How to ask better questions

Introduction

Business owners are often so busy being busy, they fail to ask themselves the breakthrough questions to spark Innovation, creativity and inspiration.  The results these things bring all start when you ask a simple question. How to ask better questions?

Here’s what happens when asking the right question breaks through the clutter of normal working life: 

1. A 3-year-old asks her dad an obvious question and he starts a business that ends up with annual sales of £1.1 billion 
2. A typist asks a simple question and builds a business she sells for  £39 million 
3. Joe and Brian ask a few simple  questions in 2007 and just 2 years  later take 1,000,000 bookings and a £80 million investment. The  business is now valued at over  £20 billion 

Then can’t we all ask great questions? On a sunny winter’s day in 1943 Jennifer Land (3-years-old) asked a question of her  dad. Edwin Land had just taken Jennifer’s  picture with his favourite camera when she piped up: 

“Why can’t I see the picture (you’ve just taken) now?” 

Like most 3-year-olds, Jennifer didn’t want  to wait!   Jennifer’s question stayed with Edwin and  resulted, in 1948, in the first Polaroid camera.  At the height of Polaroid in 1978, customers bought 14 million polaroid cameras and spent £1.1 billion (in today’s  money that’s £3.7 billion) with the company. All because of Jennifer’s naïve yet valuable question.  

Here’s a proven solution for you…to get a breakthrough for your business, use a proven 3-question formula so that you and your colleagues  ask the simple, valuable and innovative  questions. 

We’re all hungry for better answers.  But first, we need to learn how to ask the  right questions.  Ask the right questions and you’ll get yourself a breath-taking business  breakthrough like Edwin did. 

In the 1950s Bette Nesmith Graham was a typist in a bank by day and a commercial artist by night.  If you’d been Bette, you might also have asked yourself this modest question: “What if I could paint over my mistakes when typing, the way I do when painting my pictures?” 

Bette’s question resulted in her taking to work a small bottle filled with a paint  and water mixture. Bette’s ‘miracle mixture’  made it easy to cover typing errors. It wasn’t long before she was selling her correction fluid to hundreds of secretaries.  Later, in 1980, Bette sold her company  ‘Liquid Paper’ for £39 million!   

HERE’S THE PROVEN SOLUTION FOR YOU…

To get a breakthrough for your business, use a proven 3-question formula so that you and your colleagues ask the simple, valuable and innovative questions.

Warren Berger, in his book ‘A More Beautiful Question’, has uncovered a  3-question formula. A formula that goes a long way to explaining how some of the best business ideas and innovations have been  created. 

Like Jennifer Land (the 3-year-old) you start the 3-step breakthrough question  formula with a ‘WHY’ question. 

Polaroid, Liquid Paper and many other  inspired and profoundly valuable innovations  start when you: 

‘WHY’ wakes you up so that you become  aware of and understand the problem. “Innovative questioners, when faced  with situations that are less than ideal,  inquire as to why, trying to figure out  what’s lacking.” – Warren Berger 

Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky were struggling to pay the rent on their San  Francisco apartment. At the same time  newspapers were reporting on the lack of  hotel beds in the city… So what question  would you ask given these two facts? How  about asking… 

“Why do people coming to our town  have so much trouble getting a hotel  room?” 

Joe and Brian were problem finding with  this question. 

And so was born the idea of ‘air bed  and breakfast’. It’s now called Airbnb and is  valued at more than £20 billion. 

“…find a problem before others do,  and then successfully answer the  questions surrounding that problem”.  – Warren Berger.  

The ‘WHY’ stage is about seeing and understanding the problem. 

A ‘WHAT IF’ question starts you thinking about possible solutions.
The ‘WHAT IF’ stage is about imagining.
“What if I paint over my mistakes when typing, the way I do when painting?”   Bette jumped straight into working out possibilities by asking “What if I could…”

A ‘HOW’ question signposts, stimulates and prompts you to act on the possibilities and solutions you dream up.  The ‘HOW’ stage is about doing, testing, prototyping.   Put them together and here’s what’s  possible… 

…in just 2 years a handful of questions creates Airbnb Why? What if? How? All contributed to  the creation of Airbnb – a business that now  generates over £2 billion in sales revenue. Here are some of the questions two of the  founders asked in 2007: 

“How are we going to pay the rent?” They had no jobs and no money and were  struggling to keep a roof over their heads. “Why can’t we find a place for these  people to crash for a night or two?” The city hotels were jam-packed because  of a conference in their city of San Francisco. “Why not our place?” 

“…and what if we provide more than  just a mattress to sleep on?” 

They expanded the original thoughts to  include a modest breakfast as well as the  blow-up mattresses they used. 

Instead of advertising their place they  built a website (they both had design  backgrounds). 

“Why not make a business out of this?” “What if we could create this same  experience in every major city?” 

The challenge for the business was that according to traditional thinking and the  views of investors, no one would want to  stay in someone else’s bed. 

But Joe and Brian had experienced both sides of the problem – finding a bed AND  needing money but with a bed to rent. They  wouldn’t be put off. And so, another ‘WHAT  IF’ question sent them to Denver: 

“What if we take this idea on the road  and test it in another city?” 

In 2008, Denver had a Democratic presidential convention, and a shortage  of hotel rooms. And with a little clever PR  and news coverage the boys proved that it  worked in 2 cities!  A year later they achieved more than 1  million bookings and had received more than  £80 million from investors. 

STOP working at your ‘coalface’ and take time out to ask breakthrough questions

START by asking ‘WHY’ so that you find a problem worth fixing

It can. But few people take questions  seriously enough.  

Few people take time out to simply  generate a whole raft of questions about  their business, their customer experiences or  the future of their products and services. 

So why not open your diary now and  block off half a day or a couple of hours away  from work. And use this ‘time-out’ to build a  list of questions like those the boys at Airbnb  did in 2007. You’ll then have started… 

If a naive 3-year-old can stimulate a multi billion-pound business who knows what your  questions can inspire? 

Book your time-out now and apply this  3-question formula to your business, your  thinking and your actions! 

It’s easy to admire breakthrough businesses like Uber and Airbnb. But what if you could create your own breakthrough idea for your business? 

Warren Berger’s research points to a simple 3-question formula you and I can apply to our businesses, our products and our services. 

Why not take a little time out and give this 3-question formula a go? 

1. Step back from the ‘coalface’ of running your business and go problem finding 
2. Create a whole series of ‘WHY’ questions to find a problem worth tackling in your business.
3. Next pose some ‘WHAT IF’ questions to generate creative options
4. Having found the problem and created options now it’s time to work out ‘HOW’ – prototype and test your ideas as fast as you can

“Me and my team know our industry and know what we’re doing, so how come we can’t achieve breakthrough results?”

Berger puts it best:

“…many people overestimate their knowledge, put too much faith in their gut instinct, and walk around convinced they have more answers than they actually do. If you feel this way, you’re less likely to ask questions.”
He then helpfully points out how the British director at the innovation firm IDEO helps businesses achieve breakthroughs:

“I position myself relentlessly as an idiot (or like a 3-year-old) at IDEO, and that’s not a negative, it’s a positive – because being comfortable not knowing – that’s the first part of being able to ask questions.”

Possibly the most well-respected business advisor of the last 50 years is Peter Drucker. He reckons:

“My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.”

Asking naïve or ‘beginner’s mind’ (3-year-old’s) questions puts you on the road to creative breakthrough questions.  Why not put a ‘stranger’ in the room when you start asking the ‘WHY’ questions about your business and your clients and your services? This will help you step back.

“Isn’t asking all these questions just a big navel-gazing exercise?”

You’re right to challenge the possible time wasted when taking a ‘time-out’ for a questions exercise.

But the reality for most leaders is they are swamped by the sheer volume of stuff that needs doing day-in, day-out. Being this overloaded is not conducive to creative or innovative thinking.

So, it pays to step back and do some creative thinking by asking some well-structured questions. A good starting point being:
“What questions should we be asking ourselves?”                                               

When Jim Hackett retired from Steelcase, he’d grown it into the world’s largest office furniture company. He’d managed a profound restructure and saved it from extinction! Hackett believes:

“There is an over celebration of getting things done…
…we have to train ourselves to ask questions. We have to discipline ourselves to do it.”

Discipline yourself to a regular ‘time-out’ from the day to day running of your business, for question creation.

“How do I know that the  3-question process will work  for me and my business?” One of the key insights from Warren Berger’s research is that the successful innovators are great at prototyping, testing and trialing. Why not take a leaf from the book and  give the 3-question formula a try? Yes, the formula is simple but isn’t necessarily easy. Polaroid, Liquid Paper and Airbnb all took months or years to mature into sellable propositions. So please take the long view AND take the first step.  

Take some time out and start asking yourself the ‘WHY’ question. Even better why not set about creating a whole series of ‘WHY’ questions and then filter and fine-tune the best ones to use. 

STOP: working at your ‘coalface’  and take time out to ask breakthrough  questions  

START: by asking ‘WHY’ so that you find a problem worth fixing 

Busy being busy gets things done but doesn’t get you a breakthrough result in  your business. 

If Polaroid, Liquid Paper, Gatorade, Airbnb and many more breakthrough  business ideas start with questions it clearly pays to ask more questions too. 

And so why not get a breakthrough for your business, use the proven three question formula so that you and your colleagues ask the simple, valuable and  innovative questions. 

Start by stepping back from your ‘coalface’, have yourself a ‘time-out’, away from the day-to-day hustle and bustle of  your business. 

Why not get an outsider involved and build yourself a list of questions using the 3-question formula laid out in  Warren Berger’s brilliant book. 

‘WHY…?’ 

‘WHAT IF…?’ 

‘HOW…?’