I met a young graduate who was a biology graduate, working in their first job in a friend’s business. She said that she has a lot to learn in business, because she studied biology.
But I told her, that there are many similarities between biology and business.
Biology, and business is just a bunch of systems together. Take the human body for example, we have a collection of systems – blood, respiratory, skeletal, nervous system, immune, etc., and a business has much the same set of systems that work together.
– Financial – which is like the blood
– Muscular and energy which is like the people
– Skeletal which is like the
– Digestive which is like the sales
– Nervous is the financial or management side
Anyway, however you classify the systems, they perform certain functions and they are all needed for that one organism to work effectively. And businesses, just like organisms, are also part of an ecosystem, and cooperate with other organisms in partnerships, etc.,
So how do you grow and manage a business? Well many organisms have a certain natural size and design, just like an acorn will become an oak tree.
But if you want to understand a business fully, then you need to look at each system separately. A conversation with the person, a blood reading, heart rate monitor, strength tests, and other readings (the tests you can do are all pretty standard and well known.
Well, in a business, you can do the following readings:
1) Point of constraint bottlneck analysis – what’s the point of constraint? Then focus everything on that.
2) Market opportunity analysis.
3) Financial analysis / unit economic analysis / data analysis
4) Customer understanding analysis / user journey mapping
5) Staff analysis – qualitative ideas / feedback.
6) KPI and goals.
7) Value creation analysis – how can we give so much value to our customers? Think of monetising it later
8) Value capture analysis – where are we not capturing value
9) Systems Efficiency analysis – cost saving / Define Eliminate Automate Delegate
10) Potential resource analysis – what resource would help 10x – eg., person, or activity
11) Tech analysis – what’s some tech or solution that would a) be super helpful to customers, b) drive the biz to scale up to a huge level – eg., influencer endorsement, investment, new tech.
12) Where do I want to be analysis then work backwards
13) 80/20 review – what 20% of activities are bringing 80% of the revenue, and vice versa.
14) If Jeff Bezos / Elon Musk / Nik Storonsky was running the biz what would they do? (do differently)
15) What would you do if you couldn’t fail?
16) Risks / Opportunity / Strengths / Weaknesses analysis
17) Culture / talent analysis
18) Training / growth analysis – staff development plan
