Questions 4 Leaders

Questions for Leaders at the end of each Quarter of A Year
When a quarter ends business leaders at all levels will spend the next few days or weeks collecting financial results and reporting on them.

Will all those reports help you manage your business? Hopefully they will be of some help. They might not be enough, though. Here are some additional questions you might want to ask yourself in order to help you turbo charge the next quarter.

Questions About You

What significant contribution did you make to your organization in the last three months? I suggest writing a PAR (Problem-Actions-Results) statement for each of your significant contributions, and pasting it into your resume for future reference. Do it now before you forget what you accomplished.

What new skills did you learn in the last three months? What did you read?

How many new contacts did you make in the last three months? How have you followed up with them? How have you maintained contact with the rest of your network?

What feedback have you received about your leadership skills?

How many times did you get out at the "coal face" - where your team is actually delivering service to customers or making widgets?

What did you do for your mental and physical health this quarter?

What did you do to improve your on-line brand over the last three months? When you google yourself, what do you find?

What does all of that imply for your second quarter self-development plan?

Questions About Your Team

How many times did you give feedback to each of your employees?

How would you rate the results of each of your employees so far this year? Have you shared those ratings with them (you should)?

What progress has each employee made on her development plan this year?

Which employees are over-delivering and may need additional challenges?

Which employees are having trouble and need help (or to be re-assigned)?

What does all of that imply for your second quarter team development plan?

Questions About Your Customers

How many customers did you visit with in the past three months?

What are your customers saying about your product/service and what are you doing about it?

Where are you gaining market share and price?

Where are you losing market share, or sacrificing price?

What does all of that imply for your second quarter market plan?

Questions About Your Business (Or Your Part Of The Business)

What are the trends for gross margin, operating margin, days sales in inventory, days sales outstanding and days payable outstanding?

What is the trend in waste?

What changes are you facing? Are they major or minor? Are they short term or long term? If long term and major, how have you revised your plans to cope with the changes?

What went well in the last three months, and what did you learn from the success?

What went poorly in the last three months, and what did you learn from the failure?

What are the key opportunities and problems you must fix in the coming three months?

What are the key questions you need to answer in the next three months?

What does all of that imply for your second quarter business plan.