As entrepreneurs and business professionals, theories and abstraction don’t usually interest us very much. We’re looking for something actionable, something we can use. We don’t want information for its own sake; we want answers. The trouble is, when we place too much emphasis on answers, we forget to ask the right questions in the first place.
When we don’t define our questions carefully before seeking answers, we end up falling back on a default question that isn’t especially helpful: “How can we make more money?” While this is, of course, fundamental to the success of any business, it doesn’t help define strategy.
How can questions help define a more useful road forward? Let’s start with a few examples:
- What purpose does your business serve?
- What should you stop doing?
- If you didn’t already have a business, how would you start it today?
- Where can you perform heretical experiments?
- Who are your customers?
- How can you get better at experimenting?
- Which metrics matter most to you?
- What really influences your key metrics?
- What is scaring your customers away from you?
Why are questions so important, often even more important than the answers? It comes down to this: answers often change with the environment, but questions don’t. At the same time, answers can be continually refined and improved upon, but only if we fully understand which question they’re designed to answer.
Questions are useful in more immediate situations as well. When things fall behind schedule, projects aren’t moving forward, or things are otherwise “failing,” questions are often the best way to resolve the issue. When you ask employees questions, you can either empower them to believe in their own solutions, or ask berating questions that lower their morale.
How can you learn to ask better questions? Understand what makes a question useful:
- They strengthen relationships
- They encourage alternate solutions
- They clarify situations
- They give people ownership of their solutions
- They challenge assumptions
- They encourage fresh new ways of thinking
- They allow for more analytical or critical approaches
Perhaps most importantly, you need to encourage a business culture that is comfortable asking questions. You can do this by directly asking employees to bring questions to meetings. You can also do it by setting an example, asking the right kinds of questions yourself.
All that said, you can forget “there are no bad questions.” Ask the wrong questions, and you can hurt progress by putting people on the defensive:
- Who is holding the team back?
- Why are you behind schedule?
- Shouldn’t you know better?
- What’s wrong with this project?
In addition, other kinds of questions can also stunt progress:
- Leading questions that build the answer into the question
- Closed questions used in a series create the sensation of being interrogated. While these kinds of questions are good openers or closers, they are bad when used in series.
Remember, the best leaders don’t just make judgment calls or issue orders. They ask questions to define strategy and empower their workforce.
Do you ask enough questions?