Business Transformed: Master the 17 Questions That Transform Business

by Paul Gossen

What if you could master a powerful conversation which would create a new level of relationship in your team, drive breakthrough results and generate real accountability? What if you could master 17... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0978375505
• ISBN13: 9780978375508
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: Leadershipinc. Press
• Length: 121 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Questions that will truly transform your effectiveness...

It would seem that a promise to show you 17 questions that would transform your business would be a bit of an oversell. But in Business Transformed, Paul Gossen does indeed show that these questions can, if seriously asked and answered, can turn around your working relationships. They'll also do wonders for your personal transformation, too... Contents: Contract - Can we talk?; Relationship - How are you?; Engagement - What do you want?; Purpose - Why is this important to you?; Accomplishment - How will you know when you have it?; Perception - What do you believe is possible?; Energy - What would be the breakthrough?; Performance - Who would you have to be?; Strategy - How could you produce this result?; Focus - How will you stay on track?; Reality - When will you do this?; Action - What if you don't do this?; Certainty - Is that a promise?; Accountability - Can I count on you?; Presence - Where was the breakdown?; Development - What did you learn?; Renewal - What's next? These questions are divided into five stages: Relationship; Purpose; Transformation; Accountability; and Growth. On the surface, these questions look pretty basic and ordinary. For instance, asking someone "can we talk?" is pretty much a standard opening for a conversation. But what does it really mean? It's a contract to enter into an exchange of information, a request to take time to listen to each other. Without this basic commitment, any agreement will be forced and not well-thought-out. Same thing with "how will you stay on track?". It's really easy to say you'll do something, and then to get sidetracked with other commitments. This question forces you to deeply consider what is being requested, and how honest you have to be to deliver a result within your committed timeframe. One of the keys to all these questions is to have someone who has the permission to ask these tough questions and keep pushing you until you're able to answer them. In addition to the main business orientation, these questions can also do wonders for your personal life. Having someone push you to think through what you really want, why it's important to you, and how will you know when you're there would be extremely valuable in transforming your personal effectiveness. Even asking them of yourself and honestly trying to answer them will take you further than most people go. This is a book that looks deceptively simple on the outside, but can change things in ways you couldn't imagine. Well worth reading...

Success at Your Fingertips

Paul Gossen has a strong take on the time frames that pinch us all. He has very sound ideas about transforming businesses into successful ones and has decided to follow the 'visual' loop from the media and has produced a book that, while it reads like a catalog, gets across his premises as quickly and soundly as anything out there. Gossen's five stages of business transformation (taking a small business mentality and molding it into a highly visible and successful one) are at first glance rather simple: Relationship, Purpose, Transformation, Accountability, and Growth. Where Gossen shines is in the creation of his seventeen questions, the doors he opens with a very human hand. And that seems to this reader to be his gimmick - make the interpersonal relationships of those who represent the business the models of solid communication and the results will be not only a successful encounter between two people, but also the map for metastasizing that experience into the growth of the larger group of individuals (read 'business'). Sound simple? Yes, it is, but it is not simplistic. Gossen's use of photographs and visual aids throughout this little book make it so immediate that the first impression easily moves into the lasting category. This is a manual that could be comfortably (and proudly) placed on the desk of every employee of a business, no matter the rank, and make a positive change in performance. Well worth the investment! Grady Harp, December 07

Checklist for action

Gossen presents 17 Questions(TM) that guide anyone in the business world from initial contact with someone, through their working together, and on up to anticipation of continuing their working relationship. I'm not one to go jumping onto bandwagons, but I'll pay attention when someone seems to have a sound idea, and I see a lot of good in this approach. The central set of the 17 covers the measurables of a project: What do you want? How do you know when you have it? When will you do this? What if you don't? Don't laugh. It may sound obvious, but I've seen projects fail for lack of specific goal, and my most infuriating clients have been the ones who'd keep moving the goal so they'd never have what they claimed to want. Later questions retrospectively ask, What went wrong? What did I learn? Let's just say that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Although checklists may sound trite, the cockpit of every aircraft has a written list of preflight checks to perform. Reminders increase in importance as the heat of the moment gets hotter, and I'm sure we all have hot ones. If you think "But a pilot has a critical job, that couldn't apply to me," maybe you're right. Maybe your job doesn't have any effect on the success of your business. But, in that case, why do you still have a job? The more surprising among the 17 Questions(TM) don't address the business issue at all, they address the person with whom you do business. They address the irrationality of the human ape dealing with the human ape, a factor that some reject as frivolous "touchy-feely." Maybe it is TF to some extent, but hardly frivolous. Even if we're irrational, that irrationality pervades our interactions, has specific and understandable characteristics, must cooperate with our rational faculties for an undertaking to succeed. These questions engage that irrationality's cooperation and its help. A few things in this book didn't work so well for me, though. I'm a very techie type, at home with books where pages are gray with dense equations. Business Transformed is filled with color, "exciting" typography, and photos of attractive people - well, I could deal with it anyway. I also like to know what I'm dealing with. Right there on the first page of the book's text, I see that "Business cannot be changed. Business can only be transformed." I never did figure out what transformations are not changes, and never saw the mathematician's honorable cop-out of saying it is primitive. Likewise (p.17), I'm not sure how or why I'd "create a big game in this conversation." I do not know and never saw a definition of "game" that an engineer would want to involve in the design and delivery of a high-performance computer. Question 7 also slipped through my fingers: "What would be the breakthrough?" Well, how the heck should I know? If I knew, it wouldn't be a breakthrough in any way that I understand the term. Also, I stand with Fred Brooks in wondering whether "includ[ing] mo