The Power of Questions

A client recently undertook a study of all of its research and development initiatives to better understand if it was working on the right things and staffing appropriately. The team leading this effort was tasked with simply understanding what was going on. They’d decide what to do, what to stop, what to accelerate once the lay of the land was clear.

An interesting thing happened during the project: of 500 initiatives, almost 200 were stopped. And it was not the people leading the study who stopped the initiatives, it was the researchers running them!

So what happened?

Very simply, when you ask someone a question, they have to think. And when they reply, a few things happen. First, you probably learn something. Second, if the question is novel, it helps respondents come up with new thinking. And third, the person who speaks gets to see their thinking, too.

As researchers were asked openly about their initiatives with curiosity and no other agenda than to understand, they had realizations about their own projects. In almost all cases where an initiative was canceled, the researcher saw the project was no longer needed, appropriate, or correctly scoped. They were not negligent people, they had just been deeply in the weeds and as the world changed or a new strategy was adopted or as the results came in, no one stepped back to reassess the validity of the initiative.

In a calm, balanced, curious conversation, wisdom arises. Settled people have insights and then act on them.

Here’s another example:

I was at an offsite team meeting recently. At lunch, a leader asked someone what they were struggling with at work. It was a light question, born out of curiosity, with the intention of connecting and getting to know the employee. The employee shared a supply chain issue that seemed insurmountable. The leader listened, and turned to another participant from another region and asked “How do you handle this issue?”. The participant proceeded to explain a really useful approach. The problem owner listened with eyes wide open and at the end of the explanation commented, “Wow, we could do that. Can you give me the name of your contact?” The solution provider agreed and then shared a related problem and asked if the other person had a solution for that, which they did!

The leader who had initiated the dialogue sat back in amazement. Two important issues were possibly on their way to being resolved without asking anyone to study the problem. No task force or steering committees. And there was nothing that they needed to do to move this forward. And finally, as in the first example above, no change management plan was required!

Your organizations and people are full of wisdom. The only issue is no one is asking questions. Or if they are, they may not be asking in a way that engenders curiosity and wisdom.

But don’t believe me, just run the experiment. When you next visit a site or get together with your team or even connect with a family member: just ask. If your mind is settled, you will be curious (it’s the inherent design), the right questions will emerge and they will feel like an invitation to reflect and wonder together.

Happy asking!

Robin Charbit