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# 2018-09-04 - A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger | |
Curious Tortoise | |
# Introduction: Why Questioning? | |
... Questions challenge authority and disrupt established structures, | |
processes, and systems, forcing people to have to at least think | |
about doing something differently. To encourage or even allow | |
questioning is to cede power--not something that is done lightly in | |
hierarchical companies or in government organizations, or even in | |
classrooms... | |
Anything that forces people to think is not an easy sell... We | |
operate on autopilot--which can help us save mental energy, allowing | |
us to multitask, and enabling us to get through the daily grind. | |
But when we want to shake things and instigate change, it's necessary | |
to break free of familiar thought patterns and easy assumptions. We | |
have to veer off the beaten neural path, and we do this, in large | |
part, by questioning. | |
A beautiful question is an ambitious yet actionable question that can | |
begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something--and that | |
might serve as a catalyst to bring about change. | |
# Chapter 1: The Power of Inquiry | |
At that moment, Phillips exhibited one of the telltale signs of an | |
innovative questioner: a refusal to accept the existing reality. One | |
of the many interesting and appealing things about questioning is | |
that it often has an inverse relationship to expertise--such that, | |
within their own subject areas, experts are apt to be poor | |
questioners. | |
Another critical step for a questioner tackling a challenge: Take | |
ownership of a question. | |
Divergent thinking: the mental process of trying to come up with | |
alternative ideas. It is a form of asking the question "What if I | |
think differently about this?" It mostly happens in the more | |
creative right hemisphere of the brain... and often triggers random | |
association of ideas (which is a primary source of creativity)... | |
Open questions with a positive tone tend to yield better answers and | |
instigate change. | |
Serial mastery: the need for modern workers to constantly adapt. | |
[IOW, Be curious or die.] | |
Q + A (action) = I (innovation) | |
Q - A = P (philosophy) | |
Why? -> What if? -> How? -> Solution | |
"design thinking": | |
* frame problem and learn more about it | |
* generate ideas | |
* build on those ideas through prototyping | |
Classical four-stage process of creativity developed nearly a century | |
ago by British psychologist Graham Wallas: | |
* Preparation | |
* Incubation | |
* Illumination | |
* Implementation | |
Having a process helps you keep taking next steps so that even when | |
you don't know what you're doing, you still know what to do. | |
Often the very worst thing that you can do with a difficult question | |
is to try to answer it too quickly. | |
Connective inquiry: connecting existing ideas in unusual and | |
interesting ways, AKA combinatory thinking | |
# Chapter 2, Why we stop questioning | |
Neoteny: a state where you see things without labels, without | |
categorization, AKA beginner's mind. | |
Pre-schoolers immediately begin to ask fewer questions. The more | |
preschool models itself after regular school, the more it seems to | |
squelch natural curiosity. As kids begin in grade school, their | |
questioning really starts to disappear. As kids stop questioning, | |
they simultaneously become less engaged in school. Synaptic pruning | |
begins at about age five. | |
Many of today's schools are product-driven. Under pressure to | |
improve test scores, they've tried to instill businesslike | |
efficiency... | |
Activity-permissive education: advocates letting kids move as they | |
learn | |
To the extent that a school is like a factory, students who inquire | |
about "the way things are" could be seen as insubordinate... If | |
schools were built on a factory model, were they actually designed to | |
squelch questions? | |
Five learning skills, or "habits of mind," were at the core of | |
Deborah Meier's school: | |
* Evidence: How do we know what's true or fake? What evidence | |
counts? | |
* Viewpoint: How might this look if we looked at it from another | |
direction? | |
* Connection: Is there a pattern? Have we seen something like this | |
before? | |
* Conjecture: What if it were different? | |
* Relevance: Why does this matter? | |
Before settling on her five habits of mind, Meier started with two | |
particular ways of thinking she wanted to emphasize--skepticism and | |
empathy. In her schools, students were given much more autonomy and | |
freedom... often when you give kids more freedom to pursue what | |
they're interested in, they become easier to control. | |
Inquiry-based learning schools share many core principles with | |
Montessori schools. | |
What Dan Meyer did... was to transfer ownership: Instead of asking | |
the question himself, he allowed students to think of it on their | |
own--at which point it became THEIR question... this issue of "Who | |
gets to ask questions in class?" touches on purpose, power, control, | |
and even race and social class. | |
... those who don't know how to ask the right questions are | |
vulnerable to being denied that which they might need or are entitled | |
to have. | |
Right Question Institute technique for K-12 classroom program: | |
* Teachers design a question focus | |
* Students produce questions | |
* Students improve their questions | |
* Students prioritize their questions | |
* Students and teachers decide on next steps | |
* Students reflect on what they have learned | |
Nikhil Goyal thinks this is where the future of learning-by-inquiry | |
is going to happen--not in schools, but in makeshift classrooms, | |
often held in "maker" or "hacker" spaces. Libraries are being | |
re-made as interesting maker spaces. | |
# Chapter 3: The Why, What If, and How of Innovative Questioning | |
To ask powerful Why questions we must: | |
* Step back | |
* Notice what others miss | |
* Challenge assumptions (including our own) | |
* Gain a deeper understanding of the situation or problem at hand, | |
through contextual inquiry | |
* Question the questions we're asking | |
* Take ownership of a particular question | |
... at least temporarily it is necessary to stop doing and stop | |
knowing in order to start asking. | |
"Steve Jobs had an unusual relationship with Zen. He got the | |
artistic side of it but not the Buddhist side--the art, but not the | |
heart." | |
The five Why's methodology originated in Japan and is credited to | |
Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota Industries. | |
Contextual inquiry is about asking questions up close and in context, | |
relying on observation, listening, and empathy to guide us towards a | |
more intelligent, and therefore more effective, question. | |
David Kord Murray, a former rocket-scientist who worked on a project | |
for NASA and later became head innovator at Intuit, made a study of | |
connective creativity in his book Borrowing Brilliance. According to | |
Murray, "The nature of innovation [is that] we build new ideas out of | |
existing ideas." | |
"These days it's easier and less expensive to just try out your ideas | |
than to figure out IF you should try them out." | |
The best learning comes from looking at success and failures side by | |
side. In this failure, what went wrong? What went right? Am i | |
failing differently each time? If yes, then you are learning. | |
Collaborative inquiry begins with asking others, "Do you find this | |
question as interesting as i do? Want to join me in trying to answer | |
it?" | |
# Chapter 4: Questioning In Business | |
The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen: Should we make better | |
products that we can sell for higher profits to our best | |
customers--or make worse products that none of our customers would | |
buy, and that would ruin our margins? | |
Keith Yamashita observes that in the business world at large "we're | |
coming off a 25-year post-eighties period of efficiency, efficiency, | |
efficiency. I think the unintended consequence of that entire | |
efficiency era is that people diminished their questions to very | |
small-minded ones. In this quest for incremental improvement, it | |
became all about asking, "How can we save a little bit of $, make it | |
a little more efficient, where can we cut costs?" But... "In order | |
to innovate now, they have to ask more expansive questions. | |
What is our purpose on this Earth? Who must we fearlessly become? | |
What if the company didn't exist? Who would miss us? What does the | |
world hunger for? | |
Panera Cares pay-what-you-can cafe | |
"There is too much pressure and too much influence from others in the | |
group," according to Debra Kay, author of the book Red Thread | |
Thinking. "The free association done in brainstorming sessions is | |
often shackled by peer pressure and as a result generates obvious | |
responses." One solution is to generate questions instead of ideas. | |
# Chapter 5: Questioning For Life | |
As you make these daily choices about what to spend your time on and | |
which possibilities to pursue, the author and consultant John Hagel | |
suggests you ask yourself this question: When I look back in five | |
years, which of these options will make the better story? | |
Appreciative inquiry is usually focused on building upon current | |
strengths, but sometimes by looking into the past, you can glimpse | |
what might improve your life in the present and future... | |
experimentation can be thought of as, simply, the ways you act upon | |
questions. | |
"It's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think | |
your way into a new way of acting." -- Millard Fuller, founder of | |
Habitat For Humanity. | |
According to Herminia Ibarra, a professor of organizational behavior | |
at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, and author of Working Identity: | |
Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career, the best way | |
to find a new career is to keep asking, and quickly acting upon, the | |
question "What if I try this?" | |
The typical career change, she notes, often involves poring over | |
self-help books, talking to people who can offer advice, and waiting | |
for the epiphany that shows you your "true self"--at which point you | |
can strike out confidently in a new direction. That's all wrong, | |
says Ibarra: "We need to act." Through her research, Ibarra learned | |
that most real-life career transitions take about three years, and | |
they rarely happen in a linear path. It's a series of trials and | |
errors, and where we end up often surprises us. But the main thing | |
is to get the testing and learning under way as soon as possible. | |
Jon Bond considers questions to be "the verbal equivalent of | |
nonviolent conflict resolution." | |
Related links: | |
Questions In Service of the Asked: | |
author: Berger, Warren | |
detail: http://amorebeautifulquestion.com/ | |
LOC: HD53 .B448 | |
tags: book,non-fiction,self-help | |
title: A More Beautiful Question | |
# Tags | |
book | |
non-fiction | |
self-help |