What is an essential question? Math Star, an education think tank/collaborative, defines essential question with these criteria: “the best essential questions center around major issues, problems, concerns, interests, or themes relevant to our lives and communities. Good essential questions are open-ended, non-judgmental, meaningful and purposeful with emotive force and intellectual bite, and invite an exploration of ideas. Good essential questions encourage collaboration…”

Essential questions reside at the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom, 1954). They require us to ANALYZE (develop a thorough and complex understanding through skillful research, fact-finding and/or questioning), to SYNTHESIZE (invent a new or different version) and to EVALUATE (make a thoughtful choice between options, with the choice based upon clearly stated criteria).

Essential questions are a powerful starting point for great strategy planning. Essential questions call upon our best thinking. They are questions that help us to make meaning out of events and circumstances. There is what we know. There is what we don’t know, yet, but know that we can learn. There is what cannot learned. Finally there is what we can intuit. An essential question can often be informed by the facts but requires insight, prediction and creativity to ascertain your answer.

An essential question is always poised at the boundary of the known and the unknown. Once you frame an essential question, it tells you what facts you should gather. But once the facts are gathered, and you understand what those facts mean, your essential question has no right or wrong answers. Essential questions can help us develop foundational understandings, which are important when several people (or even an entire organization) must reach decisions together.

A good essential question is the principle component of inquiry-based learning. Some people even suggest that our brains are designed to find the answers to questions we pose!

The Canoe Group believe that great strategies develop when we frame and answer essential questions. On the next page, we share sample essential questions.

But for your organization – or for your situation – you begin from what you know, or from what you want and need to learn. Remember: To make the best and most important decisions, you first need to know what question or questions you are trying to answer.

Example essential questions

Essential questions facing a company

• How can we diversify our revenue streams?
• At what point does cutting costs affect the quality of our service?
• What are the shared interests or shared values of our most important customers? (beyond purchase of our offerings?)
• What can we DO that will demonstrate who we ARE?

Essential questions facing a partnership

• How can we make the best decisions together?
• What will make the most of the assets we have?
• Why are we in this together?

Essential questions facing a non-profit organization/NGO

• Do we lead or serve our community?
• What motivates people to give us their time?
• What are “outlier ways” we can meet our mission – and generate new revenues?

Essential questions facing an individual

• What college is right for me?
• Do I believe in God?
• When should I put others’ needs before my own?

Essential questions facing a family

• What kind of parents do we want to be?
• Where should we live?
• How do we want to retire?

Essential questions facing a community

• How will we take care of those who are disadvantaged?
• Can we balance taking care of the land with the needs we have as people?
• How will we educate our children?

Do use essential questions in your personal or professional life? Share your thoughts below.

W. H. Murray once said, ”Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.”

We’ll state it as fact: If the people of an organization can state with absolute certainty what they intend to accomplish together, odds are good they’ll be able to get there.

So, knowing this, why do leaders moan and groan when faced with the assignment to develop or redraft an organizational mission statement?

We’ve thought a lot about this at The Canoe Group these days, as we undertook the discussions to fine-tune our own mission statement and core values. We’ve led hundreds of such sessions for client groups, usually at the start of strategic planning. Form follows function is one of our planning mottos.

If the function of a mission statement is to establish and align the intentions of those committed to an organization, what ”form“ should be followed in the discussions used to craft those words?

Here are the six rules of mission statement development we recommend:

1. Mission statement discussions should never involve brightly colored dots.
2. The group of leaders who – right now – are ultimately responsible for the success of the mission should all be around the table, and they must agree upon and frame the final draft.
3. Several discussions will most likely be necessary and individual reflection in-between sessions is crucial if you’re going to get down to it.
4. Those who will be asked to help pursue the mission should have a voice.
5. Learning from the past, and learning about the present, leads to insight and clarity about the future.
6. You are writing it for yourselves.

We’ve created a ”Canoe Group White Paper“ about mission statements that’s posted on our website (see the top right column of this page). It outlines the essentials of great mission statements, and offers some examples that will blow your mind. Download it, pass it out, use it to head off the moans and groans, or file it for use the next time your organization starts strategizing about your future. Let us know what you learn!