Here are 100 example Take-A-Panel questions:
- What was your vision for the merged company? What are the guiding principles that made this merger so successful?
- What barriers did you have to overcome? How did you overcome them?
- How did you convert your vision of the merger into a rapid implementation effort? How did you combine such speed with effectiveness?
- How did you measure the merger's progress and performance?
- How did you manage the decision-making process during the transition? How are decisions made today in 2003? How is this different from when the merger began?
- Who are your customers? How are you organized to serve and relate to those customers most effectively?
- How has your organization structure enabled you to adapt so flexibly and quickly to the changing business environment and many acquisitions? What does this organization look like?
- How did you motivate and protect your people during this transition?
- What principles guided your communication with stakeholders (media, markets, customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, others)?
- Two decisions that you made along the way threatened the success of this project. What were they and how did you correct them and change course effectively?
- How did you leverage the XX/YY merger to create a repeatable integration process? What are its central elements?
- How do you identify, target, and track the achievement of synergies in your acquisitions?
- What are your organization's common goals and objectives? How do you achieve buy-in to these as you integrate new acquisitions into the enterprise?
- Looking back over the past three years, what would you have done differently?
- What were the key channel conflict issues that XYZ faced?
- What early steps did XYZ take to manage this channel conflict? Why?
- What was the longer term plan for managing channel conflict?
- What aspects of XYZ's culture had to change in order to overcome channel conflict?
- How did XYZ leverage the channels to improve them? How did the channels increase business for each other?
- What was the effect on employees, other clubs and the federation?
- You made some mistakes. If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently?
- What was the role of senior leadership in XYZ that contributed to the victory over channel conflict?
- What role did XYZ's culture play in the victory?
- What was your personal contribution to the success of XYZ?
- In what ways do our customers, suppliers, doctors, pharmacists, patients and others in the value chain find us different as a result?
- How do Abbott's processes differ today from three years ago? How did we determine that these were the right processes-the processes we absolutely needed in order to be as successful as we hoped?
- What is the role of technology in today's new product development process? What information is being shared today that wasn't in 1999?
- What were the most significant obstacles to rolling out this strategy quickly and profitably? How were they overcome?
- Which technologies and practices were standardized across company? What was the client benefit derived from the standardization?
- What decisions were most critical to the success of the strategy? How did we make those decisions effectively without sacrificing the speed we knew was so important?
- What things formerly considered "unchangeable" at XYZ were changed in order to implement the strategy? How did you change the unchangeable?
- How was "buy-in" to this strategy obtained?
- How did our competition respond?
- What was your personal contribution to the success of this effort?
- What do you wish you had known three years ago when this whole process started?
- What does the new "ball game" look like?
- What rules of the game did XYZ change and how did it go about changing them?
- What was your business model for this effort?
- What customer market did you target?
- What geographic market do you serve? What channels did you use to reach these markets?
- What was your strategy for dealing with the regulatory issues associated with this market?
- What alliances did you make in order to achieve your business model so successfully?
- How did you create a culture at XYZ that enabled you to effect such radical change?
- What are XYZ's core competencies? What do you outsource?
- What roles and responsibilities did you need to grow your company? How did you find the right people to fill them? How are you retaining these people?
- What were the largest obstacles XYZ had to overcome in implementing its business plan? How did you do it?
- What actions did you take in the first six months after the DesignSession to ensure your success?
- Looking back, it is obvious that two major mistakes threatened the rollout of XYZ. What were they? How did you discover them and change course?
- How did the competition respond?
- What was your personal role in the success of XYZ?
- What was the advice that you gave to XYZ? What ideas were in your book that XYZ needed to hear?
- In what ways did you suggest your advice should be applied? In what ways was it actually applied?
- Were there any "touch points" or natural "ripple effects" from applying your advice?
- What were the "untouchables" at XYZ that needed to get slaughtered as XYZ moved to success?
- How did XYZ assemble the complex issues surrounding scope and key business decisions to make XYZ a success?
- What critical assumptions were challenged during the scope definition phase? Did those assumptions survive?
- What business decisions appeared obvious at the beginning that later obviously needed to change?
- What process was employed to determine acceptable scope changes during integration?
- Who was "owner of the process"?
- What was the most significant surprise the team experienced during integration?
- How have the HR/Supply Chain/V&C processes changed at XYZ?
- You feel that XYZ made (and overcame) two mistakes in implementing XYZ. What were they? How did XYZ discover them and change course?
- Diagram or describe the vision you had for the Customer Service Improvement program for XYZ Subscriber and the results you expected.
- How did you define the global challenges that had to be overcome? What were the driving forces behind the evolution of the business model for XYZ Subscriber that allowed Motorola to gain world market dominance?
- What were the specific issues, unique to XYZ Subscriber, that you dealt with?
- What were the fundamental business process, functional, organizational, and performance measurement aspects that had to change to enable your success?
- What business complexities existed in your region or sector that did not exist elsewhere? What common issues and problems did you discover in each of the regions/sectors? How is that different today - are we more common or more different than the rest of the world?
- What were the cross-sector issues that you solved? What were the interdepartmental dependencies that had to come together to achieve the consumer focused vision?
- What external linkages were required to execute, what were they and how did you do it?
- In your opinion, three key innovative ideas were the critical success factors for the program's success in the region. What were they?
- What did XYZ do to delight it's customers? In what ways did you overcome the external competitive threats?
- What lessons learnt from previous successful large scale initiatives did you apply to this one? What XYZ practices/legacies, which limited us in the past, did you abandon? How did you do it?
- Looking back, it is obvious that the organization made two major mistakes in implementing the new global supply chain processes and systems. What were they? How did you discover them and adjust your course to get you to today's success?
- What advice did you give to the leadership group back in 1999 which played a major role in successfully directing the overall initiative?
- In what ways do our customers see XYZ differently as a result of the expanded food department?
- What were the three most significant changes you made to how XYZ sells food?
- What things viewed as "unchangeable" were changed in order to implement XYZ's new department 01 strategy?
- How did an expanded food department impact the store layout? Where did the space come from? How did you decide what changes to make?
- How was "buy in" obtained?
- In developing and rolling out changes to the food department, you feel that XYZ made two significant mistakes. What were they and how did you respond to the challenge?
- What were the most significant obstacles to making changes to the food department quickly and under budget? How were they overcome?
- What do you know now that you wish you had known 5 years ago?
- How did the competition respond?