Former Defence Secretary of the United States, Donald Rumsfeld’s most famous quote is about knowing what you know, and knowing what you don’t know…and then not knowing other things you don’t know. A lot of people made fun of it, but it’s an accurate and smart comment.
As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.
I’ve been doing Business Analysis for about 20 years now (although I only realized it was called that 10 years ago). I have taken a number of courses on getting feedback from stakeholders and building a picture of the business. During that process, you figure out what the business knows, you also identify a lot of risks, what the business knows it doesn’t know. There’s also a ton of things that you don’t know you need to know.
This is one of the things that bringing in outside help is best at. An outsider likely has experience in places you don’t, and they can identify more known knowns and known unknowns than you can internally because their experiences have taught them about those items.
Sometimes you don’t know the unknowns simply because you don’t know the questions to ask.
At NorthIQ we have a very simple on-boarding process that lets us discover some of those known unknowns and known knowns. We call it “The 4 Questions That Will Make Your Business Smarter”.
The four questions every business needs to answer are:
- What’s your strategy?
- Who are your customers?
- How are you communicating?
- How do you convert a lead to an opportunity?
We also tell you about the 3 Solutions Every Business Needs.
- You need to be on social media
- You need a website
- Your website needs to be smarter
We’ve created a simple e-book that will walk you through those four questions, and we think you should use this guide to make your business smarter!
Get the NorthIQ Smarter Business Guide
