Brand and marketing strategies start with asking great questions

Why are asking the right questions so important? When approaching any strategy, it’s not possible to create great recommendations unless you have first defined the right problem. Ask… What are the real needs? Who are we really talking to and what do they care about?

Plus, if you haven’t taken the time to first do your homework and reveal all of the essential information, then your recommendations are shaky at best.  Ask the hard questions. What are the real strengths and weaknesses? How will we make a real contribution with this strategy?

Asking the right questions is one of the most important skills to have. This part of the process can be creative too, especially since this may be the best time to apply a different lens that will help you get to the heart of a business or communications challenge. This is the best time to think like a designer. Designers are naturally curious and tend to approach information from new directions.

And once you get that information, here are a couple of tips that will keep you on track.

1. Don’t come into a challenge with preconceived ideas. If you do, then you’ll be working towards validation of existing thoughts instead of exploration of new ones.
2. Distance is sometimes a blessing. We all know that if you’re too close, or too entangled, in a challenge, it can be difficult to generate new ideas. This is where an “outsider” often helps – someone who is able to look at a challenge without the baggage of past failures. If you don’t have the luxury of distance, then try an exercise where you give yourself a short time constraint so that you don’t have a chance to “over think” the challenge.

Asking great questions to create innovative ideas is core to any business, but at the same time we know that ideas and strategies have to live throughout the organization and not just in the boardroom.

Leslie Koch, the president of the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation (GIPEC), ties these ideas nicely together in this clip about Governors Island. Her speech helps bridge the process of applying sound strategy and thinking into action, which she tells in a very real way.

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