Finding your organisation's 'Beautiful Question'

The power of questions to unlock creativity features often in the world's wisdom teachings.

A sage, famous for his ability to unlock the truth through astute inquiry, is asked:

"Is it true you always reply to a question with another question?"

You guessed the response: the wise man replies,

"Do I?"

Now in everyday discourse this could be just annoying, but it does hint at how highly questions are valued as a means to exploring any topic more profoundly. 

The Power of Curiosity

My recent work with teams and organisations includes the theme, "How do we uncover our 'beautiful question,' which if answered would open up fresh possibilities?" One of my favourite examples is from a client, Lexus, who many years ago posed the great question:

"What do we do in a world where all cars start?" 

Reliability of automobiles, following the success of the quality revolution, could be assumed, and was no longer a key differentiator. Inspired by this notion Lexus went on to build a customer experience second to none, and in a few short years was outselling its rivals, Mercedes and BMW. Customers were already thinking beyond the quality of the machine to embrace a relationship they valued even more than performance and reliability.

This is the kind of commercial question I help clients to envisage, followed by creative work on 'so what?' : how do we think and act to respond to that question? In a global packaging business this has meant tackling questions like,

"How do we think beyond the package in providing sustainable and smart customer solutions?'

For an HR team, it was:

"How do we 'touch' our people in a virtual environment?"

And in a software company I built on their own original question:

"How do we produce software that makes users smile?"

You might argue that they should have been focussing on these goals anyway, but all I can say is that they hadn't fully addressed - or hadn't seriously thought about - these mould breaking ideas until they'd identified the questions that were specific and exciting for their enterprise. And then, of course, acted on them!

Team Questions

Individual and team self-questioning is equally effective:

"Why do we exist?" "What are we really selling?""What business are we in?" 

"What's my best contribution to the business?" "Why am I here?"

These are examples I've heard from people and groups recently: they work to release innovation if they are self-generated and 'owned' by the questioner. Because when you are really passionate about the question, you realise you also own the answers. Curiosity to uncover new solutions is naturally unleashed. As Einstein remarked,

"I have no special talents: I am just passionately curious!"

So What?

Where is this all leading? Through virtual, interactive keynotes and facilitated workshops I've been helping clients to apply insights to:

*Setting a new purpose or strategy

*Aligning people to higher goals-beyond 'business as usual'

*Creating a culture of innovation

*Differentiating a product or service, and

*Inspiring transformation

There are clear links between posing the right questions, creativity, innovation and a reinvigorated sense of purpose. It's not accidental that 'question's' first syllable is QUEST.

We are all on a quest -personal and organisational- to discover the best contribution we can make to our markets and the wider society.