by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®
“Encouraging employers to ask questions can help spur the innovation companies crave.”Article by Warren Berger: ‘The Power of “Why?” and “What if?”’ – NY Times, July 3rd, 2016.
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It would seem that Warren Berger and another resource mentioned in his article – the Right Question Institute – have invested heavily into improving our decision-making prowess. However, asking the right rational question without tapping fully into our intuitive capabilities will leave us somewhat short when seeking solutions to more complex business, academic or personal dilemmas.
Berger points out that our question-asking peaks at around 4-5 years old. That’s when parents, other adults, and especially teachers get tired of trying to answer all kid-like questions, so do everything possible to squelch them. By the time kids get to their late teens, they are pretty devoid of questions unless they’re addicted anarchists.
On top of that, we then layer-on career experiences that tend to suppress question-asking through our traditional command and control organizational world, where people are just expected to keep their heads down and comply with the existing order of the day. “Ours is not to reason why: ours is just to do or die.”
About the only time we’re free to think, be creative, ask questions and make decisions, is with our hobbies, special private interests, or in our own adult homes. Then we realize just how much decision capability is bottled up inside us…other than those of us who are entrepreneurs or senior executives, who have decisions foisted upon us daily.
It should hardly be surprising to us that Berger’s article laments how people lose the habit of asking fundamental questions within the workplace? Ironically, executives increasingly beg for innovation from their people, without realizing that they have been part of the wet-blanket for generations. Traditionally executives have been trained into or prefer to handle all the thinking and deciding and then tell their people what to do.
English philosopher Sir Joshua Reynolds said, “There’s no expedient that man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.” Is it possible that our parental care, school system and workplace exposure knock-out our ability to think and ask questions – to ensure we are properly acculturated into society? If so, we are then stuck with a major thinking issue.
Having said all that, within our current shaky business and economic environment, the pressure is on to increase innovation to stimulate stronger sales. As you well know, innovation is not something you can just turn-on and off like a tap. But, suddenly, workplace people are required to become more innovative.
To help reverse the current situation, writers like Berger and organizations like the Right Question Institute are offering materials to stimulate good questions and re-ignite innovative thinking. Additional to that important effort, this writer would also like to confirm the arrival of Option Solving.
Option Solving blends the science of effective rational questions with the art of intuitive decision-making. Its seven-step approach starts out by asking the right question. Asking the right question becomes even more meaningful when we combine the power of our rational thinking with the power of our intuitive thinking. Some sources would say our intuitive capability is as much as 200,000 times more powerful than our rational capability…that’s a pretty big multiplier.
Other option solving steps, once your rational, consideration-oriented question is in place, include:
» Creating “bookends” – extreme options for creating a decision-framework.
» Determining plausible options – it expects that at least five alternative options will be crafted to inspire new ideas.
» Using emotional distancing – to allow for intuitive-mind space to sub-consciously mull over your alternatives.
» Making decision-time – that speedy moment when you aggregate all your options and make an intuitive choice.
» Peeling-the-onion – if further decision-clarity is required, you can use further sub-sets of option solving activity to reveal other layers of decision-insight.
» Invoking action time –once your decision-outcome is known, to immediately flush out action initiatives while all the issues are top-of-the-mind and then proceed without second-guessing yourself.
NOTE: You can review many practical option-solving examples by going to www.optionsolving.com or obtain the book ‘Smart Decisions: Goodbye problems, hello options’ through Amazon.com.
And so, by taking any one or all of the following three steps you will become a much better decision-maker:
- Look up Warren Berger and his book, “A More Beautiful Question.”
- Contact the Right Question Institute through rightquestion.org,
- Locate optionsolving.com or book, ‘Smart Decisions: Goodbye problems, hello options.’
Any one of these will help you and your team reverse the tide on ‘Innovation through Smart Decisions.’
Ultimately, it begs the question, “How did you handle situations before you had access to such tools?”
To learn more about the right-questions, right-decisions, talk with: