The right questions to ask for specific business situations

The success of leaders is contingent on the quality of their decision-making. To make the best decisions, it is first necessary to ask the right questions. As this depends highly on the situation, we have rounded up questions for specific situations that leaders encounter on a regular basis.

Questions to prepare for the future

No one has a crystal ball, but to help make the best possible guesses about the future, look at the companies that are faring well in the current crisis. The pandemic exposed which companies were future-ready, or at least agile enough to change with lightning speed when the landscape shifted. Their readiness was reflected in superior performance compared with their peers. We have studied these companies to identify what they were doing differently. To test if you are doing the right things to be future-ready, you should look at these questions.

Questions to examine your corporate digital responsibility practices

You can think of data in a very similar way to a physical product, and that comes with ethical issues including how it is sourced, transported, sold, packaged, and destroyed. This is where corporate digital responsibility (CDR) comes into play. Here are three questions to see if you company is moving in the right direction on these issues.

Questions to help you choose the right governance model

Choosing a digital governance model is a critical part of a digital transformation strategy. Research has indicated that governance is a key driver of financial performance for businesses that have undergone successful digital transformations. There is no single recipe for a governance model. Each company needs to balance the scope of its transformation ambitions with the dominant company culture. Here are five questions to ask to help choose the right model for your company.

Questions to help you balance CSR and ESG

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a framework to help companies be socially accountable — to themselves, their stakeholders, and the public. ESG means using environmental, social, and governance standards to evaluate companies and countries on how far advanced they are with sustainability.

CSR aims to make a business accountable, whereas ESG criteria make its efforts measurable and thus comparable. Another distinction is that CSR has been in the making for 50 years, whereas ESG is more recent. But what questions should you be asking if you want to be sure that you, as a leader, are not neglecting the one nor the other in your company strategy? Start with these four.