The questions we ask in a strong quarter

A good year is a poor diagnostic, and it is worth saying plainly why.

Growth covers a great deal. It covers process debt, concentration risk, a customer base that is narrower than the headline suggests, and a product that is winning for reasons nobody has examined in three years. None of that is hidden. It is simply that nobody has had a reason to look, and looking has been socially expensive.

We have all been on both sides of this. Raising a hard question in a meeting that is going well makes you the difficult person in the room. Doing it often enough that it becomes normal is one of the more useful things a leader can build.

Four questions

These are the ones we come back to. They are most worth asking when they feel least necessary.

1. What share of this result came from something we chose? As opposed to a competitor stumbling, a regulatory change, a currency movement, or a single large customer. The honest answer is rarely all of it.
2. Which of our advantages has an expiry date we have not written down? Every organisation has at least one. Naming it does not cost anything.
3. If this line stopped growing next quarter, how long before we knew it was structural rather than noise? If the answer is more than one cycle, the reporting is the problem, not the market.
4. Who has told us something uncomfortable this quarter, and what happened to them? How that person was treated determines whether anyone does it again.

Make it somebody's job

The organisations that manage this well do not rely on individuals being brave in the moment. Courage is a poor control.

They make the question routine — a standing agenda item, a scheduled review, a named owner — so that raising it costs nothing socially. Somebody in the room is expected to be unconvinced, and everyone knows that is the role rather than an attitude.

Those of us who have worked in regulated environments have seen the value of this from the compliance side: a control that depends on someone choosing to be difficult is not a control at all.

What a good year is actually for

Not complacency, and not anxiety either.

A strong quarter is simply the cheapest moment you will ever get to find out what is not working. The scrutiny costs less, the options are wider, and nobody has to be blamed for anything yet.

That is a privilege. It is worth using while you have it.