Management Questions

• What’s our purpose as a company? What’s the promise of our brand?
• What do our customers/consumers feel is the most valuable things that we can do for them? (Consider this as the basis of your brand promise.)
• What is the unique value of our organization…the competitive differentiator in our minds and in the minds of our stakeholders?
• Where is our competition coming from and what are their perceived advantages?
• What’s our strategy for how to work with what we have to create our desired results?
• What are our key 3 to 5 strategic imperatives…the things that we feel we must accomplish to create the future outcomes we want to create? (These imperatives are the building blocks of your plan.)

Source: Authentic Leadership: Reducing the Gap Between Lived and Espoused Values by Daniel D. Elash, Ph.D. / CEO Refresher

11No Comments »http://www.mgmtquestions.com/2005/12/30/strategic-planning-questions/Strategic+Planning+Questions2005-12-30+20%3A36%3A44Administrator Posted by Administrator / Strategy Questions

Still stuck with bad processes and high-maintenance legacy systems? Here are five questions that will help you determine and sort your priorities.

• Is your company’s infrastructure helping or hindering your company’s …
  M&A options and plans?
  New-product and speed-to-market strategies?
  Efforts to implement new technologies that deliver a more unified, holistic view of your customers?
  Depending on your company’s business strategy in the coming years, a response of “hindering” to any of these questions might put your organization on the defensive when faced with competition from third-party providers.
• Do you have metrics to prove that your IT infrastructure delivers value to the company?
  If not, you’ll constantly be competing on costs, which won’t give sufficient emphasis to the value you provide.
• Can you respond effectively when outsourcing providers tell your CEO that they can take over your company’s IT infrastructure and cut costs by one-third?
  This scenario will be a continuous challenge in the coming years. Developing an effective response is a necessity. At what point do you hop on the outsourcing bandwagon, too? Educate yourself now about all the options.
• Is your company’s IT infrastructure group considered an equal partner with other technology areas and business partners when developing new technical capabilities?
  If not, you run the risk of being considered simply a commodity rather than a strategic differentiator.
• How comfortable do you feel about achieving the financial targets set for IT in the coming year? In three years?
  There will continue to be sources of savings within IT. However, they often will come from new sources that have to be built into future IT plans.

Source: Overcoming IT Ambivalence by Jeff Hughes / Optimize, December 2005, Issue 22

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• What do current customers say that they LOVE about you?
• What specifically do they say you should improve?
• When was the last time you disappointed them?
• What do they value the most about your company?
• Which specific customers recommend you the most?
• What do they say specifically–in their own words–when they recommend you to others?

Source: Top 6 Tips to Understanding Customer Evangelism by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba / MarketingProfs.com
November 26, 2002

9No Comments »http://www.mgmtquestions.com/2005/12/15/understanding-customer-evangelism/Understanding+Customer+Evangelism+2005-12-15+22%3A29%3A50Administrator Posted by Administrator / Customer Questions

Ram Charan and Julie Schlosser recommend the best questions every board member and shareholder should ask to get to the heart of what they should know about a company. Ten disarmingly simple questions. “so simple in fact, that we often forget to — or are embarrassed to — ask them.”

1. How does the company make money?
2. Are our customers paying up?
3. What could really hurt — or kill — the company in the next few years?
4. How are we doing relative to our competitors?
5. If the CEO were hit by a bus tomorrow, who could run this company?
6. How are we going to grow?
7. Are we living within our means?
8. How much does the CEO get paid? (Maybe not in an interview!!!)
9. How does bad news get to the top?
10. Do I understand the answers to questions 1 through 9?

Source: Ten Questions Every Board Member Should Ask / Ram Charan and Julie Schlosser / Fortune

8No Comments »http://www.mgmtquestions.com/2005/12/15/10-questions-every-board-member-should-ask/10+Questions+Every+Board+Member+Should+Ask2005-12-15+22%3A24%3A24Administrator Posted by Administrator / Corporate Governance Questions

Revenues and Profitability

• I can identify the products, services, and channels driving my revenue and profit.
• I can rank customers and customer locations by profitability.
• I am automatically alerted when critical costs, such as non-billable overtime rates, fall out of control.
• I know when my sales reps/managers are on target, and I can intervene in time to make a difference.

Customer Relationship Management

• I can identify low-value customers and try to improve their value or design them out of my business.
• I am able to spot customer relationship problems early by monitoring leading satisfaction indicators, such as product or service quality.

Sales and Marketing

• I’m able to target high-value customers in order to lower my marketing risk.
• I’m able to rank the success of product promotions to know what’s effective by product and market segment.
• I know what’s in my sales pipeline.

Finance

• I can identify underutilized assets.
• I’m confident that I have the facts to make the right capital asset choices in next year’s budget.
• My budgets are based on accurate histories and current trends, not on pie-in-the-sky figures, guesses, or sandbagged numbers.

Supply Chain

• I can easily identify how much I’m spending with each supplier and use that information to negotiate lower costs.
• I know which carriers are most often damaging my shipments (and on which routes) and/or delivering them late to my customers.
• I’m able to predict product demand and trade that information for more cash and less inventory.

Strategy Management

• My employees view individualized key performance indicators, aligning them with the corporate strategy.
• My employees have instant access to a knowledge base of information that helps them to do their job.

Human Resources

• I’m able to use leading indicators to preempt health and safety incidents.
• I have the leading information required to measure and manage employee satisfaction and increase employee retention.

Source: TechRepublic

7No Comments »http://www.mgmtquestions.com/2005/12/04/business-intelligence-quiz/Business+Intelligence+Quiz2005-12-04+22%3A00%3A44Administrator Posted by Administrator / Miscellaneous Questions