INTERVIEW Derek Owen - Totem
“The Totem Business Principles encapsulates strategies, skills, values,
experience, ethics, expertise and techniques.” Derek Owen, CEO & Founder - Totem
How Healthy is your Business?
Comms Business is delighted to launch a strategic initiative with Totem to bring a business health check
service to the Channel. In a rapidly evolving market, do you really know how healthy your business is? In this
article Comms Business speaks to Derek Owen, CEO & Founder of Totem
Comms Business Magazine
(CBM): What is the back story
to the creation of the Health
Check?
Derek Owen (DO): After years
of working with businesses to
identify issues in their strategy,
approach and other key
principle areas we documented
around 100 questions that we
used throughout the analysis
and information gathering
stage. We thought there must
be a better way to provide this
to businesses to easily gain a
snapshot of where they are on
their journey and deliver that
online.
We honed these questions
down into 6 key principle
areas. ese being: Purpose,
Performance, Process, Product,
People and Promotion.
e Totem Business
Principles encapsulates
strategies, skills, values,
experience, ethics, expertise and
techniques. is helps dene a
company’s objectives, culture,
focus, adaptability, resilience
and the capability to deliver
what’s necessary for sustainable
growth.
CBM: Why are you focusing on
the Channel?
DO: e Channel is changing;
more and more businesses are
heavily focused on their day
jobs and delivering products
and services to their customers,
they rarely nd time to sit
up and take a look at how
their business is running. Are
they being ecient, are the
key stakeholders aligned in
the strategy and direction of
the business, what are their
employee’s thoughts on how the
business is running etc? is
Health Check enables business
leaders to quickly and eectively
see how they are performing
within this environment.
It is also possible to get all
employees to complete the
Health Check to provide a
company-wide understanding
along with employee perception
of how the business is
performing.
CBM: What does the process
of taking the Health Check
look like?
DO: It’s a quick and eective
online tool that can help focus
further business improvements.
Once the questionnaire is
complete the answers are scored
against a set of principles Totem
have developed by working
with clients, and are based on
fundamental business practices
that have helped shape many
businesses to succeed.
If used correctly, the
weighted results from your
Totem Business Health Check
will help you focus on the areas
of your business that need
attention, and arm you with the
steps you need to take to ensure
your business is ‘future t’,
now and on an on-going basis.
Ultimately, we wanted to create
an easy to use tool that could be
completed within 10 minutes,
and provide business leaders a
benchmark of where they are
against the key principles.
CBM: What can businesses
hope to get out of this?
DO: e Health Check can be
used individually – to gain
an understanding of how the
business is performing. It can
also be used by business leaders
within a company to gain a
perspective of the dierent
department heads, or it can be
used by all employees – where
the aggregated results are
analysed and presented back as
a company-wide summary of
which key principle areas need
further improvement.
e way in which the tool can
be utilised is very versatile. For
example, a company we recently
helped had 56 employees and 7
business board members each
responsible for a separate area.
e result enabled a series of
drilled-down reports to identify
a company-wide perspective, a
board member perspective and
then a business area perspective.
It gave the company an
enormous amount of insight
into the business and showed
them where the improvements
needed to be made. ey
committed quite heavily to the
process which gave the tool a
large amount of data also, the
more data it gets the better the
results will be for that business.
The 6 key Principle areas.
• Purpose - is is the reason
the business exists, the focus,
the mission and core values.
• Performance - Performance
is how a business measures
itself against many elements
and activities. We call it the
“key success factors”.
• Process - Business processes
help you to dene, plan
and focus on the activities,
actions and linked tasks that
deliver an end result.
• Product - e product
principle denes what
products and services are
developed, along with the
pricing and protability
models.
• People - People goes
beyond sta and across
all employees capability,
diversity, adaptability,
succession planning and
team skills.
• Promotion - Promoting your
business can be achieved by
using a number of dierent
mechanisms that form the
“Promotional Mix”.
To take your business health check visit - www.totem-healthcheck.co.uk
20 | Comms Business Magazine | November 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
/www.totem-healthcheck.co.uk
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