IDEA: Ask each employee, “What one hypothetical event could materially affect our company’s bottom line?”

Everyone in the company knows of something in the firm that could financially hurt the company.  Management may think it knows most of the possibilities, but it probably does not know some of them known by the guys working out in production or out in the marketplace.   Ask your employees this question so your managers can help eliminate risk.

Possible answers to this hypothetical question:

• If the night supervisor quits, no one knows how to fix or repair the new $10M machines we bought last year (maintenance problem).
• The purchasing agent may state that does not know where else to buy their number one ingredient used for 55% of their product sales if their main vendor goes out of business (limited suppliers).
• If the banking lady leaves, somebody better get all of her logins and passwords for the LOC and other bank accounts. She is the only one on all of the statements. (backup needs to be established —NOW)
• Our machines are fixed by XXX’s brother.  If we ever fired XXX, his brother probably won’t give us a break on the price to fix the machines like he has for the past five years. He is at least 40% cheaper than anyone else.  (prepare alternative repair shop)
• If XXX quit, I don’t know who will do the payroll for the 65 hourly personnel. (cross train other accounting personnel to handle PR)
• Only XXX knows all of the customers’ contacts customers who pays us.  I hope he doesn’t quit.  (Have all the customer contacts entered into your system)