Rough Questions to Answer Before Your 2010 Strategic, Marketing, and Leadership Planning
Strategic planning and decision making are difficult, but when personalities, politics, and bias get involved, it becomes even more complicated. It takes courage to confront conventional thinking. Someone has to ask those awkward questions that people think…but never have the guts to ask. Sometimes there is a strong temptation to be quiet, not to challenge the process and finish it once and for all.
Okay, I’m going to ask the hard questions. As my grandmother used to say, “The only way to change is to do things differently.” If you want to stimulate some real, measurable and relevant change, then be bold, step up, man up and ask. Every process needs to be challenged from time to time. He starts kicking the scared cows with questions like these.
15 rude questions you need to answer
- Why are we doing this? Do we have compelling reasons?
- If we started over, would we do things this way?
- If there were no company politics, rivalries, or biases involved, how would you change this project or decision?
- Who are the people who design, drive and do the work and just watch?
- Why do we need people who are just watching?
- What are the three big things we can do with our customers that would have the most positive impact on their business and ours?
- Are our products and services really different and do they offer real and measurable value?
- Whose solution are they using while waiting for our solution?
- Is it easy to do business with us and are we easy to buy from?
- Is our Unique Value Proposition really unique and valuable?
- What is our company doing to steal business from our competition?
- Is our department developing strategies to grow the business or simply to protect our budget?
- Is our marketing attracting the business we want or just the business that wants us?
- Are the customers we have today the ones we want and need in 3-5 years?
- How do we change our business model to get the customers we want and need?
why do you have to ask
No one sets out to make a bad decision. In reality, every bad decision begins as someone else’s attempt to make a good decision. Most problems come from not having a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how to make it happen. So begins the great corporate tap dance, the process getting longer and longer until all the best options are gone. Remember, the last available option is never the best decision.
All change begins with questions and answers. If you never ask the hard questions, nothing positive happens. So be courageous, ask questions, challenge yourself and grow the business in 2010.
