What Is The Right Question?

Do you really KNOW what you want to know?

I was in a room of executives when they were wondering how to get more customers.  Sales were way down and everyone was desperate to make something happen.  So, why didn’t they ask the right questions?  Mostly no one spoke up because they were afraid.  These highly skilled and well educated people were afraid of looking foolish in asking the right question or questions.  I tell my son, “Smart isn’t what you know.  Smart is what you do with what you do know.”  So, getting up from my seat I did something - I asked the questions that needed to be asked.

• Were we the right people to turn the company around?
• How much time, money, and/or effort were we willing to put into changing the culture of the company to something customers wanted?
• Who is ultimately leading the charge to turn things around?
• How much power will this person have to make things happen?

How do you know when you have the right questions?

When you get to the point when people have to face tough questions and the temperature of the room goes up a few degrees you have a situation where the smart start moving and the weak make excuses.  It is much easier to make changes when you ask the right questions from the start and get people out of their comfort zone.

Hypothetically, if you were asked by a good friend to help him with the same situation where he worked, what would you say?  Very often we are too close to the situation to ask the right questions.  Step back, use Bulldog Rule #10 - Leave the emotion out of your business (most of the time), and ask questions that come to mind.  Write them down and then ask another question for every question you wrote down.  Soon you will have a list of questions that matter.  Cut out the questions that won’t impact your situation and then you have the right questions.

Like I mentioned earlier - Smart is what you DO!  So, go do something.  The right questions can give you the right answers only if you do something with them.  Sitting in front of the path to success does not mean you will move down it.  Get off your butt and move!!

There are too many people who are going to say that they are not in charge and can not make things change.  You built a wall to keep yourself from changing things and you are the right person to tear it down.  Changes come because you do something more today than you did yesterday. I have a friend who said, “If you could just improve your life 1% everyday in 100 days you would be 100% better.”  He was a strange man, but he was onto something profound.  Taking the time to change a company and ask the right questions does not have to be a big deal.

Remember - small changes make things better too and many times you can get a larger force to help you than if you try to change everything at once.  Too bad there are many leaders who do not understand that lesson.  Start small and change things. Do something smart.

Bgriffin@BusinessBulldog.com

This entry was posted on 29. August 2009 at 22:03 and is filed under Customer Service, Creating the Culture, Being the Boss, Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

| Print