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n A practical overview of some of the most important conceptual thinking in
business today.

n How to apply conceptual thinking to your organization by using questions.

n Why it is important to be frugal.

n Where to go for further information.

I recently realized the awful truth. I have now spent as many years as a
consultant as I did as a senior executive – or in a “real job” you may think.
The realization that the only way that I could have spent so much time in
two careers set me thinking about what I have learned over the last thirty
odd years in business. One conclusion came very readily. Whatever success
I have enjoyed has come when I have had the good sense or good luck to
ask the right questions of myself or of others. The right questions, asked
of the right people at the right time are the keys to success.

As a consultant I find that if I ask the right questions of my clients they
are generally able to solve their own problems or exploit their best oppor-
tunities with little or no further help from me. This leads them to believe
that they are getting exceptional value so they choose to use me again and
again. I waste neither my time nor theirs and we both learn valuable les-
sons. Questions enable me to deliver what a consultant is best placed to
deliver. I am able to help my client to think in a more focused way while he
or she thinks more broadly using better information. What is more, clients
implement their solutions and initiatives with considerable confidence and
enthusiasm since they are “all their own work”.

In my role as a mentor to top executives questions play a wider part. In
addition to helping the client to find the action that best suits them I am
often able to suggest the questions that they should be asking others in
their corporations to ensure that they too are able to think things through
effectively. The right questions frequently turn people who are new to a
subject area into perceived experts. The chairman fulfils his or her role as
consultant to their board with confidence. This accelerated growth of
knowledge and experience can do wonders in getting subordinates to think
things through and get optimal results where they might have courted
mediocrity by making inappropriate assumptions based on insufficient
thinking. The right questions asked in the right way of the right people at
the right time are the key to quality throughout the business and it is qual-
ity that costs virtually nothing beyond an enquiring mind. Excellence lies
already in people’s minds and capabilities awaiting the right questions to
draw it out and turn thought into action.

As a non-executive director the role is one that can be described as
“asking the right questions at the right time and insisting on complete
answers”. Had NED’s asked the right questions of the right people at the
right time and insisted on full answers, the problems currently besetting

x Introduction