Hal Gregersen

What if the key to
finding better answers is to start by asking better questions?

BEHIND EVERY BREAKTHROUGH IS A BETTER QUESTION

The technology for capturing photographic images had steadily improved over the years in terms of speed and quality, but the assumption remained that this was a process for professionals, or at least for serious and well-heeled enthusiasts. Eastman wondered: Could photography be made less cumbersome and easier for the average person to enjoy?

How does nature solve this problem

Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers

All questions are the frame into which the answers fall. And . . . by changing the frame, you dramatically change the range of possible solutions

Seelig suggests that one way to reframe things is to think of someone quite different from yourself and try to adopt the perspective they would take on the situation.

What people at X have learned to recognize, however, is that the human tendency is to start digging in and making progress on whatever part of the effort is easiest.

So, just calling out that tendency and advising against it can help. The comical example Xers use is that, if the vision was to get a monkey to sit on top of a pole reciting Shakespeare, the typical team would go straight to work building that pole with its nicely balanced platform at the top. It’s the part of the problem they already know how to approach, and solving it feels and looks like momentum-building progress. But everyone knows the hard part is going to be teaching the monkey—and if that proves impossible, any time spent on other parts of the solution will turn out to have been wasted.