Ask High-Value Questions

“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first fifty five minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I knew the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”

— Albert Einstein

Among the 12 Manners of Voicing, asking questions is, from my experience, the most productive of learning and innovation. I have started to illustrate asking high-value questions in a prior blog post (“Personal Learning History”).

Last March 28, 2007 I was invited to be a reactor to several paper presenters in the “National Conference on Improving Competitiveness through Science & Technology Human Resource Development.” It was sponsored by the Science Education Institute of the Department of Science and Technology of the Philippine government.

As reactor I was expected to comment on the papers presented: expand on ideas I agree with, criticize ideas I don’t agree with, etc. I decided to completely change my approach. I decided not to provide answers. Instead my “reaction” was a series of questions:

1. Provocative questions
2. Mind-opening questions
3. Assumption-exposing questions
4. Mental model-challenging questions
5. Bias-awareness questions
6. Blindfolds-discovering questions
7. Discovering-what-we-don’t-know questions
8. Attention-shifting questions
9. Market opportunities-attentive questions
10. Reframing questions.

You can read my short (only 5 substantive slides) presentation by holding “Ctrl” and left-clicking HERE to view my presentation in a new tab.

Learn to ask high-value questions. I call them “high-value” questions because they can lead to answers that are high-value knowledge, for example:

1. Delighting customers instead of just satisfying them, and thereby converting customers to willing and eager salespersons convincing their friends to buy your product.
2. Changing how we see reality: this is why “reframing” questions are very powerful. For example, if we change how we view the market then it may enable us to see new market opportunities that we hardly saw before. This can lead to —
3. Challenging and changing the assumptions behind our business model, resulting in a better or new business model that can revive a losing business or radically outstrip all competition or lead to an entirely new and successful business venture with its own niche!

Cheers!

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Note that there are embedded links in this blog post. They show up as colored text. While pressing “Ctrl” click on any link to create a new tab to reach the webpages pointed to. Thanks to Wikimedia Commons for the use of the image in this post.

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Practical KM Hints (#6)

Deliberate or conscious paradigm shifting (see Q8- Wanted: Workable Tools for Voluntary Paradigm Shifting”) is a KM skill. Here are some examples where this KM skill comes in:

• Conscious paradigm shifting can be an outcome in generative dialogue (see “D19- Debate versus Discussion versus Dialogue”). Practical Hints for Learning Facilitators (#3) lists some guidelines for facilitators to help workshop participants reach the Stage 4 of generative dialogue.
• When company executives are revising their business model or innovating new business models, they are actually changing their fundamental business assumptions — another example of conscious paradigm shifting. I gave an actual example in my presentation to the 10th Asia Pacific KM Conference in Hong Kong last December 2008 (see Slides 42-44 in “Service Innovation: some Philippine Trends and Experiences”). Green Spot Strategic Planning^© is an example of strategic KM (see “D9- Strategic KM versus Operational KM”)
• Conscious paradigm shifting requires one to “get out of one’s mental box” which depends on the skill of discovering one’s hidden assumptions. This is the same as the ability to work on/with your mental models, one of the five disciplines of a learning organization according to Peter Senge. CCLFI uses a simple group workshop exercise called “Get the Guava!” to help people do the latter. If you are interested in this exercise for non-commercial purposes, email me and I will send you a copy.
• It is likely that you yourself have experienced a personal paradigm shift, but you did not label it as such. CCLFI has group workshop exercises such as “My Peak Life Experience” to identify, recover and study these important episodes in one’s learning journey through life.

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