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In conducting a belief audits you can come up with all sort of question designed to uncover the core ideas, assumption, and values; the fears, hopes, and dreams about the future; the current strategies and strategic vision or boxes of the relevant people involved in your business collectively and individually. Doing so can be particularly useful, because organisations often struggle to come up with one or more new boxes when they cannot coherently read their present one. Either formally or informally you can also sit down together and try to answer some of the following questions, all of which are designed to get you talking about your current boxes.

• What are some of the key assumptions inherent in your day to day activities, the established rules under which you or your organisation generally operates?
• What core values are a given?
• What are some of your own personal beliefs about your organisation and what makes it perform effectively at present?
• In what area does your organisation not devote enough time and resources
• In what areas is there too much focus?
• What has your organisation never feared that you believe could destroy it over the next five years?
• What has your organisation always felt that could become its greatest asset over the same time period?
• How would you “Sell” someone on working at your company?
• What boxes are you using when you think about the market for your products or services?
• What is your organisation’s competitive space and are there things it might like to redefine?
• What models do you use to think about your customers? Do you think of them as valuable stakeholders or Nonsense to be managed or in some other ways?
• If you or your organisation didn’t exist what difference would it make to the world? What would be missing?

Excerpted from ‘Thinking in new boxes’ by Alan Iny and Luc de Brabandere