A very useful discipline in doing great thinking is ‘question fanning’. The idea here is to take an initial question and see what other questions you can derive from it. These other questions can be broader in nature or more narrow. They fan out from your starting point – hence ‘question fanning’.
From “What would make customers value what we do more” you can step back to a broader question such as “How are our customers’ needs changing?” This is one of the more strategic questions you can ask before thinking about what you can do to get customers to value you more.
You can also narrow down your question. “Are we delivering the right things?” is a more focused question which is just one part of thinking about how to get customers to value you more.
This technique helps you ensure that you are answering the right question – not just the first one that springs to mind.
Click on the slides below to see another example of how question fanning works.
