Tomorrow, I’ll be traveling to work with a large multinational corporation. In addition to delivering a keynote speech on future trends and “unlearning”, I’ll also be facilitating a session in which I’ll help them consider how they might begin conducting “business as unusual.”
As a part of the process, I’ll ask a lot of questions. Below is a sample of just some of the questions I’ll use.
If you believe your organization needs to change in order to better position itself for the future, feel free to use these questions inside your company of organization.
1. What new trends must we pay closer attention to?
2. From a business perspective, what keeps you up at night? (Is your risk profile changing in subtle or not so subtle ways?)
3. Are new smaller, nimbler competitors emerging on the periphery of our business?
4. What don’t we know? (And how could our ignorance impact our business?
5. What aren’t we seeing? (And who in the organization is accountable for identifying these unseen opportunities?)
6. What long-held assumptions must be questioned and/or reconsidered?
7. Alternatively, how might embracing the status quo, conventional wisdom or “business-as-unusual” lead us astray?
8. Where could we use a fresh perspective? (How, then, do we acquire this new perspective?)
9. What is the danger of not changing?
10. Are we over-investing in “what is” at the expense of “what could be”?
11. What is today’s “can’t do” that needs to become tomorrow’s “can do”?
12. Who, besides our customers, must we do a better job listening to?
13. What is one small pilot project worth considering? And what, if anything, is holding us back from pursuing the idea?
14. Identify at least one “outside-the-box” idea worth considering. (Please restrain initially from judging the idea.)
15. Lastly, what other questions should we be asking about our future?
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