As the new year begins, it is an opportune time to reflect on the past year and clarify vision and direction for the year ahead. Strategic questions enable people and organizations to move from the known (present) to the unknown (future) – exploring possibilities, seeing new options, and realizing where new information may be needed. Strategic questions lead us to reflect in ways that inspire movement.

We offer some questions to explore individually or use with your team/organization to spur some new ideas and insights:

• What was a successful event/experience of 2011 that you would like to see grow or be replicated in the coming year?
• What were three key things that you/we learned last year?
• Of all the new people you met this year, who would you like to collaborate with more in the future?
• What trends or events in the past year were most significant? What new possibilities might they enable?
• Imagine it is one year from now and your/our work has been hugely successful, what would things look like?  
• What people or stories inspired you that you would like to replicate?
• Of all the competing priorities you have, which do you most want to focus on?