Question-storming
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Are you facing an incredible opportunity, a particularly difficult challenge, the launch of a major new project, or getting ready for a hugely significant event?
How are you planning to lead your team as you take on this new opportunity?
In the past you might have used brainstorming to find solutions. That is always a viable option.
But if you have experienced limited success with brainstorming, are you ready to try another approach?
I recommend question-storming.
As you know, the focus of brainstorming is for your team to spend a defined amount of time suggesting as many possible solutions as they can—without evaluating any of them—as long as they remain in brainstorming mode.
Brainstorming and question-storming have some similarities:
- Both are group/Team exercises
- There is no initial evaluation of either ideas or questions offered
- Out-of-the-box thinking is wanted and valued
But here is how the two differ:
- Brainstorming focuses on solutions
- Question-storming focuses on identifying the problems and issues that need to be addressed to create unparalleled success
Here are the rules for question-storming:
1. Name an opportunity, challenge/problem, project, or event, that needs to addressed.
2. Set a goal for the number of questions the group needs to suggest. Example: The group should suggest 50 questions.
3. Each question is written on a whiteboard. Another great alternative is making use of a shared Google Doc where everyone on the team can enter their questions at the same time.
4. Once the goal for the number of questions is reached, every team member reads all the questions listed, and then votes on the top five that they think must be answered to ensure the success of the subject named in Rule #1.
5. List the top five overall questions.
6. Starting with the #1 question, ask your team: How can we find out the answer to this question? Who on our team (individual or small group) is willing to do the research needed to come back to our team with the answer(s)?
Heads up: Almost every team will stall out at about 25 questions.Don't let them stop! The best questions that will make the biggest difference almost always come from questions 26–50! By forcing them to continue to at least 50 (or 75 or 100), you are forcing them to plow new ground.
Here is a question-storming example:
Topic: Sales are 15% behind last year.
Question-storming (goal is 50 questions):
1. What are the comparable sales numbers for each of our products/ services?
2. Were last year's sales normal, above or below normal?
3. How many new customers have we had in that past 12 months?
4. How many customers have we lost in the past 12 months?
5. Are we doing anything differently this year to generate sales than we did last year?
6. How do our "brick & mortar" sales, online sales, phone sales, and face-to-face customer/client sales compare from this year to last year?
7. What are the implications regarding the products/services that are experiencing the biggest declines?
8. How might changes in the overall economy, business climate, or culture, be affecting our sales?
9. How can we get ahead of those changes so that they are working for us and not against us?
10. How can our sales force move from presenting to prospects, to engaging with prospects?
11. What are competitors doing better than we are?
12. What can we do to strengthen our customer service?
13. What do we need to do to make sure we under-promise and over-deliver?
14. Have we asked our customers/clients if it is easy or difficult to do business with us?
15. What might be our greatest opportunities to dramatically increase sales?
16. What would it take to cut our sales-to-delivery time in half?
17. Would our customers/clients pay more if they knew they would receive superior quality and a lifetime guarantee from us?
18. What would happen to our sales if we doubled our marketing budget?
19. What would happen to our sales if we doubled our research and development budget?
20. How would we, as an organization, need to change to double our sales in one year? What about two years?
21. How can we make sure that the quotas for our salespeople are maximizing our sales vs. being counterproductive?
22. Why do we do what we do?
23. How can we evaluate our current advertising agency?
24. Do we need more leads or is our greater need to increase our "leads to sales" ratio?
25. Why are customers/clients not buying from us?
26. How can we move our new customers/clients from viewing a first-time sales transaction with us as one-and-done to the start of a customer-for-life relationship?
27. Are our products/services perceived as cheap and average, or as expensive but worth it?
28. How would a focus group with our clients/customers/prospects help us better see the future?
29. What is it that we perceive as impossible to do, but if we could do it, would dramatically increase our sales?
30. What is going well?
31. What's not?
32. Where are we stuck?
33. What needs to change?
34. What is one item we are currently offering that we need to consider dropping?
35. What is one item we do not offer that we need to consider adding?
36. Do we have too many goals or would we do better to focus on fewer goals and execute them well?
37. What is the current morale of our organization?
38. Do we have the right people in the right positions in our organization?
39. What are we learning from customer/client complaints?
40. Do our sales follow the 80/20 rule (i.e. do 20% of our products/services provide 80% of our sales income)?
41. Who do we know that could help us?
42. Would our customers/clients pay more if they knew that 100% of the time we will deliver within the next 24 hours?
43. What could we learn from our sales team?
44. Have we had any surprising successes?
45. What can we do to decrease our production costs in order to offer better pricing?
46. Are we leveraging social media?
47. Is our website helping or hurting our sales?
48. Does the physical look of our product help or hinder our sales?
49. What could we do to make our product more physically attractive?
50. What do we know about our customers/clients?
Once you get your questions, ask: Which of the 50 questions— when answered—do you think has the greatest potential to help us dramatically increase our sales? Each team member puts their top 5 in priority order. Then, one or two team members calculate the results.
Here are the top 5 questions selected from the 50 above:
1. What could we learn from our sales team?
2. Do our sales follow the 80/20 rule (i.e. do 20% of our products/services provide 80% of our sales income)?
3. What are we learning from customer/client complaints?
4. Would our customers/clients pay more if they knew they knew that 100% of the time we will deliver within the next 24 hours? If we don't know, how can we find out?
5. Do we have too many goals or would we do better to focus on fewer goals and execute them well?
Now that the top 5 have been identified, go down the listand ask your team:
- How can we find out the answer to this question?
- Who on our team (individual or small group) is willing to do the research needed to come back to our team with the answer(s)?
When you start using question-storming you'll be joining scores of organizations that are already using this method to discover the best ways to move forward!
Excerpted fromNow That's a Great Question,by Bob Tiede which you can download for free at LeadingWithQuestions.com/
 | Bob Tiede helps leaders everywhere move from telling to asking. He has been on the staff of Cru for 48 years and on the U.S. Leadership Development Team for 16 years. His blog, LeadingWithQuestions.com is followed by leaders in over 190 countries. Bob has written three eBooks available for free download, Great Leaders ASK Questions, 339 Questions Jesus Asked and Now That's a Great Question. Learn More » |
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