With organizations of all sorts facing increased urgency and unpredictability, being able to ask smart questions has become key. But unlike lawyers, doctors, and psychologists, business professionals are not formally trained on what kinds of questions to ask when approaching a problem. They must learn as they go. In their research and consulting, the authors have seen that certain kinds of questions have gained resonance across the business world. In a three-year project they asked executives to brainstorm about the decisions they’ve faced and the kinds of inquiry they’ve pursued. In this article they share what they’ve learned and offer a practical framework for the five types of questions to ask during strategic decision-making: investigative, speculative, productive, interpretive, and subjective. By attending to each, leaders and teams can become more likely to cover all the areas that need to be explored, and they’ll surface information and options they might otherwise have missed.

Most great CEOs rely on a set of guiding mindsets. This checklist helps them turn mindsets into practices that can steer their companies to great heights.

To be successful, CEOs must articulate a compelling vision, align people around it, and motivate them to execute it. But there’s one thing that can make or break them: how they respond in real time to unforeseen events. On average, addressing unexpected issues—which range from fluctuations in stock price, to just-discovered product flaws, to major accidents and crises—consumes 36% of a CEO’s time. That’s a big proportion, and not all those problems merit a leader’s attention. To help CEOs understand which ones they truly need to focus on, Nohria, the former dean of Harvard Business School, has created a framework that sorts events into four categories—normal noise, clarion calls, whisper warnings, and siren songs—and offers guidance on how leaders should handle each type.

Until just recently, a solar eclipse wasn’t a tourist event.

They’re essential. The house begins to stink if we don’t take out the garbage.

Leading Through Inflation: A Playbook By Ram Charan What every CEO, board member and C-Suite executive should know about helping their company prosper—or maybe even survive—in the uncertain days to come. Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on linkedin Editor’s Note: Nearly fifty years ago, a young Ram Charan was brought in by GE […]

I recently came across a Hemingway quote that caught my attention: “My working habits are simple: long periods of thinking, short periods of writing.”

Yes to a coffee meeting means saying no to an hour of reading. Yes to a Zoom call means no to getting some exercise. Next time you face a choice, author Ryan Holiday suggests you ask: Which of thes…

Turn 2021 into a year of execution by recognizing these traps that are holding you back.

Every organization makes plans. They don’t have to be rigid and bureaucratic.

Over 100 years later — the company now with over 200 locations in 86 countries in 32 languages and 9 million graduates — our current pandemic has driven the company to reinvent itself as their business.

Bain

An executive with 8,000 indirect reports and 2000 hours of work in a year can afford to spend, at most, 15 minutes per year per person in th...

Seth Godin

People want to know what they’re working toward and why.

Chris Lema

Sheryl Sandberg

Step away from your desk and give yourself space to think.

Pinkcasts: short, informal, low-fi videos offering tips, recommendations, or whatever happens to be on my mind. Sent on the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of every month.

Shut off the relentless stream of time-wasters.

The long read: Vacuous management-speak is easily laughed off – but is there a real cost to talking rubbish?

This is going to be a difficult POV to write because making a case for the power of simplicity is no easy task. And yet, more than ever, I’m convinced that simplicity is the scarcest commodity among leaders, and probably the most important.

Every new business model was a new mental model.

Unscramble your signals.