research grind is not.
2.4

Where to compete

Time5/10Financial8/10Automation4/10
What this is
Which markets, segments, geographies and channels you have chosen to play in — and which you have not.
Why it matters
Spreading across too many segments is the most common cause of thin margins in small business. Each segment carries its own marketing, delivery pattern and support cost.
You have a problem here if
Your customer list contains several segments you would struggle to describe as one audience.
What to automate
Segment your existing revenue and margin automatically from accounting and CRM data. Very few owners have ever seen profit by segment; when they do, the "where to compete" decision usually makes itself.
2.5

How to win

Time5/10Financial10/10Automation4/10
What this is
The specific advantage that makes a buyer choose you when they have alternatives.
Why it matters
Tied with business model for the highest financial potential in the framework. "How to win" is the difference between a business that must chase demand and one demand comes to.
You have a problem here if
Your answer to "why you?" is a list of adjectives any competitor could also claim.
What to automate
Not automatable in any meaningful sense. The nearest useful mechanism is systematically mining won and lost deal notes for the reasons buyers actually gave — which requires that those notes exist, which is a CRM discipline problem worth fixing first.
2.6

Strategic priorities

Time7/10Financial8/10Automation4/10
What this is
The small number of strategic bets the business is actually resourcing this year.
Why it matters
Resourcing everything means resourcing nothing. Explicit priorities are what let a small team beat a larger one on a narrow front.
You have a problem here if
Every department has its own priority list and none of them reference each other.
What to automate
Keep one list, visible to everyone, with the resourcing attached. Automate the drift alert: anything consuming significant time that appears on no priority is worth a monthly conversation.
2.7

Resource allocation

Time7/10Financial9/10Automation5/10
What this is
How money, people and owner attention are distributed across the business, versus where the return is.
Why it matters
Most businesses allocate by history and by whoever asks loudest. Reallocating existing resources is usually cheaper and faster than finding new ones.
You have a problem here if
You cannot say which activity consumed the most owner hours last month.
What to automate
Automate the measurement: time and cost attribution by product, segment and project, pulled from timesheets, payroll and the ledger. The allocation decision stays human, but it should be made against real numbers rather than impressions.
2.8

Trade-offs and what not to pursue

Time7/10Financial7/10Automation3/10
What this is
The things you have explicitly decided not to do, and the discipline to keep not doing them.
Why it matters
Undeclared trade-offs get made anyway, badly, in the moment. A written "not doing" list saves more time than almost any process improvement.
You have a problem here if
You regularly take on work that does not fit, because saying no felt harder than saying yes.
What to automate
Encode the trade-offs where the pressure hits: disqualification criteria in the lead form, minimum job value in the quoting tool, a hard stop in the proposal template. Automation here enforces a decision you already made — it cannot make the decision.
2.9

Execution roadmap

Time8/10Financial7/10Automation7/10
What this is
The sequence of work that turns strategy into delivery — who does what, when, and in what order.
Why it matters
Highest time-leverage line in this category. A roadmap prevents the most expensive failure in small business: three initiatives running at 30% each, none finishing.
You have a problem here if
Initiatives are described by who is working on them rather than by when they will be done.
What to automate
Genuinely well served by tooling. A single project system with dependencies, automated status roll-up and stale-item alerts removes almost all the manual chasing. Do not buy something heavier than the business needs.
2.10

Strategy review

Time6/10Financial7/10Automation6/10
What this is
The scheduled moment where strategy meets reality and is confirmed, adjusted or abandoned.
Why it matters
Without a review cadence, strategy is set once and then quietly ignored. The review is what makes the rest of this category real.
You have a problem here if
The last time strategy was formally revisited was more than a year ago, or only after something went wrong.
What to automate
Automate everything except the conversation: the calendar hold, the pre-read pack assembled from live data, the list of decisions made last time and whether they happened. Turning up to a strategy review with facts already gathered is most of the value.

Category totals

Time 61/100 · Financial 81/100 · Automation 45/100. The sum is the official roll-up; the averages above exist so categories of different sizes can be compared.