The example of Boddington suggests that it is possible to measure the strategic health of a company. The list of measures that can be used for this purpose is long (see Exhibit 4-6). Several of the most useful indicators of strategic health are discussed below.

· Customer satisfaction: You may have me as a customer today (and that's why you are profitable), but if I am not satisfied with your product or service, you will not have me as a customer tomorrow (and that's why you will face a crisis). Better catch these customers before they leave.

· Employee morale: This is an excellent indicator of the ''energy level'' inside the organization. Unhappy or unmotivated employees usually spell trouble for the future. The roots of internal dissatisfaction need to be identified and the problem rectified.

· Trends in financial health: You may be profitable today, making (say) $20 million in profits, but the meaning of that figure will vary depending on what came before. Your assessment of the future ought to be different depending on whether you reached the $20 million level by going up from $10 million in profits two years ago to $13 million last year to this year's $20 million or down from $30 million to $27 million to $20 million.

· Relative financial health: Even if your company is very profitable, you should probably worry if your competitors are consistently generating a higher return. You need to compare your company's position with that of its best competitors worldwide.

· Innovation and new products in the pipeline: There is no question that Glaxo/Wellcome is very profitable today, but whether it will be profitable tomorrow depends largely on whether it will discover new drugs to replace existing onesespecially as the company's blockbuster drugs (such as Zantac) lose their patent protection.

· Distributor and supplier feedback: Distributors and suppliers can provide the company with different perspectives on what's
going on in the market; they may indicate areas you should be paying attention to.

· Changes in the industry and the company's fit with the new environment: The reason you are profitable today is that you are doing what the market needs. But what if the market is changing? Are you changing with the market, or are you in danger of becoming an institutional dinosaur?