Never underestimate the value and power of a “good” question

I’ve always been a fan of questions. “Always ask questions” is one of my core values and was a key culture point at my old company. So when I was reading through Alan Webber’s new book 52 Rules of Thumb, it didn’t surprise me to find Rule #10 – A good question beats a good answer.

Since I first picked up Fast Company magazine, where Alan was a founding editor, I have always appreciated his style of thinking and the way he seemed to always ask questions that resonate with what was going on at a particular point in time.

So what is it about questions that intrigues us. Is it the opportunity to go exploring, the challenge of finding the answer or just the great conversations they generate? Probably all three and then some. So why is it, if the question is so important, do we often skim over the most crucial part – coming up with the question to ask?

There have been some powerful fans of questions over the years. Starting with Socrates who was so famous for asking questions that his style of dialog is today called a Socratic method. Throughout the ages and into the modern day thinkers, philosophers, artists, authors and business people have all used questions.

The biggest-selling business book of all time – Good to Great by Jim Collins was the result of seven years of rigorous exploration of ONE question. How can an existing company go from good to great? The answers he found confounded much conventional business theory and rewired many people’s thinking about their companies.

A note here – sometimes you don’t want to explore anything, all you want is a yes or a no. I am not talking about those kinds of questions, they have their place but generally they don’t stimulate new thinking or ways of doing. So given that all questions aren’t created equal, what is the difference between a good question and great question?

There don’t seem to be any rules per se, but a few guidelines can be found courtesy of World Café. These guys are dedicated to finding great questions that drive dialog and reveal insights that transcend assumptions and preconceptions. From their Guide to Asking Powerful Questions comes this short list of things you should shoot for when framing your own questions:

1. Construct your question to be open and stimulate dialog. A good way to do this is to make sure it starts with an interrogative – who, what, why, how are good options.
2. What work do you want the question to do? Deliver a concrete outcome; build a sense of team; open up the dialog to explore new ideas…
3. Create a broad scope within the question that is practical. For example, scope could be “our project”; “our company”; “our industry”.
4. Limit the assumptions built into the question. Many words in the English language come loaded with assumptions and putting them in your questions creates an often unintentional direction for the outcome.

There are many other considerations when framing great questions and I encourage you to take a browse through The Guide to Asking Powerful Questions. Then, to quote Alan Webber:

“Work at asking great questions in meetings. Reward people for raising questions that need to be asked. Have the courage to ask unasked questions to make explicit what you think is obvious – knowing that just by asking the question you’ll make new connections and open new lines of enquiry… It’s not what you don’t know that will hurt you and your business. It’s what you don’t bother to ask that will kill you.”

You might be wondering what questions have to do with brand? Well, the foundation of every great brand is knowing the answer to the following question: ‘What do we believe and what do our actions show?’ Do you know yours?

Any questions?

See you next week!

Michel Hogan is a Brand Advocate. Through her work with Brandology here in Australia and in the United States, she helps organisations recognise who they are and align that with what they do and say, to build more authentic and sustainable brands. She also publishes the Brand thought leadership blog – Brand Alignment.