7 Helpful Questions

The 7 Helpful Questions & Top 5 Core Issues are at the heart of helping you gain perspective about where your company is right now.  Our suggestion is to answer from the perspective or perspectives you know best, but always thinking of it from the perspective of what would be best for the company as a whole.

7 Helpful Questions

1. What Is Right?  Identifies what is right and gives you perspective on what you may optimize in the future.
2. What Is Wrong?  This question produces a list of things that might be corrected.  Keep in mind that this is a question intended to produce a list of what might be changed in the future.
3. What Is Missing?  Where are the voids in your business?  The answer points toward what might need to be added.
4. What Is Confusing?  Most companies have areas or issues where things are confusing or that they believe need to be prioritized, organized, refocused, or discerned more clearly.  The answer to this question gives you a chance to clarify what’s confusing and move forward.
5. Where Are We Succeeding?  In the past year what did we overcome or succeed at beyond our expectations.  Opportunities to reinforce.
6. Where Are We Failing?  In the past year what did we fail to address, complete, overcome, etc.  Opportunities to regroup.
7. What Can We Leverage?  Resources, Opportunities, People, Strategic Relationships, New Product or Service Lines, etc.  Opportunities to multiply.

Tips

• Focus on all areas of the the business (Leadership, Branding, Finance, Management, Delivery, Sales, Marketing, etc.)
• Try and identify at least 2-3 items for each question.  Be as specific as possible.

Top 5 Core Issues

After working through all seven questions, review your work and identify 3-5 Core Issues or themes that run through the questions.  This will give you great insight into the most important current challenges your company and your team are currently facing.  These Core Issues will heavily inform your 1 Year Goals.

Purpose Statement - Why Do We Exist?

Successful, enduring organizations understand the fundamental reason they were founded and why they exist, and they stay true to that reason. This helps them avoid losing their way.  An organization’s core purpose—why it exists—has to be idealistic and inspiring.  Many leadership teams struggle with this, afraid that what they come up with will seem too grand or aspirational but that's really the point.  This is a short, concise statement that gives your employees the "why" behind what they do on a day to day basis.

"Now that doesn’t mean that all organizations make people’s lives better in major, transformational ways.  Most do in relatively small, subtle ways.  And it doesn’t mean that they make all people’s lives better; usually it’s a relatively small subset of the population.  Nonetheless, every organization must contribute in some way to a better world for some group of people, because if it doesn’t, it will, and should, go out of business."

Patrick Lencioni

A FEW CRITICAL FACTORS

1. Answering this question is not the end of the clarity process. You will have the opportunity to clarify more tactical areas of focus.
2. An organization’s purpose has to be true. It must be based on the real motivations of the people who founded or are running the organization, not something that simply sounds good on paper.
3. The process of determining your organization’s purpose cannot be confused with external or internal marketing messages.  It must be all about giving your organization clarity and alignment.

Core Values - What Do We Truly Value?

The importance of defining your Core Values in creating clarity for your organization cannot be overstated. More than anything else, Core Values are critical because they define a company’s culture. They provide employees with clarity about how to behave, but the impact of values goes beyond employees. Clear values can also serve to attract and repel the right customers who want to do business with an organization that reflects what they value.

Defining Your Core Values

1. Identify 1-2 employees in the organization who embody what is best about the organization.  What is true about those people that makes them so admired?
2. Identify 1-2 employees who, though talented, were no longer a good fit for the organization.  What about them drove others around them crazy?
3. Which of the Values does the leadership team embody? (Be honest)
4. Pair down to 5 Core Values. (Group those that are similar)
5. Decide what to call the Core Value that is unique to your company. (Don't over wordsmith)
6. Define what the Core Value looks like in action in a short statement.

Key Questions

1. Is this trait inherent and natural for us, and has it been apparent in the organization for a long time?
2. Is it something we have to work hard to cultivate?
3. Are these Core Values embodied by the leadership team?

Vision - Where Are We Going?

Vision is a clear written statement of what your business will be when it is complete.  It is a detailed picture of the future – your vision of what your business will look like, act like, smell, taste, and feel like, and how it will perform when it is fully developed. 

Vision provides a sense of direction and goals – a target for the future. Motivation for you and your team – a dream to strive for.  It provides basis for decision making, planning, and business development activities.

Characteristics

• Products and services
• Organization size (annual sales, annual profits, number of employees) 
• Growth (sales, profits, production)
• Business Locations, Markets
• Market positioning, Target markets
• Basis of competition (price, quality, service, etc.)
• Basis of brand

Unique Characteristics

• Distinctive product/service lines
• Distinctive behavior of employees
• Distinctive presence (look, sound, feel)
• Distinctive culture and operations
• Other unique or distinctive characteristics

Vision is a clear written picture of your company’s future.  It’s a commitment to the future, not merely a wish. It has to serve your Values and Purpose or it won’t be real to you or your people.  This type of Vision Statement is not a one sentence statement or "BHAG," but a one to two paragraph picture of what your organization will tangibly look like in 3 years.

Testing Your Vision

• Can you see it?
• Is it bigger than you?
• Is it specific enough to elicit emotion, and fear?

• Does it engage your passion?
• Is it anchored in your past?
• It is not “Purpose” restated.

Vision Focus Areas & 1 Year Goals

Having written your Vision Statement it is now time to start working toward that Vision on a day to day basis.  To do that it is now time to define both your Vision Focus Areas and your 1 Year Goals as a first step.  Later on we will define Quarterly Initiatives.  

Vision Focus Areas

Vision Focus Areas are the major themes that you see running through your Visions Statement.  When you define the 3-5 focus areas it helps your 1 Year Goals flow pretty easily and you can articulate the 3-5 most important things that you will be focusing on over the next 3 years. 

• Look at your Vision Statement and look for the main themes or key points that you need to focus on.
• Determine 3-5 Focus Areas from your Vision Statement, which will help inform your 1 Year Goals.
• Answer the question, "What are the key points or themes that stand out the most in the Vision Statement?"

1 Year Goals

1 Year Goals are those things that will be our priorities over the next 12 months.  These are the most important things, the things that will take your organization to the next level, the non-negotiables to accomplish.  More is not better here and will only serve to distract you, don't be afraid if there is really only one thing.

• Determine what can be accomplished over 1 year toward the fulfillment of the 3 Year Vision/Vision Focus Areas.  Make sure it is big enough, you should not be able to complete it in 3 or 6 months.
• Set no more than 3 goals.  Part of the purpose of this exercise is about helping your organization focus on what is most important.
• Make them SMART Goals - Specific/Measurable/Achievable/Results-Driven/Time-Bound.
• Use the calendar year, so if you are in the middle of a year, then set a goal that can be accomplished by the end of the year.
• Answer the question, "If we accomplish nothing else over the next 12 month we will..."

Action Plan - Quarterly Initiatives & Steps

Quarterly Initiatives help keep the bigger picture in focus and not let the day to day firefighting take over.  So many organization stop before getting to this point.  They feel that they have gained enough clarity to move forward.  But that is usually not the case.  By taking the time to define Quarterly Initiatives and the steps to accomplish them, every owner of an initiative knows exactly what they need to do to push the 1 Year Goals forward and whether they are on-track or off-track to accomplishing their owned initiatives. 

Quarterly Initiatives

• Determine the most important priorities for the coming quarter.  These are the things that will keep you on track and help you meet your 1 Year Goals.
• Create 1 - 2 Quarterly Initiatives to correspond with each 1 Year Goal.
• Identify one owner for each Quarterly Initiative.  The owner is not necessarily responsible to do all of the work, but is ultimately responsible for pushing the initiative to completion.
• Once these Quarterly Initiatives are established for the quarter none others can be set.
• Quarterly Initiatives should be reset every quarter and make sure to use the actually calendar year quarters (March 31, June 30, September 30, and December 31).

Steps

• You should have 5-7 clear Steps for each Quarterly Initiative. Make sure they are clearly delineated steps.
• Identify an Owner and Due Date for each one.
• The cumulative result of the Steps should be the fulfillment of the Quarterly Initiative.

• Make sure to allow, if necessary, for an organic approach.  Sometimes all of the steps can’t be worked out at the start until other input or research has been done.

The Process

1. List all of the Quarterly Initiatives that you own.
2. Take the first Quarterly Initiative and brainstorm.  Think of the deliverable or end result from the Initiative and generate all possible Steps.  Do not make Steps too broad, they should be able to be completed anywhere from 1 week to 1 month.
3. Arrange the Steps in the order that they need to be completed. Some may be able to be done at the same time.  
4. After listing and arranging each Step for the Quarterly Initiative, assign an Owner to each one and a Due Date.