409 Posts Found

Questions For Gauging Team Morale

1. Who haven’t I heard from?
2. How well do I know my team members? How well do they know each other?
3. Have I made a difference to each member of my team this week? (related: Have I checked in with each employee this week to see how they’re doing?)
4. Have I expressed gratitude to every single person on my team recently?
5. Is anyone a flight risk?

… [ Read more ]

Source: 35 Impactful Questions Managers Should Ask Themselves Regularly | Subject: Management Questions

Before asking questions as a manager, it’s critical to know what motivates employees to stay with an organization and why. Gallup research shows 12 needs managers can meet to improve employee engagement, including:

• Prioritizing employee development
• Facilitating a sense of purpose
• Caring about employees
• Considering employee opinions
• Focusing on employee strengths

These five measures map closely with research recently published by HBR on [ Read more ]

Author: Susan Peppercorn | Source: 5 Questions Every Manager Needs to Ask Their Direct Reports | Subject: Human Resources Questions

• What do her strongest allies say about her?
• What are her strongest strengths?
• What do her harshest critics say about her?
• What are her development opportunities? Her weaknesses, blind spots, and obstacles?
• When she is trying to influence you, how does she do it?
• How do you describe her leadership style?
• What environments bring out the worst in her?
• Do you think she’s more external facing or more internal facing? Do you

… [ Read more ]

Author: Alisa Cohn | Source: The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2021 | Subjects: Human Resources Questions, Management Questions

The following questions, based on BCG research into the characteristics of robust, resilient business models, can help you navigate this part of the process:

• Can the business model scale effectively? Can it be replicated across all your business units or the markets you serve, without diminishing returns?
• Will the business model differentiate your brand or product and make it more competitive in the marketplace?
• Will it reduce

… [ Read more ]

Authors: David Young, Marine Gerard | Source: Four Steps to Sustainable Business Model Innovation | Subject: Strategy Questions

1. If you designed the agenda, what would be on it?
2. What is the executive not telling you that you feel you need to know?
3. How is the external world changing in ways that are not reflected in your board conversations?
4. What don’t you know about the company that you’re most concerned about?
5. What do you see always being discussed but never resolved?
6. What are you not discussing that you need

… [ Read more ]

Authors: Andrew White, Eric Wilkinson, Tazim Essani | Subject: Corporate Governance Questions

Far too many boards and CEOs see cybersecurity as a set of technical initiatives and edicts that are the domain of the CIO, chief security officer and other technical practitioners. In doing so, they overlook the perils of corporate complexity—and the power of simplicity—when it comes to cyber risk. We’d propose, in fact, that leaders who are serious about cybersecurity need to translate simplicity and … [ Read more ]

Authors: Richard Horne, Sean Joyce | Source: Simplifying cybersecurity | Subjects: IT Questions, Risk Management Questions

If you’re a chief exec or even an executive leader:

• Do you have a comprehensive understanding of the groups that most affect the organization’s ability to reach its goals?
• Do you know who your top customers and most critical employees are?

Now that you’ve identified them, ask yourself:

• Why do those customers and employees choose your company?
• Why do they stay?
• What is the likelihood of their future loyalty?

Authors: Chris Jones, Jake Herway | Source: The Biggest Mistakes New CEOs Make and How Not to Make Them | Subjects: Corporate Governance Questions, Management Questions

Ask yourself these questions about your organization:

1. Do your values have relevance for your customers?
2. Do your customers experience your values in some way?
3. Do your values differentiate you within your industry?

Authors: Nate Dvorak, Ryan Pendell | Source: Culture Wins by Making You Stand Out to Your Customers | Subject: Organization Questions

1. Who is in our target market, and where will these ideal candidates find us?
2. How is our culture reflected in our branding and job advertisements?
3. What attracted our best candidates to us, and what do they want out of a career?
4. How are we tracking where our best candidates come from and what they want?

Authors: Andrew Robertson, Ben Wigert | Source: Why You Need to Compete for Employees Like You Do for Customers | Subject: Human Resources Questions

Here are the five questions every employee needs to have answered if they are to have an exceptional onboarding experience:

1. “What do we believe in around here?”
   Naturally, there’s a lot of “nuts and bolts” material that must be communicated during an orientation. But all those little details are expressions of your organizational culture. How you explain your benefits, time off, and other policies — and

… [ Read more ]

Author: Jim Harter | Source: 5 Questions Every Onboarding Program Must Answer | Subject: Human Resources Questions

I believe there are some essential questions that are useful across a variety of contexts, including, and perhaps especially, the workplace. In fact, I gave a commencement speech last year on this topic, suggesting to students from the Harvard Graduate School of Education that there are really only five essential questions in life. Although the audience was future educators, I believe these questions are equally … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Leadership Questions, Management Questions

With a higher degree of digital fluency, boards can help C-suite leaders make better decisions about how to expand a company’s most successful technology initiatives and when to pull the plug on lagging ones. In our experience, board directors are more likely to gain such fluency if they routinely ask these five critical questions relating to the IT organization’s performance:

1. How well does technology enable

… [ Read more ]

Subject: IT Questions

Much of the training top executives receive around crisis management is little more than training in crisis communications—only one part of the broader crisis-response picture. Executives should ask themselves the following 25 questions about preparedness.
Understanding threats

• What are the organization’s top ten risks and, relative to these, what are the top five “black swan” threats that could destabilize the organization?
• For each black-swan threat, how

… [ Read more ]

Subjects: Crisis Management Questions, Risk Management Questions

While most large companies are still in the early stages of developing a fully integrated marketing organization, we’ve found that the following questions are the most important ones to answer:

1. Are you thinking about customer journeys rather than just touchpoints?
   The starting point for delivering value, not just talking about it, is understanding the end-to-end journeys your customers take to accomplish a task, such as buy

… [ Read more ]

Subjects: Brand Questions, Customer Questions

Way to Play

• Are we clear about how we choose to create value in the marketplace?
• Are we investing in the capabilities that really matter to our way to play?

Capabilities System

• Can we articulate the three to six capabilities that describe what we do uniquely better than anyone else?
• Have we defined how they work together in a system?
• Do our strategy documents reflect this?

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Strategy Questions

Bring the Future to Life

1. Case for Change. Have we convinced the organization that the status quo is unacceptable?
2. Compelling Intent. Is our story of the future meaningful to our people and securing emotional buy-in at all levels?
3. Credible Solutions. Are the proposed solutions appealing so the organization, and will they work in our culture?

Inspire Deep Commitment

4. Aligned Top Team. Do we have the right top team? Is

… [ Read more ]

Subjects: Change Management Questions, Management Questions, Organization Questions

1. How are you deploying digital technology to proactively disrupt your industry?
2. How are you keeping track of the “ratchet effect” customers have when interacting with businesses, both online and offline? Do you know not only what’s best-in-class, but also what is best-in-any-class?
3. How differently do your customers experience your company online versus offline?
4. How do you assess your company’s competitive essence and how it

… [ Read more ]

Subjects: IT Questions, Management Questions, Strategy Questions

In thinking about using analytics to power HR decision making, HR executives should ask:

• Are we using analytics effectively to monitor HR performance and drive improvements?
• Can we use employee segmentation to deliver increasingly tailored HR services to groups and individuals in the workforce?
• Are we able to “look ahead” to identify employees who are at risk of leaving, or to predict team and individual performance?
• Are we using

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Human Resources Questions

In thinking about integrated talent management, HR executives should ask:

• Does our technology work across functions, or does it enforce traditional silos?
• Can we easily inventory skills across the global organization and match that against future business needs?
• How does development, compensation and performance management work together to engage and retain our high performers?
• Do our systems support an individualized, “workforce of one” approach?
• Are we able to clearly align

… [ Read more ]

Subjects: Human Resources Questions, IT Questions

Identifying New Growth Opportunities

1. What problem is the customer struggling to solve?
2. Which customers can´t participate in a market because they lack skills, wealth, or convenient access to existing solutions?

Identifying the Threat of Disruption

1. Where are we overshooting the market by providing features that users don´t care about and don´t want to pay for?
2. If you were going to disrupt your company, how would you do it?

Designing Compelling Offerings

1. Who

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Innovation Questions