Take it to the room
The ten questions, answered by your whole leadership team rather than by one person. Twenty minutes on your own, or ninety minutes with us at your next board meeting.
What it is
The Challenge shows one person what they can see. This step shows what the room can see, and where it disagrees.
Most of what is useful sits in that gap. A chief executive answers the ten questions one way. The people around the table often answer them another. Where a room disagrees with itself about how its own decisions work, that disagreement is usually the most useful thing it learns all year.
Two ways to do it
On your own. Twenty minutes.
Use our one-page version of the ten questions at your next exec or board meeting. It is written to be tabled, and it runs like this:
- Everyone answers all ten on their own, in silence. Three minutes.
- Go round the table. Each person gives only their count of clear yeses.
- Spend the rest of the time on the questions where the room split.
- Pick one question the company cannot answer, and agree who closes it, and by when.
It costs nothing. Take the Challenge, and you can ask for the one-page version at the end.
With us. Ninety minutes.
One of us joins your next board or exec meeting and runs the same ten questions with the room: in silence first, then out loud. We read where the room agrees, where it splits, and what the split points to.
Within a week you get a two-page note. It says which of the four dimensions to measure first, and whether a Baseline is worth doing at all.
A fixed fee, agreed before we come in, and credited in full against a Baseline if you go ahead.
What it asks of you
On your own: twenty minutes on an agenda you were already holding.
With us: a ninety-minute slot, and a thirty-minute call beforehand to agree what your board most needs from it. Nobody prepares anything else.
It works best with the people who carry the result: usually five to ten of them.
What happens to the answers
They stay in the room. When we run it, the note reports the pattern, never who said what. Nobody is scored, and nobody is ranked against anyone else.
When it is not the right thing
If the meeting is already full of something urgent. Wait for the next one. The questions will keep.
If people round the table cannot disagree in front of each other. The exercise will show an agreement that is not really there. Tell us, and we will suggest a different way in.
If you already know you want the measurement. Go straight to the Baseline.
Where it leads
Some rooms find they can answer most of the ten and need nothing more from us. That is a good result, and we will say so.
Others find the gaps cluster in one place and want to know how big they are. That is what the Baseline measures.
Common questions
Is it the same ten questions as the Challenge?
Yes. The Challenge tests what one person can see. The room tests whether the team sees the same thing.
Do we have to do it with you?
No. The twenty-minute version works on its own, and it is written for exactly that.
Is the ninety-minute version a sales meeting?
No. You get a note that says whether a Baseline is worth doing, and sometimes it will say it is not.
What if we go on to the Baseline?
The fee for the session comes off the cost of the Baseline in full. You only pay for it once.
Who comes?
Rob Anderson or Alice Phillips, authors of The Stillness Dividend.
Can you do it remotely?
Yes, though it works better in the room.