Having facilitated countless strategic plans across industries, it’s always striking when people are surprised that we’re surfacing their questions in the process. I’m surprised by their surprise.
Of course, this is new for most organizations and leaders. At most, they might do market research in a planning effort. Reality is, there are many other unknowns in all other aspects of the organization. Unless assumptions are surfaced and researched, the plan will fail because untested assumptions and unidentified unknowns make even the most elaborate plans unrealistic and therefore unsupported.
Not only does a question-based approach make planning more realistic, it makes visioning richer, priorities more agile and engagement stronger. Vision as questions are 3-5 times more powerful than goal and objective statements. Questions deepen and extend the learning and innovation capacities of the organization.