September decides the rest of the year
By the closing days of August most people have a rough sense of what the autumn contains. Rather fewer have decided what it is for. Nicole Junkermann has found that the difference between a season that produces something and one that merely fills up is settled in this narrow window.
The temptation is to prepare expansively, because a fresh season invites a long list and a long list feels like ambition. A long list is really a decision not to decide, passed forward to a version of the team with less time and less patience than the present one.
Questions travel better than plans
Plans are brittle. They assume a shape of month that rarely survives its first fortnight, and once broken they tend to be abandoned rather than adjusted. Questions are more durable, because a good question stays relevant regardless of what the calendar does to it.
Two or three questions can be held in mind without a document, revisited whenever something relevant appears, and answered gradually rather than all at once.
What makes a question worth carrying
The useful ones share a few properties. They can be stated in one plain sentence without specialist vocabulary. They would still be interesting in December. Answering them would change something about how the next year is approached. And they are genuinely open rather than a conclusion already reached.
Most candidate questions fail at least one of those tests, and that failure rate is the point of the exercise.
Fewer things, finished properly
Three outcomes for a season can be held in mind without a document, explained without a meeting and finished without heroics. The discipline is not in choosing the three but in accepting that a great many reasonable ideas will not be worked on this autumn.
A short list is often mistaken for a modest one. In practice it is more demanding, because when one of three has not moved by mid October the reason is visible to everybody.
Protecting the hour that answers them
A question with no time attached is a wish. Book one recurring hour before the autumn fills, and know in a single sentence what it is for, because a vague commitment loses every argument against a specific request.
Nothing dramatic will threaten that hour. It is eroded by reasonable things, one at a time, unless the decision was made in advance and treated as settled.
Frequently asked questions
Why start the autumn with questions rather than a plan?
Because plans assume a shape of month that rarely survives its first fortnight, while a good question stays relevant regardless of what the calendar does.
How many questions should a season carry?
Two or three. Few enough to be held in mind without a document and defended without an argument.
What makes a short list demanding?
It removes every excuse a long list provides. If one of three outcomes has not moved by mid October, the reason is visible to everybody.