Question Everything?

Asking the right questions is a big part of getting to good decisions. For any business at some point the question, 'can we make money selling this product' must be asked. Some companies ask the question before the product is developed others after the bills are piling up and the warehouse is full of unsold inventory. When faced with major decisions the more questions you ask the more likely your decisions will be exceptional.

Questions generally fall into two categories: gathering information and clarifying the information. To gather information you need to ask questions like: What group of people need this kind of product? What features should it have? What is needed to make this product? When you are asking questions to clarify they should have answers of Yes; No or a persons name. Any thing else means you need to gather more information or your question is too complex.

Do we have the expertise to build this product? If 'Yes' then ask who will be responsible? Once you have a name then the task can be delegated and you can move on to another decision. If the answer is 'No' then you need to ask more questions. Can we train a current employee? If Yes then who? If No then can we hire someone? If yes then who? If no then how can we get the expertise to build the product? This can't be answered with Yes, No or a persons name so we are back to information gathering. Once we have several options we start again with the Yes/No questions until we get to a name or realize that we can't build the product.

Be careful of two questions posing as one. The classic example is 'Have you stopped beating your spouse?' If you answer Yes you imply that you used to beat your spouse. If you answer No you imply that you are still occasionally beating your spouse. You are in trouble either way unless the context is card games. Likewise 'Can we produce this product at a profit?' appears to be an innocent question but it is really two related questions. Can we produce this product? Can we sell enough of them to make a profit? When you break the question down you see you need to work with the engineering department to answer the first question and the marketing department to answer the second.

For most major decisions you will have a gut feel for what the right choice is. I believe that the gut feel is just the brain being extremely efficient. Your brain has analyzed the situation and looked at the alternatives and came to a conclusion without articulating the steps. Unfortunately you can't go to the board members of your company and say, "I want to spend a million dollars because I feel like it."

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic