Strategy
Strategic Questions for the New Year
As the new year begins, it is an opportune time to reflect on the past year and clarify vision and direction for the year ahead. Strategic questions enable people and organizations to move from the known (present) to the unknown (future) - exploring possibilities, seeing new options, and realizing where new information may be needed. Strategic questions lead us to reflect in ways that inspire movement.
We offer some questions to explore individually or use with your team/organization to spur some new ideas 
and insights:
- What was a successful event/experience of 2011 that you would like to see grow or be replicated in the coming year?
- What were three key things that you/we learned last year?
- Of all the new people you met this year, who would you like to collaborate with more in the future?
- What trends or events in the past year were most significant? What new possibilities might they enable?
- Imagine it is one year from now and your/our work has been hugely successful, what would things look like?
- What people or stories inspired you that you would like to replicate?
- Of all the competing priorities you have, which do you most want to focus on?
Strategic Questioning
“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
Since many of the challenges we face are unprecedented and we cannot simply project what worked in the past, we need tools that help us navigate and create a more positive future. Strategic questions enable people and organizations to move from the known (present) to the unknown (future) - exploring possibilities, seeing new options, and realizing where new information may be needed. Strategic questions lead us to reflect in ways that inspire movement.
For example, the research labs at Hewlett Packard were involved in a strategic planning exercise, oriented around the question: “How can we be the best industrial research lab in the world?” One day an engineer came into the office of the woman organizing this strategic planning initiative and said:
“What would really energize me would be to ask the question: How can we be the best research lab for the world?”
That one word change shifted the context of the inquiry and mobilized many peoples’ energy. The question “traveled well” and began to be considered by many employees throughout the company.
Amplify What Works as a Frame in Strategic Planning
"Well, that meeting was not nearly as painful as I expected." This "ringing endorsement" came from
a participant in a strategic planning workshop we co-facilitated for the environmental department of a large corporation. Part of what made this meeting more engaging than most was a focus right at the start on identifying what was working well.
At the beginning of the meeting, we asked people to share with a partner a story of a successful project or quality of their team or organization and discuss what enabled that success. Right away, you could feel the energy in the room go up as people talked animatedly sharing stories.
