Align Your Organization with Your Customers
To determine whether your organization is aligned with your markets and customers, ask yourself the following questions:

• Does our company have multiple divisions selling to the same customers?
• Are there formal or informal processes that coordinate companywide policies for interacting with customers?
• Can we easily get complete information about all the products and services that we are selling to

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Subject: Customer Questions

Exit interviews provide insights you can use to keep others from leaving. Here’s what every manager should ask:

• If the CEO left unexpectedly today and you were put in charge, what are the first things you would change?
• What could have changed six months ago that would have prevented you from looking for a new job?
• If you weren’t looking, what factors tipped the scale when an opportunity

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Subject: Human Resources Questions

• What types of mistakes do customers tend to make while making this kind of decision? Make sure the decision process avoids these mistakes.
• What do customers most frequently overlook or not consider? Make sure the decision process brings these elements into consideration.
• What are the most difficult things for a customer to understand? Determine ways to communicate these elements precisely.
• What must a customer understand to reach a

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Subject: Sales Questions

These seven questions, taken together, indicate respondents’ perceptions of their workplaces’ diversity focus (WDF), which correlates highly with important workplace attitudes. Employees whose companies have lower WDF scores are less likely to feel satisfied with or loyal to their company — and they’re also less likely to stay with their employer — than employees whose companies have higher WDF scores.

• I am aware of my company’s

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Subject: Human Resources Questions

• Can you describe your company´s identity in a few words?
• Does your company´s identity match the key success factors for your business?
• Do you use your company´s identity as the basis for strategic decisions?
• Is your company´s identity integrated into its key processes?

Source: Return on Identity / Ulrich Pidun, Daniel Stelter / Boston Consulting Group (BCG), March 30, 2006

Subject: Management Questions

Traditional Measurement Needs
Financial

• Are we focusing on the right financial measures to judge the success of our company/divisions/units?
• How much of our value is reflected in our balance sheet? Do we have the right balance between financial and non-financial measures to address key intangible assets beyond the balance sheet?

Operational

• Do we have the right short-term operational measures in place to respond quickly when an activity central to

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Subject: Metrics Questions

One barometer for how innovative is your organization can be determined by answering the following questions with a yes or no.

1. Has one person been chartered with the overall responsibility to manage the corporate-wide innovation process?
2. Are there performance measures – both tangible and intangible – to assess the quality of your innovation practices?
3. Do your training/educational programs have provisions to incubate and spin-out new products

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Subject: Innovation Questions

Below is a sampling of the kinds of questions you should ask before you make a final decision to fire an employee.

1. Does the firing violate discrimination laws or other federal, state or local statutes?
2. Is the reason for firing in line with company policies and procedures?
3. Have any assurances, written or oral, been given to the employee about length of employment or job security?
4. Has the reason for

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Subject: Human Resources Questions

For each “bad” action, ask the team:

• What choices could we have made to avoid the bad action?
• What choices did we make that should have been avoided?
• What misinterpretations of events, motivations, and actions did we make that led to the bad action?
• What were the correct interpretations?
• What do all these imply about what we should and shouldn´t do going forward?

For each “good” … [ Read more ]

Subject: Project Management Questions

Even the most seasoned sales veterans sometimes struggle to get more than a few questions into the process of general discovery before quickly trying to push products. To improve your success in this area, break those discovery questions down into four subcategories:

• Marketing questions: How do you go to market? How do you distinguish yourself from your competitors? What are your biggest competitive challenges?
• Operational questions:

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Subject: Sales Questions