Five questions to ask before a strategy reset

When a leadership team senses the strategy needs to change, the temptation is to start with the change. We have found the better start is with questions about the current state — and not the obvious ones.

Here are five we keep asking, in roughly the order they help.

1. What did the previous strategy assume that is no longer true?

Most resets are driven by a change in environment that the prior strategy did not foresee. Naming that change explicitly — what assumption broke, and when — anchors the conversation. It also reveals which parts of the prior strategy were still working; not everything needs to change.

2. Where is margin actually being earned today?

Management reporting often lags the business. Before discussing the future, we run an unsentimental read of the present P&L by segment, by product, by relationship. The results are sometimes surprising; the discussion that follows is more honest because of it.

3. Which decisions are we delegating up that we should not be?

Strategy meetings are often clogged with operational decisions that have escalated for the wrong reasons. Naming these — and pushing them back down — clears space to discuss the actual strategic choices.

4. What would we stop, if we had to stop one thing?

A useful constraint. The reflexive answer is usually wrong. The considered answer, after twenty minutes of pushback, often points at the most important real choice on the table.

5. What is the one thing the team is afraid to say in this room?

Asked at the right moment, by the right person, this is the question that produces the actual conversation. We ask it more often than we used to.