Free Article By Paul Glen of C2
Consulting
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Questions Trump Answers
(This article first appeared in Computerworld
USA and Computerworld Australia.)
Information technology people tend to be answer
people. When users, managers, family members or even random people from the
Internet have questions, we're right there with the answers, because we're
always the smart people. One of the first things we learn in school is that
being smart means having the answers. The teacher asks the class a question, and
the smart kids reach for the sky. But just having a hand in the air isn't
enough. To become known as the smartest of the smart, you've got to get that
hand up faster than anyone else. It's the original arms race. (We all know how
popular this made us.)
And that lesson gets reinforced throughout
life. The questions keep coming, and we are rewarded for answering correctly.
There are quizzes, exams, word problems, standardized achievement tests, PSATs,
SATs, GMATs and job interviews -- each one reinforcing the notion that being
smart means answering correctly.
Eventually, we enter the workforce, and when
the boss asks, we answer. Our peers query, and we reply. The better our
responses, the better our raises, the more impressive our titles and the more
sincere the admiration of our peers.
But as often happens, those things that we do
to get ahead eventually fail to serve us well. What makes us successful at one
level limits our progress at the next. So it is with questions. At some point,
just answering them is insufficient to make collective projects successful and
individual careers soar. This happens for a couple of key reasons.
As we move higher in the organization, we begin
to grapple with questions that have no correct answers. Being smart isn't
enough. It becomes more important to evaluate the validity of competing
responses than to find a correct one.
But beyond that, it's even more important to
find the right questions than it is to find the best answers. Great answers to
unimportant questions are still unimportant.
Successful groups grapple with important
questions, not trivial ones. IT projects and organizations are very sensitive to
the quality of the questions that are asked. If the questions you examine are
even slightly less important than the ones you should be considering, your
results may be dramatically poorer than you might expect.
Many IT projects remind me of one of my
favorite scenes from the old Pink Panther movies that starred Peter Sellers as
the bumbling Inspector Clouseau. At one point in The Pink Panther Strikes Again,
Clouseau sees a small dog and asks the nearby hotel clerk, "Does your dog bite?"
"No," replies the clerk.
Clouseau bends down to pet the pooch and is
immediately bitten by the snarling mutt. Clearly upset, he turns to the clerk
and exclaims, "I thought you said your dog did not bite!"
"That is not my dog," the clerk replies dryly.
Accurate responses to the wrong questions often lead us astray.
Every project begins with a series of
unanswered questions. So how do you know if you're doing a good job with yours?
Here are a few of my rules:
1. Prioritize your questions. Not every
question requires or deserves a response. Ask and grapple with the most
important ones first. Good risk management demands that you handle the most
threatening things first, and fundamental questions are usually more important
than nitpicky, detailed ones.
2. Why questions should precede what, how, who
and when questions. If you look at your priority list of open questions and most
of the top ones start with words other than why, you may be starting at the
wrong place. Never assume that you know why a project is important. Way too many
projects deliver great technical solutions to low-priority problems just because
someone requested it and no one asked why.
3. If your questions come with multiple-choice
answers, make sure you have included a complete array of choices. One of the
most powerful ways to control a conversation and limit creativity is to pose
multiple-choice questions with constrained responses. When we see a menu, we
naturally assume that it includes all possible choices. Rarely is that true.
If you want to further your career and make
your organization more successful, start thinking more about asking good
questions rather than offering great answers. Your influence will expand, and
you can demonstrate something more important than smarts. You can display
wisdom.
