The Creative mind is stimulated and triggered into action by focused questions. The more questions you ask, and the better they are, the more accurate and creative will be your thinking. Focused questions are the mark of a truly intelligent person. When you learn to ask focused questions of yourself, you can then ask focused questions of other people. Here are some of the more important questions.
What Are We Trying to Do?
This is one of the most important questions to ask in business and personal life. It is amazing how many people are unclear about exactly what it is they are trying to accomplish at any given time.
Author Benjamin Tregoe once wrote, “The very worst use of time is to do very well what need not be done at all.”
George Santayana wrote, “Fanaticism is redoubling your efforts when your aim has been forgotten.”
Many people are working very hard in business, sometimes long hours and on weekends, but what they are working on is not particularly important or relevant to the overall goals and objectives of the business.
Whenever you feel that matters are moving too quickly, that you are achieving fewer and fewer results while working harder and harder, it is probably time for you to call a “timeout.” Stop the clock. Close the door, turn off the electronic devices, and just ask the question, “What are we trying to do, really?”
The Economist magazine reported on a twenty-year study embracing 22,000 companies over ten years and using 150 researchers. The aim was to determine the level of managerial competence in a company and in a country, and the reasons for it. The researchers settled on three elements to determine overall managerial effectiveness: 1) setting clear objectives; 2) setting measures of performance; and 3) rewarding superior performance.
In every case, the ability to set clear objectives for the company, for each department or division, and for each person in the organization was the starting point of effective management that led to superior performance and results. What are you really trying to do?
Whenever you face problems, obstacles, resistance, or external challenges in achieving your personal and business goals, stop the clock once more. Think on paper. Look at the processes that you are using to get from where you are to where you want to go.
Could it be that you are on the wrong path? Could it be that the way you are attempting to achieve your goals no longer works, and may be obsolete, and you need to engage in completely different activities?
Geoffrey Colvin, a writer for Fortune magazine, wrote an article about business model innovation. His conclusion was that most companies are working with obsolete business models. Even worse, if you are in an information-based business, selling intangibles of any kind, the chances are perhaps 90 percent that you are going about your business the wrong way.
When Apple announced the iPhone in 2006, both Nokia and BlackBerry dismissed it as “a toy, a temporary fad that would soon be forgotten.” They assumed that their market dominance was unassailable.
A BlackBerry executive said arrogantly, with regard to the iPhone, “Nobody wants apps.” Today, Apple offers 1.2 million different apps that allow iPhone users to perform almost any business or personal function they want and numerous functions they had never dreamed of. By 2013, BlackBerry and Nokia market shares had dropped 90 percent and the companies were largely finished, relegated to the history books of business as market leaders that failed to ask, “How are we trying to do it? How are we trying to maintain our market dominance in cell phones?”
In what parts of your business could you be blind, as Nokia and BlackBerry were blind, to fundamental shifts and changes in your market that are rendering parts of your business model obsolete?
What Result or Outcome Do You Desire?
What would be the ideal result or solution for a particular problem or goal you have today?
Imagine that you have a magic wand. You could wave this wand over your current business and make it ideal in every respect. If your current business situation, in terms of products, services, people, profits, and results, were ideal in every way, how would it be different from today?
Gordon Moore and Andrew Grove built Intel into a world leader in microchip production and a multimillion-dollar business. But the Taiwanese, Japanese, and Koreans began producing microchips of equal or higher quality at vastly lower prices, flooding the U.S. market and kicking the chair out from under the sales of Intel products.
As they tell it, one day Gordon Moore and Andrew Grove were sitting in Grove’s office. They asked themselves the question, “If the board of directors of Intel fired us both and brought in new management, what would the new management do differently from us?”
They immediately agreed that new management would get out of the commoditized chip manufacturing business and shift all of Intel’s assets and resources into manufacturing microprocessors for the new generation of personal computers. So that’s what they did. They then went on to transform Intel into one of the biggest and most profitable companies in the world. They had the courage and the vision to ask the questions: What are we trying to do? How are we trying to do it? What result or outcome do we really desire?
Are There Other Ways to Achieve Our Goals or Desired Outcomes?
Could there be a better way? If we were not doing it this way, what other way would be better, faster, cheaper, and easier?
Remember, there is always a better way. There is always a more efficient method to achieve any goal. There is always a superior way to use your special talents and resources.
Imagine that you have hired a high-priced management consultant to come in to your company to evaluate your current activities and strategies. This consultant sits down and begins to ask you some uncomfortable questions.
He wants to know what you are doing and why you are doing it that way. He wants to know what other ways you have considered to achieve the same goals. He wants you to tell him exactly what your goals and objectives are for your company overall, and for each part of your company that is expected to help you to achieve those goals and objectives.
Become your own management consultant. Imagine that you have hired yourself to come in and look at your business coldly, unemotionally, and with tremendous clarity. Ask yourself the “brutal questions.”
ACTION EXERCISES
1. In twelve to twenty-five words, clearly explain exactly what you are trying to do in your business.
2. In twelve to twenty-five words, explain your plan of action to achieve your goals. How exactly are you trying to do it?