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Questions Are the Answer: A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life

by Hal Gregersen

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443578,168 (3.1)None
What if you could unlock a better answer to your most vexing problem-in your workplace, community, or home life-just by changing the question? Talk to creative problem-solvers and they will often tell you, the key to their success is asking a different question. Take Debbie Sterling, the social entrepreneur who created GoldieBlox. The idea came when a friend complained about too few women in engineering and Sterling wondered aloud: "why are all the great building toys made for boys?" Or consider Nobel laureate Richard Thaler, who asked: "would it change economic theory if we stopped pretending people were rational?" Or listen to technologist Elon Musk, who routinely challenges assumptions with questions like: "What are people accepting as an industry standard when there's room for significant improvement?" Great questions like these have a catalytic quality-that is, they dissolve barriers to creative thinking and channel the pursuit of solutions into new, accelerated pathways. Often, the moment they are voiced, they have the paradoxical effect of being utterly surprising yet instantly obvious. For innovation and leadership guru Hal Gregersen, the power of questions has always been clear-but it took some years for the follow-on question to hit him: If so much depends on fresh questions, shouldn't we know more about how to arrive at them? That sent him on a research quest ultimately including over two hundred interviews with creative thinkers. Questions Are the Answer delivers the insights Gregersen gained about the conditions that give rise to catalytic questions-and breakthrough insights-and how anyone can create them.… (more)
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A lot of this is affirmation but there are the occasional gems. Like the stark research that shows that teachers ask all the questions, students do not. A problem that needs change. ( )
  WiebkeK | Jan 21, 2021 |
I agree. Questions ARE the answer. I realize that sounds vague by itself, but this is an approach to life I've subscribed to for the past decade. This book, however, is a little thin beyond that. The author, to his credit, does give plenty of examples which are necessary to fully explore the power of questions. I just think the lesson is diluted when stretched to book length.

The setup is relatively simple. Instead of focusing on the right answers, find the right question instead. This effectively reframes the question, and in doing so might lead you to a different, but better answer. Understanding it is one thing, making it work for you is much harder. That's more of a personalized, life-long pursuit. ( )
  Daniel.Estes | Oct 11, 2020 |
Questions are the Answer has stuck with me, such that I find myself applying it every day. We tend to make statements. We do so because it’s human nature to share what we think. We do so because we’re expected to have answers. This book shows how asking the right question can be so much more powerful. Questions frame the problem. In a group setting, questions can also catalyze the whole team in a new and common direction. I wish I had encountered this book sooner in my role as a leader. ( )
  jpsnow | Jul 5, 2020 |
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What if you could unlock a better answer to your most vexing problem-in your workplace, community, or home life-just by changing the question? Talk to creative problem-solvers and they will often tell you, the key to their success is asking a different question. Take Debbie Sterling, the social entrepreneur who created GoldieBlox. The idea came when a friend complained about too few women in engineering and Sterling wondered aloud: "why are all the great building toys made for boys?" Or consider Nobel laureate Richard Thaler, who asked: "would it change economic theory if we stopped pretending people were rational?" Or listen to technologist Elon Musk, who routinely challenges assumptions with questions like: "What are people accepting as an industry standard when there's room for significant improvement?" Great questions like these have a catalytic quality-that is, they dissolve barriers to creative thinking and channel the pursuit of solutions into new, accelerated pathways. Often, the moment they are voiced, they have the paradoxical effect of being utterly surprising yet instantly obvious. For innovation and leadership guru Hal Gregersen, the power of questions has always been clear-but it took some years for the follow-on question to hit him: If so much depends on fresh questions, shouldn't we know more about how to arrive at them? That sent him on a research quest ultimately including over two hundred interviews with creative thinkers. Questions Are the Answer delivers the insights Gregersen gained about the conditions that give rise to catalytic questions-and breakthrough insights-and how anyone can create them.

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