It has been awhile since a new management concept has erupted onto the business scene and captivated major interest. We rode the serviceable waves of one-minute managing, re-engineering, Six Sigma, Deming quality, the-customer-is-always-right, etc. In the past, those concepts worked very well and in many organizations they continue to play an important strategic role. In an effort to stir up a new wave of business guru contributions, I would like to offer a concept for the quivers of innovative managers. This new concept is called Questions Brainstorming.

Questions Brainstorming is a new approach to what is commonly called brainstorming. Unlike the traditional problem-solving approach, the questions brainstorming process involves brainstorming the questions rather than trying to come up with immediate answers and short-term solutions. I have found that the process of brainstorming the questions produces an endless list of questions that, in turn, stimulates creativity and produces the fuel necessary to keep the process of continual improvement going. When used as a profit improvement tactic, Questions Brainstorming generates the questions, whose answers form the framework for constructing future action plans. The traditional practice of brainstorming for answers generates fewer ideas and (consequently) fewer solutions.

In these difficult economic times, the search for cost savings or profit improvement ranks high on the minds of management. Questions Brainstorming is a creative problem-solving tool that can be used within any discipline of business—marketing, sales, operations, information technology, etc. To make it relevant for today’s management, let’s take a closer look at the concept in an application of cost reduction or profit improvement.

Example A – Traditional Method of Brainstorming

Call a group of employees together from various departments in your organization. Tell them that the goal is to come up with action steps to reduce costs or improve profits. Have the group start the brainstorming process by listing, on a flip chart, the action steps that could lead toward profitability improvement. Give the team a copy of the most recent profit and loss statement as a reference. Typically, a few employees will take the initiative to call out some possible solutions, and the flip chart starts to look like this:

  1. Increase revenue.
  2. Improve marketing.
  3. Reduce labor costs.
  4. Reduce benefits costs.
  5. Cut travel and entertainment.
  6. Eliminate unnecessary departments.
  7. Improve productivity.
  8. Reduce communication costs.
  9. Reduce utility costs

These items are then prioritized, and action steps put in place. A person is assigned responsibility for the various action steps, and corrective actions are taken.

Example B – Questions Brainstorming

Call a group of employees together from various departments in your organization. Tell them the goal is to come up with a list of questions whose answers will become action steps to reduce costs or improve profits. Have the employees start the process by listing on a flip chart only the questions--no potential answers or solutions. Give the team a copy of the most recent profit and loss statement as a reference. At this point, a different process begins to take shape. All employees are participating. Everyone is asking questions because they don’t have to come up with the answers. The few people who took the initiative to start the process in Example A are now joined by most of the others, because this is a less stressful context for participation.

Think of the child who continues to ask her or his parents, “Why? Why? Why?” The parents eventually get frustrated, because the child is forcing them to become more creative with their answers. Even the most intelligent parents quickly reach their intellectual limit in a discussion with a small child. The process of questions brainstorming overcomes this drawback. It demands no answers but generates an endless list of questions. The flip chart for Example B will look very different from the traditional list generated in Example A:

  1. How is revenue generated?
  2. What new revenue generation activities have been tried?
  3. How many marketing dollars are spent each year? Why?
  4. Why do we have this specific cost?
  5. Do we need this cost?
  6. What are some alternatives to what we have been doing?
  7. Were we charged a proper amount for this service?
  8. What is the price of this service? Why?
  9. When was the last time this price was negotiated?
10. What do similar companies pay for this service?
11. Why are we paying more?
12. Can we buy this service or product from someone else?
13. Can we outsource this activity?
14. Can a consultant do these tasks?
15. How do we know that we are being charged the proper amount?
16. How do we know if our price is competitive?
17. Do we take price increases every year? Why?
18. Etc., etc., etc.

You can see how the list could be endless. The questions are then prioritized, and each is assigned to an individual to seek answers. Once the answers are found, the action plans can be developed.

Managers will notice a significant change in the quality of team members’ participation, and the level of creativity in the questions, as the group generates the endless list of questions from which answers and solutions can be gleaned. The process of thinking about questions provides the framework for the answers, and these, in turn, help construct the action items for the cost reduction or profit improvement process. Questions Brainstorming in Action

Once a team is trained in and familiar with the Questions Brainstorming approach, team members become very comfortable with the process of generating questions. However, when first introducing this process to the team, you may want to use one of the following lists of questions, which have been developed by team leaders and facilitators to precondition teams and encourage them to ask all the questions. Please note that the following lists were generated from businesses I have been associated with. Use them to initiate the process, and then encourage your team to come up with questions more appropriate for your particular business.

Revenue

1. In what different ways can we use our facilities to generate additional revenue?

2. Are there add-on sales opportunities, where we can sell ancillary products to our existing customer base at no additional cost to us?

3. Is there value in our customer database?

4. Are there significant heavy users of our products that could be isolated into a separate group for special product offers and additional sales?

5. How often do we lose customers?

6. Can we develop a retention strategy for those customers?

7. What additional actions can we take to augment our business products or services?

8. Are there opportunities to license or franchise our business?

Salaries

1. How many hours a week do our managers work?

2. Should they be working 45 to 55 hours instead of 40?

3. How many of our employees take advantage of direct deposits for paychecks?

4. How well do we manage our salary administration program?

5. Have we established target compensation ratios based on the personality of our business?

6. Have we established a desired community position, knowing where we want to be with regard to our competition?

7. Do we have a salary administration program?

8. Do we have a salary range philosophy?

9. Do high-performing employees get higher increases than those who have not performed as well?

10. Do we establish a salary increase guideline budget and stick with it?

11. Are salary increase guidelines pre-approved?

12. Do we have a salary administration program that offers employees a salary review based on an anniversary or hire date?

13. Do we know if our company would qualify for targeted tax job credits?

14. Do we have a training rate for all appropriate positions, where employees receive a lower rate until they are trained?

15. Do we have a 90-day probationary rate for certain positions?

16. Do we have a labor management system that helps us schedule labor in 15-minute increments?

17. Do we have a software program that reconciles cash and allows employees to cash out quickly at the end of shifts?

18. Do we constantly look for labor reductions by modifying our software?

19. Do we have industrial engineers do time-and-motion studies to determine whether additional efficiencies can be gained?

20. Do we have an incentive program to help reduce absenteeism?

21. Is our business a high turnover business? What can be done to reduce our turnover rate?

22. Does our business utilize a vacancy factor?

23. Do we measure all of our costs by various units (such as cost per test, cost per guest check, cost per widget) in order to determine areas of control?

Payroll Burden

1. Have we ascertained the difference between full-time and part-time employees and the benefits they should be receiving?

2. Have we evaluated the cost of our 401(k) administration program to see how competitive our costs are and to determine whether additional savings are possible?

3. Have we evaluated the cost employees are paying for participating in our benefits?

4. Have we established a vacation policy whereby vacation time must be taken the year in which it is earned?

5. Do we have a sick time buyback program whereby employees can sell back sick time at reduced rates?

6. Have we instituted a vacation buyback program, allowing employees to sell back unused vacation hours at a reduced rate?

7. Have we evaluated a cafeteria-style benefit program?

8. Have we aggressively tried to reduce worker’s compensation insurance by eliminating accidents?

9. Do we understand how our true burden percent is budgeted?

Communications

1. Have we authorized a telecommunications consultant to analyze our communication costs in terms of rates charged, equipment used or programs offered? Perhaps the consultant could be compensated in accordance with a fee structure based on a percentage of the savings. If there is no savings, there is no fee.

2. How often do we renegotiate rates and terms with vendors who provide us with communication services?

Utilities

1. Have we authorized a utility consultant to analyze our utility costs?

2. Do we have in place a mandatory energy conservation program whereby thermostats are set at a standard temperature?

3. Do we have a policy that lights are turned off in conference rooms and rest rooms when these rooms are not in use?

4. Do we have a procedure for turning off all other than security lights at the close of business?

Professional Fees

1. Do we challenge fees charged by outside attorneys?

2. Have we reached an understanding about how much we will be charged, or do we just pay whatever outside professionals bill?

3. Have we sought to get the most favorable fee arrangement in each case?

4. Do we try to settle our legal cases?

5. Have outside attorneys designed a format to use for routine scenarios?

6. Have we attempted to negotiate contracts giving us a guarantee as to a minimum number of hours?

7. Do we use less expensive attorneys for small collection transactions?

8. Do we try to share costs when appropriate and make sure there are no conflicts of interest?

9. Do we give lawyers all appropriate records at the first meeting in order to eliminate the need for phone calls regarding missing items?

10. Do we insist on an itemized statement each month?

11. Do we suggest PBP approaches to the attorney? Maybe we can save the lawyer’s expense, which would offset or reduce the cost of our service.

Marketing

1. Do we ensure that our advertising agency does a post-buy analysis on all advertising buys to determine whether the target rates were achieved?

2. Do we seek syndication scenarios whereby a partner would agree to fund the development of commercials and campaigns for a percentage of revenues?

3. Do we seek to have the advertising agency have some “skin in the game”?

4. Do we look for those who would partner on a percentage of the revenue?

5. Would it be possible to publishing a magazine via a custom publisher and distribute it to our customer base as a way of marketing our organization and generating some additional revenue?

Public Relations

1. Should we consolidate our brochures into a few rather than have a large number of brochures?

2. Do we write our own press releases?

3. Do we seek free PR opportunities for promoting our business?

4. Do we stretch the impact of our public relations by being a good corporate citizen, sponsoring teams or working with local schools?

5. How do we rate our public relations agency? Are they getting results?

6. Is there a way to create PR events out of everyday occurrences?

Insurance

1. Are we familiar enough with our insurance policies to determine which items are covered and which are not?

2. How often do we challenge third-party providers to reduce our insurance administration costs?

Travel and Entertainment

1. Does our business need an individual who is certified as an independent travel agent so that we may receive discounts on hotel rooms, car rentals, and other travel expenses?

2. Should the company buy or lease an apartment for traveling employees rather than paying for hotel rooms?

3. Do we have a need for video conferencing? Would that solution help us reduce costs?

4. Is there a policy stating that all travel must be approved in advance and that travel authorization forms must accompany expense reports?

Facility Costs

1. Have we performed a property tax assessment comparing the cost to build a facility with the current fair market value, and have we sought adjustments when appropriate?

2. Have we ever had an accountant challenge tax assessment?

3. How often do we evaluate our excess property? Could this property be sold or leased to reduce carrying cost?

4. Have we evaluated the sell / leaseback program?

Vehicle Costs

1. Do we have a program in place for monitoring our gasoline purchases?

2. Are our maintenance costs monitored and controlled?

3. Have we evaluated our company policy to determine whether a car allowance is better than a company-car program?

Other Supplies and Services

1. Do we need to have armored-car service, or can our managers make those deposits?

2. Have we evaluated our armored-car service to determine whether we can reduce the number of pickups?

3. Do we constantly negotiate and renegotiate prices with vendors?

4. Do we constantly renegotiate our prices with vendors to avoid the typical 3% annual inflation rate most vendors demand?

5. Does our business recycle paper?

6. Does our business manage our trash bins to determine whether the bin sizes are appropriate? Can we get by with smaller ones or fewer pickups?

7. Have we evaluated our uniform program?

8. Are uniforms needed?

9. Should employees pick up some of the cost for the uniforms, such as cleaning expenses?

Other Expenses

1. How often do we evaluate bank charges and fees?

2. Have we evaluated the use of electronic fund transfer?

3. To how many nonprofit organizations do we contribute? Would it be better to make all contributions to a single organization?

After the facilitator introduces the jump-start questions, the team goes through the Questions Brainstorming process. Once enough questions have been generated, the facilitator leads the group through the process of prioritizing the questions and assigning responsibilities, including specific time frames for reporting back with the answers.