During our last ten years we have been collecting the questions that our clients were looking to answer and we have selected a small, and we hope representative, sample of those to share with you in this section of our website.

Sometimes these questions only need to be refined by us to support a client in finding their own answers. Sometimes we have to work a little harder and challenge our clients to stop avoiding the obvious question and own up to the real scenario that either they or their business are facing.

We like to use an approach which is based on appreciative inquiry – a method of finding new ways of asking 'the same old question' that prompt a new range of potential answers.

As we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it is becoming increasingly clear that the great leaders are no longer those that know the answers to all the questions – more, it is those that are prepared to ask the fundamental and challenging questions!

These eleven questions represent the vast majority of business scenarios that we have worked with as a team, and in many cases we have also faced these issues as senior leaders in public companies ourselves.  We offer them to you as examples of the work that we have undertaken for our clients and feel free to contact us to discuss how we can support you answer your own questions – or even help you establish the real question that it is now time to be asking!

Q1. How, and what, can we learn from other organisations, their mistakes and successes, so that we have a better chance of implementing sustainable change and transformation?

Q2. How can we encourage a spirit of enterprise, promote entrepreneurial behaviour and build emplyee confidence, self belief and courage alongside creating a set of meaningful and shared approaches to discipline, governance and diligence?

Q3. Do we need more managers doing management or more people being leaders?

Q4. Are our leaders the leaders our business needs for this phase of our development or are they being the leaders they find it easiest to be?

Q5. How can we build high performance teams and sustain performance over time?

Q6. How can we authentically promote a culture where challenge and disagreement are seen as positive expressions of excellence and the drive for quality?

Q7. How can we attract, identify, retain, nurture and develop the talent that we need to 'future-proof' our business?

Q8. How can we discover and gain advantage from knowing more about our individual employee, team and culture behavioural and attitudinal preferences?

Q9. How can we explore whether franchising might work for us taking into account the commercial, financial and personnel options, choices and implications?

Q10. Given that the people functions within my business (HR – OD – Training) have been only partially successful in leading change and transformation – how could an external firm succeed in creating momentum and overcoming the inertia that exists in senior and middle management?

Q11. Isn’t the emergentedge approach just another in a long line of fads and 'great ideas' from book-writing gurus and business schools?