Seven tools sit underneath the 7 Questions. Each is its own conversation. Together they are the architecture of a thinking organisation.
- A clear vision provides direction and purpose — a north star that guides all efforts.
- A well-defined market helps you understand your audience deeply and adapt as their needs change.
- A sound strategy lets you carve out and defend a valuable position.
- A robust business model creates value and drives sustainable growth by linking revenue to market need.
- A customer-centric approach to customer experience acquires, retains and grows customers.
- An engaged workforce — the employee experience — drives innovation, performance and loyalty.
- Clear goals and outcomes move every part of the organisation toward a shared destination.
Not one of them is static. Each needs continuous shaping as the market shifts and internal capacity grows.
The seven questions
- What is our vision, is it driven by our purpose, and what is holding us back from reaching it?
- What is our market, who is our ideal customer, what do they value, and what perceptions do we need to build?
- What is our strategy, where is our growth focused, and how do we improve our positioning?
- What is our business model, is it creating value, what metrics tell us this, and what practices improve our value proposition?
- What is our customer's experience — how do we acquire, retain and grow customers through our journey and promise?
- What is our employee experience, and does it produce the people this business needs?
- What goals and outcomes must we achieve, and how will we know?
Why questions rather than answers
The 7 Questions sit on the change side of the method — refining the core tenets of the organisation, working toward a future state. The 5 Questions of Management sit on the execution side. Together they are the twelve.
An answer ages. A question keeps working. The organisations that stay clear are not the ones that got the right answer once; they are the ones that keep asking, and notice sooner when the answer has stopped being true.
Which of the seven has your leadership team not discussed in the last year? That is usually where the drift started.