So what?

Key takeaway: Ask the question “So what?” to figure out the impact that you have.

There’s one thing that our CEO always does every meeting without fail, and that is to ask the question “So what?”

It is important that you can answer this question. Because this question points at the impact of what you are doing. If you don’t have a solid answer to this question, then what are you actually doing? Why aren’t you then working on something that does matter?

To put more structure on the “So what?” question you can look at the impact on these three groups:

• Your own team: What is the impact of what you are doing on your own team? How do we need to change our behavior based on these new insights?
• Client/stakeholder: What is the impact of what you are doing on the client/stakeholder? How do they need to course adjust based on these new insights?
• Implementation team: What is the impact of what you are doing on the implementation team? What do they need to do differently? Often your team and the implementation team are the same but this is not always the case (for example in strategy consulting).

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