Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Questioning

Ask This One Question Every Morning to Find Your Focus

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Here’s a précis of psychologist Ron Friedman’s HBR article on how to spend the first ten minutes of your day:

Ask yourself this question the moment you sit at your desk: The day is over and I am leaving the office with a tremendous sense of accomplishment. What have I achieved?

This exercise is usually effective at helping people distinguish between tasks that simply feel urgent from those that are truly important. Use it to determine the activities you want to focus your energy on.

Then—and this is important—create a plan of attack by breaking down complex tasks into specific actions. Studies show that when it comes to goals, the more specific you are about what you’re trying to achieve, the better your chances of success.

Idea for Impact: Organize Yourself Good Concentration

Starting your day by mulling over proactively on “what should I have achieved” is a wonderful aid in keeping the mind headed in the right direction.

Planning is easier when your energy levels are highest, which, for most people, is first thing in the morning.

Knowing what your goals are before you launch your day can help you focus the mind and hold it steadily to one thing at a time and in the right order.

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That Burning “What If” Question

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The Rightness of Past Choices Become Obvious in the Clarity of Future Hindsight

'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' by Milan Kundera (ISBN 0061148520) In the Czech novelist Milan Kundera’s philosophical novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984; film adaptation, 1988) the womanizing protagonist Tomáš deliberates if he wants to be single or with his eventual wife Tereza:

We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.

…

There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, “sketch” is not quite the word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.

The Mournful “What If” is a Powerful and Emotional Inquiry about Alternative Lives You Could Have Lived

Oftentimes, when dealt with adverse circumstances, life’s self-criticism apparatus kicks in. Plagued with self-doubt, life asks the questions “Why did things turn out this way?” and “Why wasn’t this experience what I expected it to be?” Regrets gnaw in the back of the mind, “How would my life be different?” and “I never shouldn’t have done this.”

And when you cognize life in hindsight, your lived life doesn’t usually compare favorably with your imagined, could-have-been life.

And that’s why you should refrain from ruminating about those non-lived lives—such projections of your mind only instigate sorrow.

Idea for Impact: Sketch the Picture of Our Own Choosing

One of the most effective ways of eliminating regrets is to eliminate the underlying ignorance that is the cause. The wise fancy what the past was once and appreciate how it is molded them. But they no longer desire to live there or evoke the choices of the life that could have been.

As the great Stoics taught, you must reject regret, appreciate that you are now the distillation of all your past choices and experiences, and take the next positive little step. Reflecting on “What do I want to make of all of this?” and “What am I looking forward to?” can clarify your potential.

As Viktor Frankl emphasized in his 1946 masterwork on positive approach to psychological treatment, “Live as if you were living already for the second time, and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”

Who wants to lament the life not lived when you can do dive into the life you’re actually in and do so much good now?

Live this choice. Sketch the picture of our own choosing.

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  3. Lessons from the Princeton Seminary Experiment: People in a Rush are Less Likely to Help Others (and Themselves)
  4. Warren Buffett’s Advice on How to Focus on Priorities and Subdue Distractions
  5. Ask This One Question Every Morning to Find Your Focus

Good Questions Encourage Creative Thinking

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Thought-provoking questions: potential game changers that are not asked nearly enough

“To think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted,” wrote George F. Kneller (1909–1999), the American academic and pioneer in the field of philosophy of education, in Art and Science of Creativity (1965.) Many people don’t know how to probe their thought processes with questions that encourage creativity.

Consider a brainstorming meeting where a new idea was received with comments and judgments like, “this won’t work,” “we’ve never done it this way,” “the customer won’t like it,” or, “if this is such a great idea, why hasn’t it been done before?” Immediately, a dysfunctional pattern ensues. Defensiveness sets in and the meeting’s participants will resist making any more suggestions and will fail to explore those ideas that were previously made. (One of the key principles of “divergent thinking” for idea-generation is to defer judgment. Neuroscience has suggested that the human prefrontal cortex—the self-monitoring element of the brain—is less active when we’re most creative.)

Creative thinkers ask open-ended, accommodating, and exploratory lead-in questions such as,

  • “I wonder if/why/whether … “
  • “Perhaps we could … “
  • “That would work if/when … “
  • “In what ways can we … .” This favorite of mine was introduced by Edward de Bono, the lateral thinking pioneer and creator of the “Six Thinking Hats” method for group creativity. De Bono called this lead-in question the ‘IWW.’

Instead of declaring “we could never do this,” ask “IWW (in what ways) may people start to do this?” In practical terms, this rephrasing may seem a small thing, but it embodies a leap in unhindered, open-minded thinking. The former seems a categorical rejection; but the latter invites an exploration of possibilities and signals the beginning of the search for solutions to constraints.

Idea for Impact: The ability to pose meaningful—and often deceptively simple questions is the hallmark of creativity

Often, what leads a creative person to get fresh insight is the quality of questions he/she asks. Questions such as “I wonder if …” and “In what ways can we … ” ignite dialogues in your mind that can lead to creative insights and new discoveries.

The prospect for creative thinking expands when you can reframe restraining statements into creative questions. Consider the following examples:

  • Restraining statement: “We can’t possibly do that.”
    Creative question: “If it were possible, how would you do it?”
  • Restraining statement: “It’ll take too long.”
    Creative question: “If it’s time-consuming, how can I make it short?”
  • Restraining statement: “I can’t talk to her.”
    Creative question: “If you could talk to her, what would you say?”
  • Restraining statement: “I’m too busy to do this.”
    Creative question: “In what ways can we free up some time for you?”

During brainstorming, asking questions in a way that opens participants’ minds to newer possibilities can have a transformative shift in the creative atmosphere. When participants suspend their judgments, everyone in the brainstorming session will feel comfortable enough to explore creative solutions to constraints.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Howard Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future // Books in Brief
  2. How to Stimulate Group Creativity // Book Summary of Edward de Bono’s ‘Six Thinking Hats’
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  4. Four Ideas for Business Improvement Ideas
  5. How to Become a Broad-thinker: Principles and Methods

The Trickery of Leading Questions

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Leading questions are questions that are purposely phrased and presented in such a way that they prompt the respondent to think and answer them in a particular way. Leading questions have the potential to subtly change respondents’ opinions about a topic and to shape their responses to the questions that follow.

Example of Leading Questions and Suggestive Interrogation

Consider the following interchange from the popular 1980s British political satire (and one of my all-time favorite shows) Yes, Prime Minister. In The Ministerial Broadcast episode, Sir Humphrey Appleby and Bernard Woolley discuss how leading questions can be used to influence the results of opinion polls—in their case regarding the reintroduction of National Service, military conscription in the UK.

In Yes, Prime Minister, Sir Appleby (played by Nigel Hawthorne) is the Cabinet Secretary, UK’s principal bureaucrat and a scheming master of manipulation and obfuscation. Woolley (played by Derek Fowlds) is the Prime Minister’s Principal Private Secretary.

In the following clip, Sir Appleby presents a set of leading questions designed to elicit opinion survey responses in support of National Service. He then presents another set of leading questions poised to produce responses opposing National Service.

The Effect of the Leading Questions

First, Sir Appleby demonstrates that asking the following leading questions can sway a respondent to support the reintroduction of National Service:

  • Are you worried about the number of young people without jobs?
  • Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?
  • Do you think there is lack of discipline in our comprehensive schools?
  • Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives?
  • Do you think they’ll respond to a challenge?
  • Would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?”

This set of six questions brilliantly exemplifies the use of leading questions. They are designed and presented in such a way that they trigger agreement—‘yes’ seems an obvious answer to each. After all, everybody is inclined to be worried about teenage crime and youth unemployment. After this pattern of concordance, Sir Appleby throws in the well-worded crucial question about National Service. In fact, this last question is worded in such a way that it offers National Service as a supposed solution to all the aforementioned problems. Once more, the answer is agreement.

In the second half of his interchange with Woolley, Sir Appleby demonstrates that another set of deliberate leading questions can make the respondent oppose the reintroduction of National Service:

  • Are you worried about the danger of war?
  • Are you worried about the growth of armaments?
  • Do you think there’s a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill?
  • Do you think it’s wrong to force people to take up arms against their will?
  • Would you oppose the reintroduction of National Service?

Sir Humphrey’s first four questions are deliberately designed to produce agreement. In keeping with the survey’s design, the fifth question does too: a person who is concerned about arms and opposed to forcing the youth to take up arms against their will is bound to oppose reintroduction of National Service.

Idea for Impact: Sensitize Yourself to Leading Questions; Use Them if Necessary

Firstly, trust surveys, statistics, and anecdotes at your own discretion. Question everything.

Secondly, sensitize yourself to leading questions. Be alert and aware of all the negative ploys, manipulations, and other persuasive devices that others can shrewdly use to influence your thinking.

Thirdly, and more consequentially, use leading questions when you hold a strong personal opinion on a topic of discussion and must engage others in your favor. If necessary, use leading questions to change their opinion or even to gather some slanted information. While I am not one to condone deception, I do recommend such manipulative techniques as long as you use them for positive ends—sometimes certain ends do justify certain means.

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The Duplicity of Corporate Diversity Initiatives

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Corporate Diversity Initiatives Even after years of diversity initiatives in corporate America, “inclusion” is more about meeting the numbers on gender, race, and other obvious differences, and less about pursuing intellectual, ideological, pedagogical, and stylistic diversity within teams and organizations.

Overall, the workforce diversity initiatives have succeeded in deterring explicit discriminatory behavior and preventing employee lawsuits. However, to make the representation numbers look good, corporate diversity initiatives have largely resulted in exclusionary practices for the preferential hiring and promoting of underrepresented demographic groups, much to the chagrin of those who are more competent, yet arbitrarily overlooked because the latter belong to groups that are numerically “overrepresented”—reverse discrimination, indeed. For fear of reprisal, the shortchanged majority is reluctant to speak out against this veiled unfairness or to call attention to the dichotomy between the ideals and the practice of affirmative action in the workplace.

Even if nearly all corporate mission statements extol the virtues of “valuing differences,” managers stifle individuality down in the trenches. They are less willing to be receptive of distinctive viewpoints and seek to mold their employees to conform to the existing culture of the workplace and to comply with the existing ways of doing things. Compliant, acquiescent employees who look the part are promoted in preference to exceptional, questioning employees who bring truly different perspectives to the table. The nail that sticks its head up indeed gets hammered down.

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How to Examine a Process and Ask the Right Questions

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Method Study and Critical Examination

Method study is a practice of examining methods of doing work: work-flows, processes, etc. The key component of method study is ‘critical examination.’ Author Michael Armstrong describes critical examination in his ‘Handbook of Management Techniques.’

Critical examination uses the questioning approach to find out what, how, when, where and, most importantly, why and activity is carried out, and who does it. From this analysis, two fundamental questions are posed: (1) Does the activity need to be done at all? If so, (2) Are there any better ways of doing it?

The questioning approach for critical examination is described in the following chart. This chart is also available as a hand-out (PDF download) for quick reference.

Questioning Approach Critical Examination

Call for Action

A great degree of professional work–in engineering, management, finances, and other functions of the modern corporation–involves analysis of products, procedures and systems. Here, thought-processes involve asking, and seeking answers to, a series of questions.

In my role as an engineer and manager, I carry the above chart of questions to meetings and brainstorming sessions. The chart helps me ask the right questions on the intent of a process or system and gain a big-picture perspective for my work or task at hand.

Download the critical examination handout, post it at your cubicle and refer to the chart for help on asking the right questions.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The Solution to a Problem Often Depends on How You State It
  2. What the Rise of AI Demands: Teaching the Thinking That Thinks About Thinking
  3. Good Questions Encourage Creative Thinking
  4. The Creativity of the Unfinished
  5. How to Stimulate Group Creativity // Book Summary of Edward de Bono’s ‘Six Thinking Hats’