Every better decision starts with a better question

“Should we hire more salespeople?” is a bad question. Not because the answer is no — sometimes it is yes — but because of what the question has already decided before anyone starts thinking.

It has decided that headcount is the variable. It has decided the problem is on the sales side. It has reduced a system to a yes or a no. Whatever analysis follows, it is now working inside a frame that may have nothing to do with what is actually limiting growth.

The same situation, framed properly

What is currently limiting revenue per rep?

That question has no answer baked into it. It can come back “rep capacity, we are turning away meetings” — in which case hire, quickly. It can come back “onboarding, our ramp is nine months and the industry is five” — in which case hiring makes the problem worse. It can come back “we win in one segment and lose everywhere else” — in which case this was never a sales question.

Three completely different decisions, all of which the first question would have missed.

What makes a question good

It names an outcome rather than an action. It does not presume the lever. It is answerable with evidence rather than with conviction. And it survives being wrong — a good question gets more useful when the answer surprises you, where a bad one just gets abandoned.

Why I built a library of them

Over twenty-five years I have watched the same twenty-five or so questions come round in every company, every sector, every size. What changes is not the question but whether anyone has the machinery to answer it honestly.

So I started writing them down, and then building models underneath them. Not to produce an answer a leadership team can adopt, but to show them what their own assumptions imply — which is usually the more uncomfortable and more useful output of the two.

One of five short notes on why decisions miss. Back to the others, or tell me where I'm wrong.