Of the hundreds of thousands of business ventures that entrepreneurs launch every year, many never get off the ground. Others fizzle after spectacular rocket starts.

A six-year-old condiment company has attracted loyal customers but has achieved less than $500,000 in sales. The company’s gross margins can’t cover its overhead or provide adequate incomes for the founder and the family members who participate in the business. Additional growth will require a huge capital infusion, but investors and potential buyers aren’t keen on small, marginally profitable ventures, and the family has exhausted its resources.

Another young company, profitable and growing rapidly, imports novelty products from the Far East and sells them to large U.S. chain stores. The founder, who has a paper net worth of several million dollars, has been nominated for entrepreneur-of-the-year awards. But the company’s spectacular growth has forced him to reinvest most of his profits to finance the business’s growing inventories and receivables. Furthermore, the company’s profitability has attracted competitors and tempted customers to deal directly with the Asian suppliers. If the founder doesn’t do something soon, the business will evaporate.

Like most entrepreneurs, the condiment maker and the novelty importer get plenty of confusing counsel: Diversify your product line. Stick to your knitting. Raise capital by selling equity. Don’t risk losing control just because things are bad. Delegate. Act decisively. Hire a professional manager. Watch your fixed costs.

Why all the conflicting advice? Because the range of options—and problems—that founders of young businesses confront is vast. The manager of a mature company might ask, What business are we in? or How can we exploit our core competencies? Entrepreneurs must continually ask themselves what business they want to be in and what capabilities they would like to develop. Similarly, the organizational weaknesses and imperfections that entrepreneurs confront every day would cause the managers of a mature company to panic. Many young enterprises simultaneously lack coherent strategies, competitive strengths, talented employees, adequate controls, and clear reporting relationships.

The entrepreneur can tackle only one or two opportunities and problems at a time. Therefore, just as a parent should focus more on a toddler’s motor skills than on his or her social skills, the entrepreneur must distinguish critical issues from normal growing pains.

Entrepreneurs cannot expect the sort of guidance and comfort that an authoritative child-rearing book can offer parents. Human beings pass through physiological and psychological stages in a more or less predetermined order, but companies do not share a developmental path. Microsoft, Lotus, WordPerfect, and Intuit, although competing in the same industry, did not evolve in the same way. Each of those companies has its own story to tell about the development of strategy and organizational structures and about the evolution of the founder’s role in the enterprise.

The options that are appropriate for one entrepreneurial venture may be completely inappropriate for another. Entrepreneurs must make a bewildering number of decisions, and they must make the decisions that are right for them. The framework I present here and the accompanying rules of thumb will help entrepreneurs analyze the situations in which they find themselves, establish priorities among the opportunities and problems they face, and make rational decisions about the future. This framework, which is based on my observation of several hundred start-up ventures over eight years, doesn’t prescribe answers. Instead, it helps entrepreneurs pose useful questions, identify important issues, and evaluate solutions. The framework applies whether the enterprise is a small printing shop trying to stay in business or a catalog retailer seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. And it works at almost any point in a venture’s evolution. Entrepreneurs should use the framework to evaluate their companies’ position and trajectory often—not just when problems appear.

The framework consists of a three-step sequence of questions. The first step clarifies entrepreneurs’ current goals, the second evaluates their strategies for attaining those goals, and the third helps them assess their capacity to execute their strategies. The hierarchical organization of the questions requires entrepreneurs to confront the basic, big-picture issues before they think about refinements and details. This approach does not assume that all companies—or all entrepreneurs—develop in the same way, so it does not prescribe a one-size-fits-all methodology for success.

Clarifying Goals: Where Do I Want to Go?

An entrepreneur’s personal and business goals are inextricably linked. Whereas the manager of a public company has a fiduciary responsibility to maximize value for shareholders, entrepreneurs build their businesses to fulfill personal goals and, if necessary, seek investors with similar goals.

Before they can set goals for a business, entrepreneurs must be explicit about their personal goals. And they must periodically ask themselves if those goals have changed. Many entrepreneurs say that they are launching their businesses to achieve independence and control their destiny, but those goals are too vague. If they stop and think about it, most entrepreneurs can identify goals that are more specific. For example, they may want an outlet for artistic talent, a chance to experiment with new technology, a flexible lifestyle, the rush that comes from rapid growth, or the immortality of building an institution that embodies their deeply held values. Financially, some entrepreneurs are looking for quick profits, some want to generate a satisfactory cash flow, and others seek capital gains from building and selling a company. Some entrepreneurs who want to build sustainable institutions do not consider personal financial returns a high priority. They may refuse acquisition proposals regardless of the price or sell equity cheaply to employees to secure their loyalty to the institution.