And the Question Is....

What question are you trying to answer?

When you ask a question a natural vacuum forms. Questions beg answers. Questions inspire thought, but questions can ruin resolve. Questions bring clarity, but questions can easily distract. Questions spark understanding, but questions can just as easily frustrate.

As a leader, you get to ask the questions. Your questions set the agenda for the work of your team, of your organization, of yourself. Be very careful with questions.

First, don't ask too many questions of your team.

The fastest way to paralyze an organization and turn it inward is for leadership to ask too many questions. 20 questions is a game - not leadership. Show some insight. Show some discipline. Show some pacing. It's your right to ask questions, exercise in moderation.

Second, direct questions to the right person.

Ask the wrong person, get the wrong answer. Ask the wrong person, generate a lot of unnecessary effort. If you don't have enough insight into your organization to know who to ask, perhaps you should start by asking who is in the best position to answer the question. I've had bosses who think it's clever to ask several different people to answer the same list of questions. I'm sure this occasionally generates a novel idea, but at what cost?

Finally, ask insightful questions.

Any hack management consultant can ask big broad questions of the organization. How can we reduce costs? How can we generate more revenues? Ask a big vague question, get a big vague answer. Ask a big vague question, send everyone on a wild goose chase. Show some insight into the business and keep your team on strategy by asking insightful, directed questions. How do we reduce Asian sourcing costs for the outer shell of the XJ product line? As an employee, this tells me you have a grip on cost components for the XJ line and an informed opinion that we are either overpaying in Asia, or that the parts from Asia are the lever for improving line profitability.

Most teams face two or three critical questions that, if answered correctly, could lift them to the next level. As a leader, one of your most important roles is getting those questions framed appropriately and answered.

So what questions are you (and your team) trying to answer in 2012?

Ideas are the Water Supply of Business

If the water supply is contaminated, we all die of thirst or worse. Without safe water, the land becomes barren and eventually we all must move on.

Ideas are the water supply of business.

Businesses without new ideas stagnate, stop growing, and are surpassed by competition. Creative industries and occupations seem to get this more than others. If you create advertising or write songs for a living, you understand that the idea is everything. It's not enough to be ABLE to do the work, you need inspiration, an idea, that animates your skill. It's true in most every occupation. A supply chain that doesn't evolve and improve is soon uncompetitive. A salesperson that never alters their pitch, finds it less effective over time. New ways of doing things.... start with the idea. It's common ground for every function in a business. Enough, I get it, so what?

Let's start with the idea management. As a leader, do you treat ideas with the respect they deserve? Do you have a process to identify, capture and nurture them? Do you place the responsibility on the employee to bring them out, or do you seek out ideas, pulling them out of the organization as if they were buried treasure? Perhaps you just relegate them to the Idea Box, where they can be handily stored on a shelf and avoided?

Now about your "Idea Generators". As a leader, you soon come to learn that while everyone adds value, not everyone adds ideas. Ideas can come from anywhere, but in my experience, they don't. They usually come from a small, consistent minority. This presents two opportunities. First you need to act to get more people creating ideas. There are myriad reasons why they don't, you need to understand and address those reasons. (There are some people who will never generate ideas for you, but lets assume a lot more could.) Second, you need to understand who your key "idea generators" are and make sure they are adequately paid, resourced, energized, and appreciated. Create the mental and physical environment that is conducive to idea creation. These people make up the water supply from which everyone will drink, shouldn't they be treated a bit differently?

Finally, on culture. Let's face it, most organizations resist change. There seems to be some unintended conspiracy in every organization between policy, folklore and fact to thwart ideas, slow progress, and frustrate idea generators. Left unchecked, the resistance wins, the ideas die, the idea generators leave. Death by committee, death by review, death by policy. The opportunity as a leader is to be proactive in creating an idea culture. A meritocracy where ideas and idea generators are cherished and status quo is treated with a healthy disrespect.

Ideas are the water supply of business. Protect them, nurture them, multiply them...then drink deeply.