One of the sharpest tools in your leadership toolbox is your ability to ask insightful questions
The best leaders carry with them daily an effective toolbox of skills. The one skill that is most likely going to help you build a business that will one day excite acquirers, is the skill of asking thought provoking questions. Thought provoking questions can help your team be strategic versus tactical, it can help them ensure you’re not confusing motion for progress and it can help facilitate productive dialog for business performance enhancements.
Let’s refresh your toolbox with some of the basic questions owners and CEO’s should be discussing with their teams to facilitate healthy dialog:
- - Are we building the value, or worth, of our company? And this goes well beyond just growing your revenues and profits. Growing your company worth is an entirely different ball game.
- - Do we truly know where we make profit in our company and what processes or equipment or systems are critical to enabling it?
- - Do we know what our core competence is? This is knowing your special sauce that customers see value in and are willing to pay a premium to get it.
- - Do we know what parts of our product or service portfolio are pulling up our company performance and what parts are pulling us down?
- - When we might look to attract an investor or an acquirer, do we understand what company worth drivers will be important to them? In other words, when they come to kick our tires, where will they focus their attention?
- - Could your company be disrupted by a step a competitor takes? Could your company take a step that could have you playing the role of a disrupter in your market?
Ask yourself whether your dialog with your team, especially your senior team, is tactical or strategic. Tactical questions are fine and needed but generally just help keep the tires on your car. It’s the strategic questions that will help you with game changing ideas.
