After meeting with and investigating 100's of businesses that have been unable to achieve their profit goals, it is clear there is need for a simple process for profit-improvement. The simple process needs to work for all sizes of businesses and work across a broad range of business sectors.

Here is a simple profit-improvement process that works:

The RAISE Process

Review your issues, objectively

Assessment of situation, people, & process

Insight, to create options & best practices

Support, of your solution implementation

Evaluation against agreed benchmarks

More details...

Review your issues, objectively:

There are 2 ways to be objective. (1) be a possibility-thinking master of self-discipline and (2) obtain unbiased 3^rd party input. Definitely, there are ways to expand open-mindedness, possibility thinking, and creative thinking. Here are 2 examples: Edward de Bono's 'Six Thinking Hats' and John C. Maxwell's 'How Successful People Think'. 

Assessment of situation, people, & process:

These are the 3 basic elements of business. They inter-play with one another. Of course, it is all about people. Yet, the differences in people are often underestimated. People create the process. Yet, sometimes they do not do a good enough job explaining what they have created. And, people regularly underestimate the impact situations have on people's behaviour....especially, tough situations.

Insight, to create options & best practices:

Some people appear to possess a natural gift of insight; some people rarely exhibit insight; any person who works at it can develop skills for insight. Business leadership and business development [sales & marketing] are two areas where insight is most essential. Here is an illustration of the importance of insight - the Entrepreneurial Dilemma. 

Support, of your solution implementation:

It is impossible to implement a solution if your people do not buy into it. It is difficult to make a good consensus decision; it is really tough to implement any decision without people buying in. For some people - and you will need their help - the path to change must contain small steps...at least, at first.

Evaluation against agreed benchmarks:

Business is an iterative process: building things you believe contain value and testing to determine those things actually do contain value. Here, I am talking about value for clients, value for owners, value for employees...i.e., value, as seen from these and other [different] perspectives. And, all these perspectives must be understood and used as performance benchmarks...to define success and guide behaviour. Then, with benchmarks understood - measure, report, adjust, etc.

Investors and traders choose Puts & Calls to manage financial risks...and to speculate. Puts & Calls are options. At the time they are sold, Puts & Calls deliver money of value to the seller and provide rights of value to the buyer/holder.

The extent of the value of these rights will depend on future situations (in the financial markets) and future choices/actions taken by the holder of the Puts & Calls.

We also use Puts & Calls during other day-to-day interactions with people. So, these interpersonal Puts & Calls involve a different sort of speculation. Like financial-market Puts & Calls, these interpersonal Puts & Calls are based on options/choices...and they also contain rights. The value in these rights is also dependent on future situations and the choices made in reaction to the situations.

In addition to rights, these interpersonal Puts & Calls contain wrongs.

The wrongs expand the value and the risks tied to these other Puts & Calls.

Here are some examples...

There are numerous examples of Puts that are wrong things to do in business... 

• Putting on airs,
• Putting people on,
• Putting people on the spot,
• Putting people in their place,
• Putting all your eggs in one basket,
• Putting it to 'em,
• Putting people through the wringer,
• Putting your foot in your mouth,
• Putting words in other people's mouth
• Putting people's noses out of joint, 
• literally Putting your nose to the grindstone.

Fighting business fires is a process. Business planning is a process. 

We choose the processes we experience and live with.

A business-planning meeting is a situation. An office fire fight is a situation.

We choose the business situations we experience and live with.

We get bogged down in unimportant details, false urgencies, and interpersonal stumblings.

So, from time to time, we need to step back and demystify our business.

***

Here's a simple-but-accurate way of looking at business:

Business contains only 3 things: People, Process, & Situations.

Processes and situations always involve people; people are integral. While this fact seems obvious as we sit and think about it, it is often lost during the heat of business fire fights. 

People, processes, and situations always provide the opportunity for forethought. We choose whether or not to apply that forethought.

And...

"He who has not first laid his foundations may be able with great ability to lay them afterwards, but they will be laid with trouble to the architect and danger to the building."

That's a quote from a book that has survived 5 centuries: Niccolo Machiavelli's 'The Prince' [written in 1513 and first published in 1532]. Granted, Machiavelli was writing about political leadership rather than business. Granted too, Machiavelli was writing about people - those wanting leadership positions and those wanting to keep leadership positions.

And, in Machiavelli's day, no question, the blades of confusion cut deep.