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Why Should You Ask
Searching Questions?
Searching questions can help you
discover new opportunities,
uncover the roots of a problem, and
find creative solutions
to it.
Open your mind to what is possible.
Asking searching questions starts with
challenging assumptions. If you do
not check assumptions you cannot be good at asking searching questions.
Don't ask one or two questions and then rush straight towards a solution.
With an incomplete understanding of the problem it is very easy to jump to
wrong conclusions.
Ask open-ended questions that elicit a wide rage of answers:
Boosting Your Creativity
Creativity requires an inquisitive mind. Unless you ask lots
of "Why?" and "What If"?
questions, you won't generate creative insights.
"To avoid this most
common of creative errors, be sure to peek under all carpets, including your
own. Don't take anything for granted. Especially
success. Try
looking at the world through more inquisitive eyes; try getting ideas in
motion; try asking the all-important: "Why?" See what happens!"
says Alexander Hiam, the author of
Creativity,
Triggering Great Ideas
A major stimulant to creative thinking for business problem solving
is focused questions. A well worded question often penetrates to the heart
of the matter and triggers new ideas and insights. To trigger more and better ideas, you, first,
must be be very clear about exactly what it is that you are trying to do.
Write it down and describe it as if it were already achieved. And, second,
question your assumptions continually. What if there were a better way? Be
willing to try something
completely different.1
Case in Point
Google
"We run the company by questions, not by answers," says Eric
Schmidt, the CEO of
Google. "So in the
strategy
process we've so far formulated 30 questions that we have to answer.
I'll give you an example: we have a lot of cash. What should we do with the
cash? Another example of a question that we are debating right now is: we
have this amazing product called AdSense for content, where we're monetizing
the Web. If you're a publisher we run our ads against your content. It's
phenomenal. How do we make that product produce better content, not just
lots of content? An interesting question. How we do make sure that in the
area of video, that high-quality video is also monetized? What are the next
big breakthroughs in search? And the
competitive
questions: What do we do about the various products Microsoft is allegedly
offering?
"You ask it as a question, rather than a pithy answer, and that
stimulates conversation. Out of the conversation comes
innovation. Innovation is not something
that I just wake up one day and say 'I want to innovate.' I think you get a
better
innovative culture if
you ask it as a question."...
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