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To lead an organization effectively, one must know as much as possible about it.

Acquiring that understanding may be described as taking an inventory of all critical aspects of the organization and its environment.

Inquiring into the operation of an organization and the characteristics of its environment involves asking the right kinds of questions, but it is not purely a matter of carrying out an inquiry.

It also involves neither acting nor speaking with undue haste, but instead proceeding only after an appropriate degree of reflection upon the answers that are received.

As in other aspects of the senior leadership of any organization, such reflection involves a process of critical review both of the answers received and their sources.

The differences between any two organizations require the modification of the approach to leadership that must be adopted by the managers and more senior leaders in each organization to achieve optimum results.

The need for such modifications increases as the differences become more pronounced. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of commonality in the range of problems with which the leaders in any two organizations must cope (even when those organizations are of radically different type).

All organizations have a finite set of resources that must be managed; the goals of any organization must be defined, and a path must be laid out for attaining those goals; all have operations, systems and processes for conducting their business and affairs that need to be aligned with the goals that have been set for the organization; the resources and operations of the organization must be deployed in an effective manner; the usage of those resources and the progress of the organization must be monitored and adjusted; and all organizations must interact with their environment and respond in the changes that take place within it.

For these reasons, the types of questions the leadership team needs to ask when taking over an organization can be easily summarized.

For instance, if new leadership were to take over a business corporation as a new chief executive officer, they would include:

• Who are the main customers of the corporation? What do they buy? Have sales to them been rising or declining; why? How can the relationship be improved? How can the customer base be expanded? Who are the five biggest customers that the corporation would like to attract? What plans do they have to do so?
• Who are the corporation’s main competitors? Where are they based? How profitable are they? What types of competitive price survey does the corporation carry out? How Often?
• What size are the competitive firms, relative to the corporation? What is perceived to be their strength? What is perceived to be their weakness? Is the corporation growing at a faster rate than its competitors? If so, how? How does management rate the competition?
• How are the prices normally set in the industry in which the business operates?
• What products does the corporation sell? What do they cost? What is the profit margin on each? When was the price last adjusted? How do the prices of the corporation compare to that of the competitors? Can the prices be cut? What would the effect be of doing so? Can prices be raised? What would be the effect of that?
• How do the profits of the corporation compare to those of its competitors? Does the corporation have an economy of scale or scope? Can its position in that regard be improved?
• What type of approach is taken to monitor what is going on at the corporation’s competitors? Are similar studies carried out regarding suppliers and customers? How is that information factored into corporate decision making?

These questions are intended to be illustrative rather than exhaustive.

Stephen Bauld is a government procurement expert and can be reached at swbauld@purchasingci.com. Some of his columns may contain excerpts from The Municipal Procurement Handbook published by Butterworths.