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Why Should You Ask
Searching Questions?
Searching questions can help you
discover new opportunities,
uncover the roots of a problem, and
find creative solutions
to it.
Open your mind to what is possible.
Asking searching questions starts with
challenging assumptions.
If you do not check assumptions you cannot be good at asking searching
questions. Don't ask one or two questions and then rush straight towards a
solution. With an incomplete understanding of the problem it is very easy to
jump to wrong conclusions.
Ask open-ended questions that elicit a wide rage of answers:
More
Triggering Great Ideas
A major stimulant to creative thinking for business
problem solving
is focused questions. A well worded question often penetrates to the heart
of the matter and triggers new ideas and insights. To trigger more and
better ideas, you, first, must be very clear about exactly what it is that
you are trying to achieve. Write it down and describe it as if it were already
achieved. And, second, question your assumptions continually. What if there
were a better way? Be willing to try something
completely different.1
Boosting Your Creativity
Creativity
requires an inquisitive mind. Unless you ask lots of
"Why?" and "What If"? questions, you
won't generate creative insights. "To avoid this most common of creative
errors, be sure to peek under all carpets, including your own. Don't take
anything for granted. Especially
success. Try
looking at the world through more inquisitive eyes; try getting ideas in
motion; try asking the all-important: "Why?" See what
happens!"2
Outside-In Company
Understand what's going in the real world –
look at your business from outside in and ask these searching questions
relentlessly:
Creating Customer Value: 9 Questions
Case in Point
Google
"We run the company by questions, not by
answers," says Eric Schmidt, the CEO of
Google.4
"So in the
strategy process we've so far formulated 30
questions that we have to answer. I'll give you an example: we have a lot of
cash. What should we do with the cash? Another example of a question that we
are debating right now is: we have this amazing product called AdSense for
content, where we're monetizing the Web. If you're a publisher we run our
ads against your content. It's phenomenal. How do we make that product
produce better content, not just lots of content? An interesting question.
How we do make sure that in the area of video, that high-quality video is
also monetized? What are the next big breakthroughs in search? And the
competitive questions: What do we do about the various products Microsoft is
allegedly offering? You ask it as a question, rather than a pithy answer,
and that stimulates conversation. Out of the conversation comes
innovation.
Innovation is not something that I just wake up one day and say 'I want to
innovate.' I think you get a better
innovative culture if you ask it as a
question.“
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