To build a self-growing, healthy company and to make sure that everyone in your company is on the same page regarding your vision & mission, you'll answer and share with your employees on a quarterly basis six core business questions.

These six questions are based upon two best selling books: 'The Advantage' by Patrick Lencioni & 'The Five Most Important Questions by Peter Drucker with Jim Collins (Good to Great) & Philip Kotler (Principles of Marketing) —all four authors are considered legends in the field of business management.

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Here is the list of 6 questions which can also act as a one page business plan. 

• Q1. What is our mission/purpose? 
  
  
  • Your purpose should be idealistic and should make the world (for your customers, your employees, for you and your family) a better place. That’s how you’ll know you've chosen the right purpose.
    
    
  • Making money is almost never a mission or purpose but rather an important indicator of success.
    
    
  • Purpose is Not a Differentiator. Two companies in the same or completely different industries can share the same purpose.
    
    
  • Purpose Examples:
    • Example from Mitsubishi Group. To be committed to meeting the needs of our customers, serving society, and fostering shared and sustainable growth for a better world.
      
      
    • Example from KW Realty: To build businesses worth owning, careers worth having, lives worth living, experiences worth giving, legacies worth leaving.
      
      
    • Example from Maxment: "Our purpose is to help our homepro business members to AI-proof their lives fast by helping them to build a self-growing $250K to $1M businesses fast".
      
      
  • There are many books on finding purpose. The one of the best books to find your purpose is 'True Purpose' by Tim Kelley. Here is a sample chapter.
• Q2. What are our core values?
  
  
  • The set of principles that guide our behaviors and decisions over time, preserving the essence of the organization Core Values (2 or 3 max) define an organization’s personality and behavioral traits.
    
    
  • An organization knows that it has identified its core values correctly when it will allow itself to be punished for not living core values. Examples from Maxment: 
    • We don't have three signs of a miserable job. Inspired by Patrick Lencioni book, 'The Three Signs of a Miserable Job'. For detail on this check this article. 
      
      
  • An organization can also have 3 to 5 'aspirational' values. The values that are not their own, but they aspire to incorporate them into their organization. Examples:
    • Make Decision, Take Action & Own the Result -- 
    • INTEGRITY: Do the Right Thing -- Keller William Realty
    • Team - Together Everyone Achieve More - KW
    • Grow or Die
    • Be Humble
    • Continues Learning — Acquiring One New Skill — Or Upgrading One Existing Skill Every Quarter 
    • Embrace and Drive Change
      
      
• Q3. What do we do?
  
  
  • The simplest of the 6 questions – an organization’s business definition
    • The Basic Offerings or Activities of the organization
    • Target Market/Audience. For home pros, it can be targeting homes with 500,000+ values; or targeting homes in certain areas / cities only
    • Three Unique or Competitive Edge 
    • Your Guarantee
       
  • You can use one sentence business plan formula from Madlibs to answer the question.
    • My company, __(insert name of company)__, is offering__(defined offering)__ to help __(a defined audience)__ __(solve a problem)__ with __(secret sauce)__.
    • My company, (ABC ROOFING), is offering (ROOFING SERVICES)__ to help __(HOME OWNERS from CITYNAME)__(ONE OF THE BEST LONG LASTING ROOFING)__ with __(10 YEAR GUARANTEE)__.
      
      
• Q4. How will we succeed?--Or--What systems are we using to build self-growing, self-managing profitable, sustainable business?
  
  
  • Most businesses (small to large) need only 10 core systems to build self-growing, self-managing, sustainable healthy business. 
    
    
  • To succeed, a business should setup the following 3 core systems to build self-growing business:
     
    • Business Referral Group (such as BNI & MBN) to give and get referrals from other member companies in complimentary niches.
      
      
    • Top of Mind System (TOMS) to generate referrals from your existing customers on autopilot.
      
      
    • Auto Lead System (ALS). It can be a free lead generating system such as Maxment Auto Lead System or paid systems via paid ads such as Facebook ad or Google Adword.
      
      

• A business should also setup the following 7 systems to build self-managing business:
  
  
  • Auto Closing System (ACS) which helps you convert more leads into customers consistently.
    
    
  • Auto Testimonial System (ATS) which helps your business to generate more reviews or testimonies consistently.
    
    
  • Auto Fulfillment System (AFS) - This system will help you deliver quality service consistently. This system may also have 5 to 10 sub-systems to manage various tasks.  
    
    
  • Human Resource Management (HRM) system. If you have employees, you will need an HRM system. Why? Because employees are the most important asset in any organization. They will help you to setup and manage all systems so you can have profitable, sustainable business which can run without you.
    
    
  • Customer Relation Management (CRM) System. Any standard CRM software such as Salesforce, SugarCRM, MaxmentCRM (coming) can be used to setup CRM system.
    
    
  • Auto Accounting System (AAS). Any standard accounting software such as Quickbooks, Xero, can be used to measure core key financial numbers such as cashflow to keep a tab on your business.
    
    
  • Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system: Any standard cloud based ERP system will help you manage vendors (suppliers, sub-contractors) and inventory more effectively. With ERP, you'll have an automated  (and much better) scorecard by pulling data from all other systems such as MARS, MALS, CRM, HRM and Accounting.   
    
    
    
• Q5. What are our 1-year and 3-year goals are, and how will we achieve them?
  
  
  • The need to deal with organization A.D.D. and silo – most organizations have too many top priorities to achieve the level of focus needed to succeed.
    
    
  • Every organization, if it wants to create a sense of alignment and focus, must have only two top priorities or objectives within a given period of time. First objective should be related to growth or revenue target and should be achieved by building or enhancing one or more self-growing systems. Second objective should be related to building or enhancing self-managing business such as "to setup Auto Closing System" and must have due date. You can sue OKRs method to achieve your both objectives.
    
    
  • Wake sure your OKRs ( Objective - Key Results) or The Rallying Cry
    • It is singular.
    • It is temporary.
    • It is shared across the leadership team.
      
      
  • The OKRs is further clarified by defining the Key Results.,
    • Key Results = the general categories of activities required to achieve the objective.
      
      
  • You will use OKRs weekly meeting & OKRs quarterly meetings to achieve your weekly & quarterly goals.
    
    
  • Issue Solving Process: Issue Solving Process which will help you solve various issues by assigning them to appropriate persons on a weekly basis so you can move forward toward building of self-growing and self-managing business. 
    
    
• Q6. Who does what?
  
  
  • At some point leaders need to clarify and unambiguously stipulate what their respective responsibilities are when they go back to work to do their jobs.
    
    
  • A simple organizational chart can be a great visual aid to let everyone know who is responsible for what.
    
    
  • Finally, to make sure that every employee who is aligned with your vision and core values is happy and satisfied, you can read Patrick Lencioni book "The Sign of a Miserable Job". It will also help you reduce your turnover and retain quality employees.

As you can see, with the exception of questions Q4 & Q5, all other 4 questions are easy to answer.

Initially, Q4 will take some time & effort to answer and to  setup systems. But, once all systems are setup, they will be easier to maintain. Don't worry. Maxment will help you and guide you (detail is coming below) to setup all systems mentioned in Q4. After that, you and your management team will spend most time on Q5--conducting weekly meetings to maintain systems, solve issues, achieve quarterly and yearly goals, and making sure your employees don't have 3 signs of a miserable job.

For more info, please read book Advantage or its summary.