Find the constraint and choose the next move

When your main product is a cash cow: sort products on a growth-share grid, pick the next bet, and choose to buy or build it.

Use when growth has stalled, to find the single constraint by asking six questions in order and stopping at the first that holds.

Use once the constraint is known, to decide where time, money and people go, raise leverage, and grade each use of resources.

Use once the constraint is confirmed, to choose among the many routes that could clear it by likelihood, return and your existing skills.

Use when nothing stops you doing more, to resist switching to new, size enough volume, and know when better or new wins.

Use before changing a process, sales motion or pricing, to weigh the sure performance drop against the possible lift.

Use when you can't do more because you don't know what you spend or make, to track the basic numbers and decide faster.

Use when you blame a small market for slow growth, to test that claim and, for a local business, find ways to grow anyway.

Use when you doubt your current business can carry your goal, to test whether the vehicle, the build or the timeline needs changing.

Use when leads are thin and you suspect your market is used up, to size how few people know you and what becoming known costs.

Use once leverage is on the constraint, to build a business that keeps growing without more effort through retention, referrals and other compounding wheels.

Use when you know the next move but keep stalling, to work through the seven sticking points and settle avatar, data and focus.

Use when the business stalls from too many locations, pay set wrong, prices too low, or a single product, to pick the fix.

Use when running a home-service business, to fix ads, website, sales and price in the right order and spend the extra cash on hiring.

Use when selling a service or software to other businesses, to work through the fixes in order for an ads-driven or referral-driven business.

When hires, processes or product lines soak up money and time without paying back, find what returns least, cut it, and move what it frees to what returns most.

When what you sell is bought once, look in four places for something that keeps paying: the product, something next to it, who sells it and who buys it.