Rude Questions to Answer Before Your 2010 Strategic, Marketing, and Leadership Planning
Strategic planning and decision-making are difficult, but when personalities, politics, and biases are involved, it becomes even more complicated. It takes courage to confront conventional thinking. Someone has to ask those uncomfortable questions that people think… but never have the guts to ask. Sometimes there is a strong temptation to be quiet, not challenge the process and get it over with.
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 must 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 bias involved, how would this project or decision change?
- Who are the people designing, driving and doing the work and just watching?
- Why do we need the people who are just watching?
- What are the three big things we can do with our customers that would have the biggest 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 just 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 3-5 years from now?
- 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 of the problems come from not having a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how to make it happen. Thus begins the great corporate tap dance, the process getting longer and longer until all the best options are gone. Remember, the last option available is never the best decision.
All change begins with questions and answers. If you never ask the hard questions, nothing positive happens. So have courage, ask, challenge and grow the business in 2010.
