Find the problem

Most owners can't name their biggest time sink, because they're too close to it. These articles cover how to watch the work, ask the right questions, and rank what you find so you fix the right thing first.

• Your first week inside a business: what to do and what to leave aloneHow to spend the first few days watching a business work, what to write down, and the things you should not touch yet.
• The "what did you do last week" interview: 10 questions that find real problemsTen questions to ask the people doing the work. They turn vague complaints into specific, fixable problems.
• How to rank problems: pain, payoff, and how fast you can fix itA simple scoring method for picking which problem to fix first, with an example and the mistakes that lead people to pick the wrong one.