Given that I am a visually oriented person, whenever I look at an organization and begin to start thinking about ways to grow their business there are two main charts I like to see. One is a Revenue Chart, which lists the various revenue streams broken down by product / service area or by Departments / Division depending upon the size and kind of company that I am dealing with.

The second is an Organization Chart. These two charts in my opinion are critical tools. The reason is that these two documents provide you with an immediate picture of both the core revenue generating machine, as well as the full corps of staff or manpower dedicated to drive and support that engine.

The reason that I find these so valuable is because it can instantly give me a 20,000 foot perspective on the organization and enable me to look at the entire organization as a whole from a conceptual standpoint. Once I am able to do that, then I can begin to look for new opportunities for growth and expansion.

Given that I am a visually-oriented person this is critical for my creative process. An exercise that I find very helpful to do is to draw two empty boxes one to the far left on the outer edge of the revenue chart and one on the far right. In this exercise, the far left represents Yesterday’s Profits and the far right represents Tomorrow’s Profits.

Essentially, I am trying to identify two things; which products and services are soon to be obsolesced and what are the products/services of tomorrow. I try to identify both yesterday’s profits and tomorrow’s profits so that there are no surprises down the line.

So, what do you do once you have identified what needs to fill those boxes? Strategize. You need to strategize how to maximize the profits that can still be generated out of the current products and services before their eventual decline and death arrives, while at the same time innovating as quickly as you possible can to replace those revenues with tomorrow’s new products or services.

You want to keep a constant vigil on the state of your business and the rocky road of revenue ahead. We live in a competitive and complex environment and Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest has never been more relevant in the world of business.

This is an invaluable tool for strategic planning as it allows you to anticipate. But the key here is that you must always be diligent about looking anew at your organization and putting up those empty boxes. Evolution and change in any industry is a guarantee and so this is a system to help a business owner to keep on there toes about the state of their business.

Reader Survey: How many entrepreneurs have a specific formula or strategy for keeping on top of their business planning?  

If you have a question for the Maniacal Marketer, please send it to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Christine Regan is the president of Redlake, Inc, www.redlake.tv, a marketing and sales agency with offices in New York and Florida.

© Intellectual Asset Management, LLC 2006