A great way to find meaning in data or when hearing information is to ask questions. Many leaders want to ask questions but don’t know where to start. Ideally your questions should be driven from your existing knowledge and he current situation. Therefore, every situation will have its own unique set of questions. However, to get started, there are some basic questions that will work in any situation. The questions in this article focus on creating meaning from information or data. They follow a simple question formula:

• What is it?
• What should it be?
• What patterns do I see?
• Does it matter?

Those questions are generally enough to start trying to find meaning. The remainder of this article provides additional variations on each one. As you read through the questions, consider the following situation: you’ve received a list of your company’s sales by region sorted from highest to lowest.

What is it?

• What does the big picture look like? (e.g., Overall how are our sales? Is anyone doing well? – Note: Just because someone is at the top of a sales list, they still might not be doing well in absolute terms, especially if the company as a whole is doing poorly)
• How much variation is there? (e.g., How far apart are the top and bottom sales figures? Are the sales tightly clustered or all over the board?)
• What is included or excluded from this data? (e.g., Does this include both in-store and on-line sales?)

What should it be?

• Do we have any targets against which to compare this data? (e.g., How are we doing against our sales goals?, How are we doing against our most recent sales projections?, How are we doing against last year/quarter/month?)
• Are there standards or best practices? (e.g., What do industry sales look like? Who is doing the best/worst in the industry? What do their number look like?)
• What are our competitors up to? (e.g., What do our competitor’s sales look like?)

What patterns do I see?

• What do the top performers have in common?
• What do the bottom performers have in common?
• Is the data consistent for all groups? Are there any anomalies?
• Are problems isolated or systemic? (e.g., Are similar regions reporting similar sales results?, Are stores that are under the same leaders/ executives reporting similar results?, Are stores that serve a similar customer base reporting similar results?)
• Are we moving up or down? (e.g., Have our sales been increasing, decreasing, or flat?)
• Are our competitors beating us in areas that we’ve had problems? (e.g., legal, consumer relations, bad press, management, etc.)

Does it matter?

• Are we doing well/poorly in areas that support our strategic goals? (e.g., Are the top three sales producers are key stores/regions?)
• Are our competitors beating us in key areas?
• Are changes due to a particular action we’ve taken recently?
• Can we afford to sustain this level of performance?