FROM DILIP MUKERJEA'S ITINERANT TOOLBOX: QUESTIONING

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STATING PROBLEMS & CHALLENGES

This technique generates instant questions. Here is an example.

The following two-column list of words has been randomly selected to act as a ‘stimulator.’


Select any issue from this list or one that you have in mind. Now consider the words in the left column, then combine it with one or more words in the right column.

For example,

■ the word ‘car’ in the left column, when related to the word ‘attitude’ in the right column, might suggest the challenge, “How can I improv e my temperament when driving?”

■ ‘family’ and ‘appearance’ might suggest “In what ways can we get away from having to keep up appearances?”

Play with word combinations; mix and match the selections.

As a variation, make your selection for a word in each column with your eyes shut, or ask someone else to pick the words. This enhances the challenge and opens up fresh pathways to your creative intelligence.

[Excerpted from 'Surfing the Intellect: Building Intellectual Capital for a Knowledge Economy', by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

FROM DILIP MUKERJEA'S ITINERANT TOOLBOX: QUESTIONING

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Exercise:

Imagine you’ve just arrived back home from a holiday. You have been clicking away and eagerly hand in your films for developing. Unfortunately…

Why did the photographs turn out as poor quality?

Follow the steps as described and the solutions will emerge. Try several possibilities.

Learn to cultivate a balance between logic and imagination. With logic, we play within the boundaries, whereas imagination has us playing with the boundaries. Of course, solutions to problems look rational, but with hindsight, the process of arriving at these solutions is often not.

Asking the right questions is essential to finding the right solutions.

Guy Kawasaki relates the following story about an innovation that we take for granted today.

Kenichi Ohmae, former director of the Tokyo office of McKinsey & Company, came up with the right question that led to a new class of photographic equipment called the ‘point-and-shoot’ camera. The prevailing high flyers were SLR cameras; this was in the 1970s. The mass of camera manufacturers were operating on positive feedback. This meant they focused on creating better and better SLR cameras: The niche had become a rut.

But Ohmae upset the status quo by asking two pertinent questions:

■ “Why do people take pictures in the first place?”

■ “What are they really looking for when they take pictures?”

His brilliant insight: What people really wanted were good pictures, not good cameras. Pursuing his hunch, Ohmae and his crew analysed a sample of 18,000 pictures at a film lab.

Their findings as to why pictures turned out bad were:

■ poor distance adjustment

■ insufficient light

■ incorrect f-stop settings (to match the film in the camera; speed and type were being ignored, and people had arbitrary f-stop settings).

It was human error, in fact, that caused pictures to turn out bad.

Ohmae’s right questions spurred camera manufacturers to create cameras that delivered what their customers desired: Good pictures minus the hassles! The point-and-shoot camera was born. Customers desire clear and immediate benefits, not razzmatazz features. Asking the right questions led to addressing the right issues.

"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions."

~ Naguib Mahfouz, 97, Egyptian novelist and Nobel Laureate

[To be continued in the Next Post. Excerpted from 'Surfing the Intellect: Building Intellectual Capital for a Knowledge Economy', by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are th eintellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

FROM DILIP MUKERJEA'S ITINERANT TOOLBOX: QUESTIONING

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Sometimes, we could have observed conditions or behaviours that are both symptoms as well as causes. Mostly though, they are separate phenomena, at two ends of a chain reaction that erupts from a finite cause.

How can we be certain that we are working on a symptom and not a cause? A simple, yet formidable method for addressing this issue is called The FIVE Whys. It enables us to test for a problem or a symptom, and sometimes there is a bonus: we find the cause as well.

First, state the problem, then ask “why” it is occurring. Now ask “why” four more times.

Example:

1 Why has the engine stopped?

Because there was no fuel being supplied.

2 Why was there no fuel being supplied?

Because the fuel supply valve was suddenly shut off.

3 Why was the fuel supply valve shut off?

Because the technician shut it.

4 Why did the technician shut it?

He meant to shut off another valve adjacent to it.

5 Why did such a mistake occur?

Because it was mistakenly labelled.

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mystery of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structures of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity."

~ Albert Einstein (1879–1955), German-American physicist

Correct labelling of the valves solves the problem and prevents its recurrence for the stated cause. There could of course, have been another reason or reasons for the engine having stopped. We simply follow the same procedure, with a change in the cause at Step 2.

For example, the fuel could have been supplied, but perhaps there was a blockage or a rupture in the fuel supply line.

another scenario:

Angela: "I need a new fridge."

Philip: "Why do you need a new fridge?"

Angela: "Because all the stuff I put in doesn’t stay fresh."

Philip: "Why doesn’t anything stay fresh?"

Angela: "Because the temperature inside the fridge is too high."

Philip: "Why is the temperature too high? "

Angela: "Because the door gasket is shredded."

Philip: "Why don’t you get the gasket renewed?"

Angela: "Because I don’t know whom to contact!"

Angela wants a new fridge simply because the door gasket needs to be renewed! Locating a repair company that can renew the old door gasket solves the problem.

The act of rephrasing the problem situation and reflecting it back in the form of a “Why?” enables you to get to the essenceof a problem.

It has been said that the logical mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes the creative mind to spot wrong questions.


[To be continued in the Next Post. Excerpted from 'Surfing the Intellect: Building Intellectual Capital for a Knowledge Economy', by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

FROM DILIP MUKERJEA'S ITINERANT TOOLBOX: QUESTIONING

PURPOSE:

To develop the skill of asking the right questions, especially when answers are unavailable. This ability enhances our thinking power, makes us more fascinating, and cuts through red tape at lightning speed.

Albert Einstein represented the best of creative thinkers when he observed:

“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination.”

We live in a world that demands constant innovation. To be relevant in this world, we must give priority to the science and art of questioning.

It has become almost routine for individuals and corporations, perhaps even entire societies and nations, to solve the wrong problem precisely. We birth creativity when we dare to challenge the status quo. This is best done by asking questions.

In fact, if we turn a question mark upside down, it becomes a hook ~ upon which we can hang our ideas!

Indeed, the opposite of a great question is often another great question. An answer brings closure; but a question creates an opening, an unfolding, a blossoming.

See whether you can come up with answers or questions to the following sample of questions:

■ What would induce you to give up your present way of living in order to face the unknown? Could you feel uncomfortable immersing yourself in the void, secure in the knowledge that all will be well?

■ If you found a wallet stacked with cash, what would you do? Would you keep it?

■ If you knew the exact date of your death, would it make a difference to the way you lived your life?

■ When you do a good deed, or make a monumental sacrifice, do you feel the need to tell others about it?

■ Would you prefer to have dreams that never come to pass, or to have no dreams at all?

■ Are you able to influence people in such a way that their lives are immediately transformed for the better?

■ Assuming that you can tell when you are truly in love, would you feel betrayed if your mate were dishonest, indifferent, or unfaithful? Would you be strong enough to forgive and continue to simply keep on loving him or her?

Now, suppose your organisation has a problem with employees arriving late for work. Your boss fumes:

“This problem is getting out of hand. Such tardiness is unacceptable. Better do something about it.”

Tardiness is not a problem; it is a symptom. The problem, meanwhile, is still unknown.

If you are running a high fever, and someone envelopes you in ice, you will die. However, if the cause of the fever is eliminated, the fever will subside. Once again, fever, like tardiness, is a symptom.

Reportedly, Gertrude Stein, significant writer and thinker, received on her deathbed, the following question from her disciples who were gathered around her:

“Now that you are ready to die, what is the answer?”

Maintaining composure and exuding wisdom, Ms Stein responded with her illustrious last words, “What is the question?”

Say you wish to communicate with someone by letter. You wrote it, posted it, but received no reply even after a few months. The absence of a reply is a symptom.

The problem is addressed by investigating the various possible reasons for there being no reply. Once the cause has been determined and eradicated, the symptom will disappear.

Perhaps the following causes are valid:

■ no postage stamp was put on your letter

■ the mailing address was incorrect

■ the plane carrying the mail crashed

■ the recipient of your letter forgot to reply

■ your letter went to the wrong address

■ a reply was sent to the wrong address

There are many more possibilities. Question persistently, and the answer will emerge.

Too often, people are blamed for the symptom, whilst the problem remains unaddressed. This sort of traditional knee- jerk reaction creates a vicious circle of:

event -> symptom -> blame -> event -> symptom -> blame, and so on.

We tend to focus on symptoms where the stress is the greatest. However, solutions to symptoms result in short-term gain, and long-term pain.

For example, when we spray pesticide over crops, we use a symptomatic solution that kills all the ‘good’ insects in the process.

[To be continued in the Next Post. Excerpted from 'Surfing the Intellect: Building Intellectual Capital for a Knowledge Economy'', by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

Are you currently getting the right answers to the wrong questions or the wrong answers to the right questions?

What is at stake when we ask the wrong questions and come up with the right answers?

Everything, that is, everything that includes the interactions between people, organisations, and technologies.

These are the ingredients of systems within ecosystems.

It is far better to ask the right questions and get a stack of wrong answers, for they are markers that lead the way to solutions.

We learn far more when things go wrong than when they go right. We must welcome wrong answers so that we can understand them, relate them to past experience, and infuse them into the wisdom of an organisation.

When we refuse to recognise and acknowledge the importance of errors, we commit the most damaging error possible.

The right questions can lead initially to chaos. This is healthy. Our wrong answers churn away within us, much like a carburetor preparing a mixture for combustion . . . except that this is creative combustion, often leading to breakthrough innovations.

Psychologists point out that most of us have mind sets. That is, we tend to fall into ruts that limit our thinking. Turning the problem upside down may provide a novel solution. It is said that Ford’s invention of the assembly line was achieved by this type of inverted thinking.

Instead of the usual ”How can we get people to the material to work on it?” Ford asked, “How can we get the work to the people?”

With this fresh approach the assembly line idea emerged.

~ Auren Uris & Jane Bensahel, “On the Job: Quick Solutions to Job Problems,” Los Angeles Times, 1981.

Ideas are meant to be alive, dynamic, oxygenated through participation, experimentation,and cross-fertilisation. They are worthless unless they can be put to use, and continually grown, improved, destroyed, and reincarnated afresh. Their core remains the same, but their scope enlarges with successful use.

The inherent, dynamic nature of ideas inspires unexpected, often serendipitous, results. As long as we have a creative brain, we can never run out of ideas!

[Excerpted from the 'Ideas on Ideas' edition of The Braindancer Series of bookazines by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

Say Keng's expert comments:

I fully concur with Dilip Mukerjea.

One of the easiest ways to start questioning & to get it rolling is to apply the traditional Journalist's Questions:

- What?

- Who?

- Where?

- When?

- Why?

- How?

For example, say within the context of evaluating a problem situation - you can ask:

- "what has happened?";

- "who was involved?";

- "where did it happened?";

- "when did it happened?";

Next, you can in fact bring your line of questioning to the next level by asking:

- "what has not happened yet?";

- "who is not involved yet?" or "who is the perpetuator here?" or "who will benefit most from here?";

- "where did it not happened yet?";

With such exploratory questions, you definitely open up a lot of perspectives, giving you the opportunity to uncover "hidden truths", so to speak!

In fact, I am inclined to throw in a 'Which? into the questioning process, although I believe Dilip has some reservations:

- Which part of the problem is most critical or which part gives the most trouble?

- Which part of it is more trivial or inconsequential?

By posing questions from this perspective, one can probably can get down to the jugular of the problem more quickly.

You can also expand the line of questioning by making your questions more open-ended, like what Henry Ford had done? In that way, possibilities naturally popped up for him.

For example, you can rephrase many of your questions in this manner:

- "In how many ways can I . . .?";

- "To what extent can I . . .?"

Other expansion possibilities include:

- "what if . . .?";

- "why not . . .?";

- "how come . . . ?";

- "so what? . . . what's next?"

To me, the ultimate purpose of asking questions is finding where it leads you to.

Interestingly, the graphic symbol for a question is "?" & if you invert it, it looks exactly like a "fishing hook".

Questioning is fishing in the ocean. Fishing for abundant answers.

As a matter of fact, to drive home Dilip Mukerjea's principal argument:

Questions, especially the open-ended ones, can gradually move your thinking from a 'fixed mindset' into a 'growth mindset'!

From my personal as well as professional experience, I believe that a deliberate practice in asking many varied questions, as I have illustrated in the foregoing, will eventually lead you to asking the right questions!

Last, to concur with Dilip Mukerjea once again, especially his last point, we must always put our ideas to work.

Remember, Actions have Consequences! & Consequences create Change, to paraphrase my good friend.