The best in-company Growth Inhibitors survey – The X-ray GIX

The GIX―Growth Inhibitors X-ray is a Jon Ane’s in-company survey that uses a distinct method to analyse a company in a bid to find and defuse the root problem generators responsible for all the unwanted symptoms in a company. According to Jon Ane’s long experience, an active company cannot survive more than six root generators. These generators are responsible for hundreds of unwanted symptoms, and amongst them is the slump in sales, which is never the generator itself.

Imagine the symptoms that you can sense as the exposed part of an iceberg, the tip. Hidden far below, at the bottommost of the iceberg, are the generators, covered by layers of symptoms at different levels, making them hard to be revealed and difficult to excavate.

It is similar to a person who exhibits a chronic headache, which is a symptom. However, this person actually has brain cancer, which is the generator. Therefore, using painkillers to treat it is like treating the symptom only. In this case, one generator can cause dozens of symptoms such as lack of sleep, high blood pressure, lack of appetite, speech difficulty, damaged immune system, fever, lack of energy, melancholy, dysfunction of other organs and so on. With the addition of these other symptoms besides a headache, you can quickly see two things. The first is how hard it is to find the generator. The second is the high cost of treating the symptoms and not the generator.

So failing to find the generator might lead to this patient’s death, alternatively, the company’s death.

As reality is always more complex than it seems, analysing a “problem” is a matter that should be dealt with properly, not by any arbitrary decision of any of us, no matter how clever we are. Another aspect that should be scrutinised is the off-the-shelf solutions that many managers might take as their line of action. By “off-the-shelf solutions”, I mean the same solutions to the same symptoms. Those might prove to be empty solutions that might well cause the “problem” to bounce back, much like the roly-poly toy. However, sometimes it seems you have taken the mad bull by the horn. The so-called solution is often nothing more than a penny in the fusebox. You will know that for sure either because the solution wanes with time or it has not even tickled the symptoms. Solutions of that sort will create a bigger snowball, a bigger and deep-rooted problem, with more unwanted symptoms.

Going back to the example of the headache. Imagine that the symptom of declination in sales is that very headache. Now let us pretend that, as the doctor, you once had a patient with a headache. He was a bit dehydrated, and you recommended drinking 12 cups of water a day and resting for three days. In this case, the problem was defused. Your next patient seemed to have the same symptoms, so you gave him the same treatment based on your past experience. Sadly, he died after a month of brain cancer. In this case, the reading of the symptoms was right, but the generator was altogether different. For more information, visit Jon Ane, The Rosetta Stone of Strategy.

G-POST STRATEGY TOOL – strategy – Rosetta Stone of Strategy – it drops the penny on the naked truth of Strategy! Jon Ane, The Rosetta Stone of Strategy.