The quality of the answer is determined by the quality of the questions.
“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask. For, once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than 5 minutes”.
Albert Einstein
There is nothing more important for creative thinking and problem solving than asking good questions. Good questions start the process of creative and analytical thinking, adventure, experimentation, and discovery. Solutions are found by asking good questions on need, value, desire, and benefit. Asking good questions can illuminate the path and provide vital energy and passion for the pursuit of an answer. In my opinion, the way you ask questions determines the success of the creative process and the resulting solutions.
Asking Question Diagram
If you want to go from A to B and you know the path to the solution, or the answer is known, then this path is normally represented by a simple line from A to B. However, in most situations the pathway isn’t straightforward or clear, and the potential solution obscure. This is a different kind of challenge and requires a different strategy.
With the answer unknown (or even unknowable) and its distance from your starting point uncertain, how do you navigate your course?
In his book “Gamestorming,” Dave Gray suggests five simple types of question you should be using for complex challenges:
1. Opening questions
2. Navigating questions
3. Examining questions
4. Experimenting questions
5. Closing questions
In setting any questions for solving complex problems , it’s necessary to set out and make some progress, even if you don’t know where you will end up. You must also ensure that you are making progress towards your goal, solving the challenge or problem. There are many techniques for defining problems, generating ideas, and arriving at implementable solutions, but Gray’s strategy, treating the process as a game with constraints, rules, and parameters, holds true for underpinning all these techniques and conceptualizing the process, particularly through uncertainty.
Opening Questions.
It is important to begin with energy and enthusiasm. This is the divergent phase in the problem/challenge finding process. There must be an atmosphere, within the team tasked with solving the problem, that anything is possible. As with brainstorming, it is very important not to be judgemental. There must be an atmosphere of anything and everything is acceptable and may lead to a solution. This is expansive and more about generating quantity rather than quality ideas. Expansion rather than contraction. The wilder and crazier the ideas the better. Rule nothing out.
The first step is to set out the main themes and begin by exploring the multiple possible viewpoints and approaches to the problem. The idea is to find novel ways to approach the challenge from many different angles, understand and break down the problem into several parts. With quantity rather than quality, we can fill our “basket” with ideas and sort through and filter those that may be useful later.
Examples of Opening questions:
· How would you define the problem?
· How would someone else define the problem?
· Is this really the problem?
· What are the opposites of the problem?
· What kinds of things do we want to explore?
· What are the biggest problem areas?
This stage is often referred to as Understanding.
Navigating Questions.
During the navigation phase, you should ask questions that assist in the assessment and adjustment of the course you are taking. It’s an opportunity to recharge the group’s energy, consult with the team on direction and course, and check progress. Here, we introduce doubt and skepticism.
“We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt.” Richard Feynman.
Probing questions and ideas is also a way to generate and develop further ideas. Is this helping us to get where we think we want to go? Is it useful? Navigating questions set the course, point the way, and adjust for directional errors.
This is a good time to ask “Why ?” five times. By constantly pushing to greater depths, we hope to arrive at a more fundamental understanding of what the problem or challenge is. This is particularly helpful for complex problems where the underlying reasons for change or development are not clear.
Some Navigation questions:
· Are we on track?
· Did I understand this correctly?
· Is this helping us to get where we want to go?
· Is this a useful discussion thread?
· Should we table this and discuss it later?
· Does the goal/problem/challenge we set earlier still make sense, or should we reframe the question based on what we have learned so far?
This area is often referred to as the Ideation phase, of which Experimenting and Examining are the off-shoots.
Experimenting Questions.
Experimental questions evoke imagination by opening up possibilities and opportunities about the problem/challenge you have set. By using questions to generate ideas, we begin to take the potential solutions to a higher level of abstraction. This is often done by using metaphor, association, inversion of the problem, reversing, and becoming playful. Playfulness and fun, even asking \silly questions, is an important part of experimenting, particularly where creative and novel solutions are needed.
“What If” questions are a method of mentally prototyping and rehearsing potential answers and often lead to further solutions. It’s something children do all the time, putting an idea into different scenarios and “seeing” what happens.
Novelty is also very important to include/exclude different ideas. Novelty keeps our attention and lets us try “what -if” scenarios without the consequence of of actually carrying out our idea. The wilder, the better!
It’s important to elevate your thinking so that you aren’t bogged down in detail. Detail can come later when we begin to bring ideas to analysis and direction.
Some Experimenting Questions:
· What else works like this?
· If this were an animal (or plant or machine) what kind would it be, and why?
· What is the opposite of the problem or the idea?
· S.C.A.M.P.E.R. questions
o What procedure can I Substitute for this?
o How can I Combine with something or some other procedure?
o What can I Adapt or copy from somewhere else?
o How can I Modify or Magnify the problem/challenge?
o How can I Put this to other uses?
o What can I Eliminate from the problem/challenge?
o What is the Reverse (or Rearrange) this problem/challenge?
This is normally part of the ideation stage.
Examining Questions.
There comes a point when you feel that you have sufficient ideas and information and you have fully interrogated the problem/challenge. Now it’s time to begin to hone in and prioritize. By prioritizing the ideas and then interrogating them we ask further, detailed questions about their fitness to the objectives and purpose. This will involve challenging commonly held assumptions by observation and analysis. As you examine your ideas more closely and narrow the focus, you will gradually make your points more concrete.
This is a filtration process, by which you decide which ideas should go forward to testing, prototyping, and action. Questioning is critical at this stage to test the potential and robustness of the proposals. However, a word of warning here: leave some intuition, emotion, and enthusiasm in the mix - this should not be just a logic exercise. Not all things work because a focus group says it works. Red Bull, for instance, was completely panned by the first focus group. Yet it went on to be an enormous success (even if it tastes horrible).
Examining Questions:
· What is it made of?
· How does it work?
· What are the pieces and parts?
· Can you give an example of that?
· What will it look like?
· Can you describe it in terms of a real-life scenario?
· Will it yield a satisfactory return?
· Will people want it? (emotion and logic)
This stage is often referred to as the analysis phase.
Closing Questions.
Closing questions allow us to put our critical thinking to use and begin to turn ideas into actions. This is the opposite phase of opening questions and requires convergent thinking. This is the time to make final selection(s) from the alternatives by prioritizing the selections, eliminating unwanted or inferior options, asking how to implement the ideas, and ultimately committing to a solution.
During this closing questioning phase, we look into the feasibility of our ideas and relate those to time-plans, resource-plans, and market/and user-plans.
Closing questions are normally focused on how /what/ who/ and when. The point is to finalize the plan of action and implementation.
Types of Closing questions:
· Is it feasible?
· What resources do we need?
· How can we prioritize these options?
· What can we do in the next few weeks?
· Who is going to implement that?
This final stage is often referred to as the direction phase.
Questioning is one of the key attributes of a creative and scientific mind. When we set out to solve a problem or a challenge, we need to find a balance between uncertainty, risk, and goals. By using a questioning structure, we are better placed to generate a plethora of both creative and useful ideas.
Solutions aren’t just creative idea generation, they also involve some rigorous analysis, implementation, and direction. Even if you know where you want to go, questioning can illuminate the path you wish to travel.
“Judge a man by the questions he asks rather than the answers he gives” Voltaire.