Leadership usually focuses on bottom-line, team morale, vision, and mission. But there are a few things you have to ask yourself to gain perspective on where you are as an organization.
At our strategic planning events, we spend tons of time gaining perspective on the business. Every company I work with, in the beginning, says they understand exactly where they are, how they got there, and the areas they need to focus on the most.
And every company leaves absolutely blown away they did not have a good perspective on where they are or what the main issues and opportunities are.
More importantly, they leave with an incredible understanding of how they make decisions, where they’re going, and the absolute most important things that they need to focus on right now! In fact, they leave with a plan on exactly how they’re going to do it and how they will execute it.
So what are some of the things I make them focus on? First, I get perspective on what’s going on inside of the company by asking four simple questions:
- What’s right?
- What’s wrong?
- What’s confused?
- What’s missing?
I ask every company to answer these questions before the event. The funny thing is, the initial answers are not even close to what we discover during the event. It’s difficult while you’re so focused on what you’re doing to realize what’s right, missing, and confused in your business.
As leaders, however, we usually don’t have a problem knowing what’s wrong. That column always seems to be filled up pretty well. That’s partly why I always start by asking what’s right.
This should be one of the easiest things for an organization to do, but it’s very difficult for a company to visualize what is right inside the business. They usually get about six things listed and then stop.
It’s one of the first questions I ask because it shows the leadership that we have a lot of work to do. And that’s just the very beginning of three days of discovery!
