Application Story 7: Asking High-Value Questions

“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first fifty five minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I knew the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”

— Albert Einstein

I'm a firm believer that asking questions is the most productive way of learning in any given situation in our personal or professional lives. Therefore, the High- Value Questions Model is a concept that helps accomplish that. In fact, this is a concept I used at work to help managers and employees become more empowered to learn effectively about information they need. For example: when building relations, interviewing, working on projects, solving issues, having difficult conversations, selling a product, and more. In other words, is a way to ask “probing questions” and questions that cannot be answered with a “yes “or a “no”.

What type of questions we should use?

We may use the following type of questions:

1. Provocative questions
2. Mind-opening questions
3. Assumption-exposing questions
4. Mental model-challenging questions
5. Discovering-what-we-don’t-know questions
6. Attention-shifting questions
7. Market opportunities-attentive questions
8. Reframing questions.

Why this approach?
When learning about this approach, one of my mentors at work explained to me that the high-value question approach can lead to answers that are high-value knowledge. This is something I totally agreed with, and here are some examples for you:

1. Appreciating customers instead of just satisfying them, thereby converting customers to promote your products with their circle of friends with the end result of buying more of your products.
2. Changing how we see reality: this is why “reframing” questions are very powerful. For example, if we change how we view the market then it may enable us to see new market opportunities that we hardly saw before.
3. Challenging and changing the assumptions behind our business model, resulting in a better or new business model that can revive things.
4. Building better relationships at work, and in our personal lives. Understanding more about any given situation and becoming more effective to learn about the facts and the reasons behind those situations specially when interacting with people.

Action Item:
if you want to try this approach, here are some examples to practice next time you feel you need to gain more knowledge:

• How do you define success in this project or department?
• What is the ideal outcome you would like to see or experience?
• How does this compare with your current results?
• You mentioned that you want to improve employee morale with this initiative. Can you tell me what that looks like?
• You have stated that increasing market awareness is one of your primary objectives. How will you know that you have succeeded?

Let me know any thoughts.

Enjoy!