JUST ASK !

The power of asking questions.

According to some frequently peddled information, in average a 4-year-old child asks

437 questions a day. To be honest, that seems exaggerated to me: that would mean
something like one question every 99 seconds or probably even more frequently.
However, as a parent of two children I have been confronted with this challenging time
of continuous questioning: Why is the sky blue ? How do we make babies ? Why cannot
we fly ? Why ? Why ?

Young children have this great ability to ask questions which seem to be naive but are
often raising real questions – and truth is that we do not always have all the answers.
Some of these questions are a way to acquire knowledge and can be addressed with
some known answers and facts: Why is the sky blue ? or: How do we make babies ? - on
the latter we might ‘customize’ the answer until they are older :-) ; But some definitely
push the boundaries of science and do challenge what is possible and what is not.

Asking questions is less valued than knowing answers

When we grow up, this characteristic (I mean this curiosity and freshness of mind)
disappears. In business life, asking questions is not valued. I remember my first boss
once told me: “We do not pay you for wondering or believing, we pay you for knowing”.
Our culture does actually not encourage asking questions. I can think of a few reasons:

 First of all, our brain is lazy. Neurosciences have highlighted that our brain prefer
mental shortcuts when facing complex situations. Easy explanations which
remove complex questions from our desk are often preferred. Homo
ignavus (lazy) rather than Homo sapiens (wise). In the words of psychologists
Fiske and Taylor, we are ‘cognitive misers’. So we need to deliberately stimulate
our brain and create an environment that is conducive to opening questions and
thinking out-of-the-box.
  We do not have time for questions. Business life is too often “fast & furious” and
we do things in a rush and under stress and we have no time to step back and ask
fundamental questions, let alone the fact that working under stress does not
favour serene thinking either. As a consequence we often go for the most obvious
solution and simply replicate what was done before. Step back for a moment and
let a complex question percolate would rather help manage issues more
effectively (see my post on Slow Business).

 We live under the reign of knowledge. Not knowing is meant to be incompetence

or immaturity and those who know are promised to senior roles. (And BTW the
education system, at least in France, is very much focused on accumulating
knowledge rather than developing critical thinking). Too often in the business
world, questions are less valued than answers (known facts). But known facts are
somehow frozen and do not address new problems nor help understand (let
alone build) new paradigms and future trends. Tony Wagner, specialist in
Education and keynote speaker at TED conferences, gets it right: Nowadays
“knowledge is a commodity”, the important thing “is not what you know but what
you can do with what you know.” To some extent Wikipedia addresses the need
for knowing. Innovation comes from how you put together the pieces of the
knowledge jigsaw (dynamic expertise).

 Hierarchy and discipline. It is not easy to ask naive (dummy ?) or too much
challenging questions in a meeting except to sometimes appear insubordinate or
sassy. Maybe we are too well educated to ask difficult questions to a senior
audience or simply challenge status quo. Great leaders foster the emergence of
such behaviours by being humble, curious, open-minded.

Gary Cohen also adds two more biases which prevent us from asking the right and
sometimes difficult or painful questions:

 Leaders can easily be very much conservative as soon as it avoids them making
tough decisions which have a radical impact on their immediate environment or
on people (like lay-offs);
 Leaders can also remain deaf to the obvious when it contradicts their initial plans
or decisions. It is also a trap I have been confronted with: your brain feels you
know the pattern and answers and is already "galloping" on a wrong route;
sometimes your brain just feel too much clever (arrogant ?) and kind of circuit-
breaks the questioning/listening piece (you think you know already).

The world is changing, let’s open new ways.

The world is changing faster than ever. Technology makes new ways of doing things
possible – hence new products and competitors pop up in the blink of an eye. And
change does not call for answers from the past.

In this moving environment, the art of questioning is a valuable asset for the
transformation and innovation journey.

That all started 25 centuries ago with Socrates. His starting point (‘I know I know
nothing’) is certainly extreme, however the systematic process for questioning things in
order to solve issues or answer fundamental questions (maieutics) is a powerful tool to
address complex problems. Socrates’ approach is essentially about questioning (the
iterative process of asking questions is the journey) but, as pointed out by Warren
Berger, questioning without action is just philosophy indeed. Add action (activation) to
questioning then you drive change and innovation.

Asking questions is a good tool to solve complex problems or initiate innovative

thinking. Think about the simple question asked by Edwin Land’s little daughter: “Why
can’t I get the picture of me you just took ?”. The easy answer was: “Because I need to
develop them”. It rather stimulated Land’s creativity who invented the POLAROID
camera.

The approach only works if you use powerful questions. A powerful question is:

 Positive. The tone and the formulation are key. Finger-pointing questions (“Why
couldn’t you deliver on time ?”) do not help. Positive questioning will focus on
what can be done rather than what does not work and will create a climate of
trust (you do want to learn, you are not looking for a culprit).

 Open-ended. Open-ended questions give space to the people who answer and
incite them to open their mind, share ideas and make proposals. Examples: “How
do you think we can improve this process ?”; “Would you think of other options
?”; “What would happen if we shorten the preparation phase ?”; “What does
success look like ?”; “What if we do not act/react ?”;
etc. However closed questions may be useful at the
end of the process when you want to converge to an action plan and when you
look for agreement and commitment of all stakeholders (“Do you agree on the
delivery timings ?”).

 Prospective. It is about changing, improving or innovating for the future. Or you

may start with questions looking at the past or current situation (where are we ?
how did we get there ?) but then you go into forward-looking questions (where
do we want to go ? where could we go ? how can we get there ? etc.) or you are
just not really questioning but just commenting, ruminating or complaining.

The art of questioning lies in an incremental process, you go step by step and fine-tune.
You start by opening the field of possibilities, explore various options or routes and at
some point close and converge– because you finally will go into decision/action mode: it
is business after all, not research.

Some authors recommend a 3-step process:

1. Why ? - Understand the context and identify issues, failures, blocking points.
2. What if ? - Open the scope, explore, provoke, brainstorm and generate ideas.
3. How ? – Experiment, pilot, plan and act. At that stage you want to close the
process and select one path (a decision is made). The “How ?” will encompass
more operational aspects such as “When ?”, “Who ?”, “Where ?”, all typical
elements you will want to include into an action plan (with clear definition of
outcome/deliverables, timeline, RACI).
Questioning is a powerful leadership tool.

When you encourage questioning, you encourage curiosity, open-mindedness and

search for creative answers without being afraid of landing onto unknown territories.

It is about opening a discussion and engaging in a conversation with each other and
caring about each other’s point of view (referring to my experience, it really requires a
lot of concentration to actively listen without being dazzled by your own pre-conceived
mental pattern). Hence it is about empowering people: you ask people in your team to
find a solution and challenge themselves to come with some proposals. Done in the right
way it is a source of motivation, inspiration and team collaboration and it can be a
catalyst for personal development.

Asking questions (to discover answers or challenge traditional thinking) or encouraging

people to ask (you) questions is a critical step to leadership.

Let’s conclude this post with Peter Drucker: “The leader of the past may have been a
person who knew how to tell, but certainly the leader of the future will be a person who
knows how to ask.”

Not easy but exciting. So, why not do it ?

JM Janoueix – 6/2015

Some references I found useful:

 “A more beautiful question – The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas” by

Warren Berger (2014);
 “The art of powerful questions” by Eric E. Vogt, Juanita Brown and David Isaacs
(2003);
 “Just ask leadership: Why great managers always ask the right questions” by Gary
B. Cohen (2010);
 “Leading with questions” by Professor Michael J. Marquardt.