The 4 Business Quadrants

How is your Business Balance?

In our blog The Perfect Skill Mix of a CEO, we discussed the ideal attributes for business leaders. In this blog, we will look at the ideal skill mix for your whole business by looking at the 4 Business Quadrants.

There are four business disciplines as detailed in the following graphic:

Key Functions - Busines Quadrants

Your Foundation:

This is the reason your business exists.  It provides motivation to combine your people and processes to create your products and services ready for delivery to your market.

Your Market:

This refers to your strategies to interact with your market, clients and customers that buy your product or service.

Your Operations:

The engine of your business, which includes the equipment, systems, procedures and supplies that enables your business to produce its product or service.

Your People:

The people who work in your business and help to create and deliver your product or service.We will provide more information about each of these quadrants in future blogs.

Business Balance:

In Fortune 500 companies, these quadrants are equally important and have huge resourcing levels. This is the ideal scenario because all four quadrants are vitally important. Sadly, this is not usually the case in midmarket companies, where the balance is heavily weighted towards operations and to a lesser extent, people. While you may be focused on sales, often your wider “market” strategies are thin. Unfortunately, little focus is applied to your business foundation.

Does your business need to invest more time and energy into your foundation and your market?  Probably.

If your business has weaknesses in any of these areas, it puts you at risk of business failure. These areas even have their own methods of decline. Your business can collapse if your foundation isn’t strong enough. Your business can starve if your market strategies are ineffective.   Your business can choke if your engine is not able to accelerate at the required rate. And if you have the wrong people, who are sucking the energy out of your business, it can suffocate.

But on a happier note, you now have the opportunity to avoid that by ensuring your business is solid all the way through. Come back and visit us again and we will elaborate more on each of the business quadrants and show you how to keep your business strong and healthy.

Want to know more?  Check out all our simple tools for improving your business.