The 12 Golden Questions
BEFORE:
Client: Brand strategy workshops are a colossal waste of time!
Me: Why so?
Client: Because nothing productive comes out of it.
Me: Out of curiosity, how long was the last brand strategy session you sat through?
Client: Over an hour!
Me: Alright, let’s get started.
AFTER:
Me: So our strategy session has reached the 12-hour mark. 3 hours each day, across 4 days. How do you feel?
Client: It’s certainly been very insightful.
Me: Good. That was just phase 1.
All our projects begin with detailed interactive sessions with the client.
The aim is to get as much information from the clients as possible.
From the initial meeting where we try to identify the pain points, to the discovery and strategy sessions.
All my strategy sessions aim at finding answers to what we call - The 12 Golden Questions.
Who are you?
What do you do?
Why are you doing it?
What makes you special?
Who are you speaking to?
What are you saying?
Where are you saying it?
How are you saying it?
Why should we trust you?
How are you reinforcing that trust?
Are you building a tribe?
What does the tribe stand for?
These questions seem simple enough. The first two are fairly direct. The rest however take time to clearly articulate. Based on my experience, the most challenging questions for leaders to answer are 3, 9, and 12.
Almost every question here can lead to further questions. The aim is to dig into the bedrock of the business or the company. The more information gained from these sessions, the more data available to create an effective strategy.
After completing a particularly long and detailed session spread across multiple days, the CEO remarked with a tired smile “I wonder if the 12 tasks of Hercules were this challenging”.
To which I responded “I can’t say how difficult Hercules found it, but his reward was immortality…just like your brand could be…”