Submission readiness survey
Surveys can be a powerful tool for improving business performance—when done right. But too often, small business owners approach surveys informally, treating them as an afterthought rather than an essential part of their business system.
The E-Myth approach, inspired by Michael E. Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited, emphasises the importance of working on your business, not just in it. That means treating surveys not as one-off exercises but as structured, repeatable systems that generate reliable, actionable insights.
At Strabo Rivers, we recently applied this approach to our Submission Readiness Survey, a tool designed to help water utilities and infrastructure proponents assess how prepared they are for regulatory and funding submissions.
This survey isn’t just a checklist—it’s part of a broader system that ensures our clients make informed, strategic decisions. Here’s how we structured it using E-Myth principles.
1. Systematisation Over intuition
Many businesses rely on gut feeling to assess project readiness or customer sentiment. The E-Myth approach, however, encourages systematisation. Our Submission Readiness Survey follows a structured process so that every response can be measured, compared, and acted upon consistently.
By structuring our survey with clear categories—such as regulatory alignment, financial justification, and stakeholder support—we ensure that businesses receive a repeatable and standardised assessment rather than subjective feedback that varies from case to case.
2. Customer-centric focus
Surveys should do more than collect data—they should uncover the real needs and pain points of customers. Our survey is designed not just to highlight missing elements in a submission but to show clients where they need to focus their efforts before they face external scrutiny.
For instance, many organisations believe they are ready to submit a business case simply because they have compiled enough information. However, our survey often reveals gaps in strategic alignment or risk assessment that could jeopardise approval. By structuring the survey around what regulators and investors actually look for, we help clients anticipate and address these concerns early.
3. Data-driven decision making
One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is gathering feedback without a clear plan to use it. Our Submission Readiness Survey isn’t just about scoring responses—it’s about translating those responses into concrete next steps.
Each section of our survey is weighted to reflect real-world approval criteria, allowing us to generate a risk profile for each submission. This means that rather than making ad-hoc changes, clients can prioritise improvements based on data, ensuring that every adjustment moves them closer to submission success.
4. Franchisable thinking
The E-Myth teaches that a successful business should be built like a franchise—even if it’s not one. That means creating scalable, repeatable systems that ensure consistency no matter who is using them.
Our Submission Readiness Survey is designed with this in mind. Whether we apply it to a small council project or a multi-billion-dollar infrastructure initiative, the underlying framework remains the same. This ensures that every client receives a consistent, high-quality assessment regardless of project scale.
5. Clear implementation plan
Surveys should not be passive exercises. The insights they generate should feed directly into an implementation process that leads to tangible improvements.
For every Submission Readiness Survey we conduct, we provide a clear action plan based on the results. This includes:
identifying critical gaps in regulatory compliance
prioritising financial modelling adjustments
strengthening stakeholder engagement strategies.
By integrating the survey results into a structured improvement plan, we ensure that our clients don’t just collect insights—they act on them.
Bringing it all together
The E-Myth approach reminds us that a great business isn’t just built on expertise—it’s built on systems. Surveys, when designed and executed properly, can be a crucial part of those systems, helping businesses make smarter, data-driven decisions that lead to long-term success.
Our Submission Readiness Survey is just one example of how structured feedback can improve business outcomes. If you’re preparing a regulatory submission or investment case, consider using a repeatable, data-driven survey process to assess your readiness. Because in business, as in infrastructure, a strong foundation makes all the difference.