Stuck on a problem? Hal Gregersen, Executive Director of the MIT Leadership Center and co-author of The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators, suggests solving vexing challenges through thoughtful questioning. His 4-24 project challenges us to set aside four minutes every day to ask nothing but questions--an exercise that can help us see problems from new perspectives.
In his decade's worth of research into the source of disruptive innovations, Gregersen found that questioning is how innovators do their work—it's the catalyst for other "discovery behaviors" that make up an "innovator's DNA," such as observing, networking, and experimenting. (Learn more about these skills in this recent Business Insider article) Innovators ask a lot of questions to better understand what is and what might be. They ignore safe questions and go right for the crazy ones--the questions that can question common wisdom and can even disrupt an entire industry.
What do some of these questions sound like?
- If tomorrow we were legally prohibited from selling our current products to our current customers, how would we make money next year?
- What would happen if we did the opposite of what we're doing right now?
- How could we sell our products in small villages without any access to advertising or infrastructure?
- What if we had not already implemented this process? Would we do it again today?
- What would we do if money were no object?
- What if we shrink our existing product line by 50%? 75%?
Five steps to catalytic questioning
Innovators not only ask provocative questions, they work at better ones. In The Innovator's DNA, Gregersen encourages "question storming" to help dig deep into the fundamental elements of the challenge you face. Here's how it works.
1. Prepare: Find a white board or flip chart. Pick one person to write everything down.
2. Pick your challenge: Select a problem or possibility that your team cares deeply about. Set a timer for 4 minutes.
3. Question everything: Don't give preambles to the questions, don't answer them, and generate as many questions as possible.
4. Step back: Look for common themes. Choose to focus on three or four questions that hold the most potential.
5. Get to work: Observe, network, investigate, or experiment--whatever it takes to find creative answers to your questions and solutions to your problems.
Learn more
To learn more about finding new answers through great questions, you can view this short video with Gregersen, "How to Ask the Right Question," or his recent innovation@work webinar, "Exploring the Innovator's DNA."
Gregerson leads two new Executive Education courses, The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills for Disruptive Innovation and Innovation and Images: Exploring the Intersections of Leadership and Photography.
Next week's post will delve into discovery skill #3, observing.