The 6 Questions Effective Leaders Should Ask

Leaders are fundamentally aggregators of knowledge. We don’t get to be small-business owners by knowing everything; we do it by working with good people and using what our team collectively knows. In fact, if you think you know everything—even about your own company—then you’re likely a lousy leader.

So how do you do it? How do you extract the valuable knowledge your staff holds? You ask questions. And don’t forget to cast your net wide when you’re talking to your staff. Every member may have something to contribute—from the warehouse worker to the receptionist to the sales reps. Don’t leave anyone out. Here’s what you should be asking.

What are your personal goals and vision?

Working for your company can be about so much more than just the income. When you can find a way to connect what’s important to your employees to the goals of your company, you may be setting yourself up to lead a team of motivated, high energy folks. Work to align your business goals with the goals of your employees, and you may both win.

Too often we may think of the company in terms of its organizational chart, rather than in terms of the critical relationships that promote or impede progress toward a goal.

Follow-up Question: How can working here make it a reality? Getting your employees’ take on how you can dovetail their goals with yours may help bring clarity and focus to your efforts.

How can I serve you better?

Never, ever forget that part of your role as a leader should be to work in service to your colleagues and employees. Asking this question can demonstrate your dedication, and it can also help give you specific direction in making worthwhile changes.

Follow-up Question: What impact will it have? Understanding how your employees envision your assistance can help you refine your strategies.

What is the biggest roadblock keeping you from achieving your personal goals?

Sometimes we can see the problem, even if we can’t yet envision the solution. Uncovering what's preventing your staff from achieving their goals may help you find the answer. This question can help you help your staff.

Follow-up Question: What is the impact of removing this roadblock? Help your employees begin to envision their ideal, most efficient selves by giving them a chance to describe what success looks like.

Who are the people at the company you admire the most?

This question can set you on the path to uncovering the social network in your business. Too often we may think of the company in terms of its organizational chart, rather than in terms of the critical relationships that promote or impede progress toward a goal. Identify the drivers, the do-ers and the rock stars in your company by finding out who helps other employees to succeed.

Follow-up Question: Why? Sometimes you may have to read between the lines to understand why certain staff members are admired, but identifying those critical employees who drive your success and supporting the behaviors that make your company a better place to work can help you nurture those desirable traits.

What is wrong, broken or just not working right with the company?

Getting a variety of perspectives on what’s wrong in your business can help illuminate both the problems and the solutions. Maybe you have great people working in the wrong positions, or there’s some hindrance to maximum efficiency. Suss out what’s not working.

Follow-up question: How would you fix it? You never know where the best solutions will come from. Ask the folks on the front lines.

How can we serve our customers better?

You’re supposed to be working on the big picture, and sometimes you can miss the little stuff—the little stuff that may be absolutely critical for customer satisfaction. Different perspectives on how you can send every customer out the door fully satisfied may be enormously enlightening.

Follow-up question: How can we have the biggest customer impact economically? Don’t underestimate the insight of your staff. You may be missing all sorts of little details that can end up simultaneously cutting costs and benefitting your clients.

As a small-business owner, you can’t guarantee your employees that you can remedy every complaint. But if you don’t ask the questions, if you don’t know what’s wrong, then you can't address problems. You should consider asking these questions of your employees, and do so regularly. Having these conversations with your staff can give them a safe way to vent, and it can also help improve employee retention. You may identify problems you weren’t even aware of and create opportunities for making your company run even better.

A Simple Business Strategy Template

How do you take business strategy down from the clouds and execute it at the level of day-to-day business activities?

I use a simple pyramid metaphor as a business strategy template. It starts with strategy at the top, includes the main tactics in the middle, and the concrete, specific business activities at the bottom. I call it the IMO pyramid, which stands for business Identity, target Market and business Offering.

 Strategic Alignment

Consider how your identity, market and business offering work together in your business's strategy.

Your Unique Business Identity

How is your business different from all others? What do you do better than anybody else? How would one of your customers describe your business to a friend? Answers to these and similar questions may lead to establishing a sense of unique business identity. And in most businesses, it tracks back to you, the owner: what you're good at, and what you like to do.

Your identity might also be about your core competence, what your business does very well, better than your competition. For example, some retail stores specialize in wide selection, others in expert advice and others in low prices. Your business identity may be linked to fast delivery, response to customer requests, keeping things fresh or coming up with something that nobody else has. That's often a reflection of what the ownership likes, believes in and does well, and what you emphasize in your branding and messaging. It's your unique identity.

Your Choice of Target Market

Your target market is usually a collection of strategic choices you've made. Your target market should ideally match your identity and your business offering. Many businesses end up pleasing a certain kind of customer who particularly values what your business does best. Consider, for example, the likely differences between a health food store customer and a mainstream supermarket shopper.

Some say the best way to define target market is by who isn't in your target market.

Your Business Offering

Business offering is my way of saying product or service. That's the food the restaurant serves, the merchandise on the store shelves, the services a business offers. Your specific business offering will likely work best when you match your identity (what you like to do and do well) and your choice of target market (the people who value what you put forward).

Building Your Business Strategy Template Pyramid

The business strategy template pyramid helps to develop vertical strategic alignment, which is what I call it when your company's strategy, tactics and concrete specifics match. You can see the alignment on each of the three pyramid faces. On each of them, strategy at the top depends on tactics in the middle for execution. The tactics themselves are built on the concrete specifics along the bottom, such as dates, deadlines, budgets and responsibilities. Strategy without tactics may be useless. Tactics without concrete activities may also be useless.

If you own a restaurant, for example, assume your restaurant's identity is rooted in really good tasting but healthy food, which is what its owners believe in. Your identity-related tactics might be as simple as finding chefs and servers who believe in the same things. Your concrete specifics to execute on that identity would be the employee policies, compensation plans, benefits and perhaps even the choice of location and the layout of and equipment in your restaurant's kitchen.

Your restaurant's strategy, then, would be to market to high-end diners who appreciate healthy gourmet food, and your marketing tactics, including pricing, signage, messaging and promotions, would likely need to match what works for that target market. Location ideally matches the target market as well, so your restaurant would probably be located closer to your target diners, and would offer convenient parking. One example of concrete specifics might be dates and deadlines for special gourmet nights, or dates and budget for sponsoring a related local event, like a healthy cookout competition.

For your business offering, your restaurant might put healthy gourmet food, sourced fresh and local, at the top as your strategy. The product tactics would include what kinds of foods to offer at what general pricing level, as well as the layout of the dining area. And the concrete specifics would include the menu and pricing, the daily specials, the sourcing of the food, how often the menu changes and so on.

 

The Result: Alignment and Execution

Good strategy may be hard to define but easier to recognize when you feel it. I bet when you take some time to think about your business and its underlying pyramid, it will likely give you a better idea of what you're doing well and what you might want to improve.

BYOD: Finding the right balance between freedom and control

Did you know that by the year 2025, 75 percent of the workforce will be part of the millennial generation? And with every millennial comes a smartphone.

The stats cut both ways. In fact, according to industry analyst Gartner, by 2017, half of employers will require all employees to supply their own device for work.

So it’s clear that when it comes to mobility and your workforce, this surge in the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) movement is rapidly dissolving the barrier between work use and personal use for smartphones and tablets. It’s also clear that your company’s use of a BYOD model and how millennial employees (and the older folks too) want to use BOYD may not always align. Now is the ideal time to review your strategies that leverage these ubiquitous assets.

From the user view: it’s all about fluid mobility

Mobile-empowered employees have BYOD requirements that include device choice, a complete separation of work and personal activities, and unobtrusive access to corporate data, applications, and email. Mobile office functionality must be seamless and easy.

From the company view: it’s all about the right level of control and security

As your business migrates away from company-sponsored devices, you still need to maintain ownership of phone numbers and business contacts. You need to be able to support employee usage for company-related voice and data activities, as well as maintain company ownership of phone number and business contacts. Most importantly, you must be able to protect company data on your employee’s devices

Keep everyone mobile, happy, and more secure

The good news is, you have choices when it comes to your mobility strategy – choices that work to your business and mobile workers’ advantage.

You can empower employee freedom while controlling business image and reachability with hosted voice solutions. This approach provides mobile application layers and cloud-centered controls to channel voice, SMS, fax, and messaging – from virtually anywhere.

You can also look to hosted VoIP solutions that enable you to shift mobility spend from Cap-Ex to Op-Ex. With reach and security covered, you can use enterprise mobility management (EMM) tools to support BYOD scenarios that let staff members use their own phones, while easily measuring and recouping business-use costs from the business.