Leading with Questions, 3rd Edition

10Using Questions to Share Strategy and Create Change

When leaders shape corporate vision, purpose, and strategy, their focus must turn outward and the questions they ask must go far beyond the company's walls. Questions involving corporate strategy are questions about how the organization relates to the world around it: what markets it competes in, what customers it serves, what alliances it pursues with partners, how it produces its products and services, outsources work to vendors, and how it relates to the community and other stakeholders. Vision and values also must look outward—for while we cannot look to others to tell us what our values should be, our values must be informed by the perspectives of outside stakeholders and relevant to the challenges we face. In this chapter, we explore ways to use questions to shape strategy and promote change, focusing on questions with both internal and external stakeholder groups.

Questions have the power to transform organizations large and small. They can connect us to customers, markets, vendors, the community, and other stakeholders as we shape strategy. How questions can shape organizational values and bring commitment to them, and agile companies use questions to promote change.

Using Questions to Bring Fresh Perspective

People can easily become entrapped in the organization's accumulated knowledge and established procedures. As leaders, we must periodically question the collective wisdom of the organization. We need to be ...