Innovation in Healthcare Starts With Questions

?“Questions set off a processional effect that has an impact beyond our imagination. Questioning our limitations tears down the walls in life-in business, in relationships, between countries. I believe all human progress is preceded by new questions. -Anthony Robbins

?As engineers going into the healthcare space, we are not going with answers. We don’t assume we know all the answers and solutions to the problems in that sector. We are just as clueless as anyone. However, we have an advantage. We are curious and humble. We are coming in with a child-like attitude to know and understand.

Don’t start innovation with answers, solutions, or assurances. That will make you cocky and proud. The best way we have discovered to start the innovation process is to start with questions. The better the questions you ask, the better the ideas you are going to come up with.

When a task looks impossible or a problem unsolvable, most people abandon it and go for something simpler. All they need to do is change the question they are asking themselves. That is because asking questions not only reframe the question but changes your perspective and point of view.

Great and profound questions will always result in groundbreaking and profound innovation. To get things right, you have to start with questions. We realized earlier on that if we want to unleash our potential and bring innovation into the Nigerian healthcare space, we need to embrace asking questions as a strategy. We have to ask questions and then listen.

Make Your Questions Bigger Than Your Answers

He was better at asking questions than at answering them, with the result that by the time we were in New Jersey, he already knew everything he wanted to about me. -MICHAEL KORDA

All progress and innovation start with questions. A company that has stagnated in growth is a sign that they have more answers than questions. The way to make the future of a company bigger than its past is to have the company ask more questions than it has answers.

When we started toying with the idea of Engineers In Healthcare, rather than answers, we had more questions. I believe that is something that helped us. If we had come up with answers we would have missed the opportunities that are hidden. The best way to have conversations with experts in the healthcare sector is to come up with questions rather than answers.

Our goal is to elevate the healthcare space in Nigeria, to move it from the place where it is now to where it should be. However, we don’t know where it is and where it should be. Coming up with answers will project us as arrogant to medical professionals. The best way to get what we need is to come up with answers.

Asking questions and a lot of it is the best way to engage people. There is no way we can succeed in this project if we don’t first connect with the medical professionals and the patients. We have to keep asking questions. By asking questions and listening we demonstrate to them that we respect them. We are leaving our world and getting into theirs. So in order to get accepted, our questions have to be more than our answers.

Questions That Challenge Our Potentials

?“The ability to ask the right question is more than half the battle of finding the answer.” IBM founder Thomas J. Watson

In my book, My Father Must Be Crazy, I made a case for universities to train students to ask questions more than give answers to answers. To expand the human frontier, we will need more professionals who ask questions rather than give answers.

Questions help uncover or create new answers but answers are always in the past. No one who has answers will be able to create something new. To manipulate answers to create something new and different, you have to start with questions.

Here are some of the benefits we derive from asking questions and the questions we ask.

1.????? Questions Start The Learning Process

“Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.” —Anthony Robbins

Who can we learn from? Asking this question directed us to the books to read and the experts we need to question to learn what is happening in the healthcare space. For instance, we pick healthcare in the US and Canada as best practice and that of Nigeria as the benchmark. Our goal then is to learn how it works in the US and Canada and then how to move healthcare in Nigeria and Africa closer to how it is in the US and Canada.

2. Questions Uncover Purpose

?Why should we? It’s important that we get to understand why we are embarking on the project. We can only Start With Why when we ask questions that reveal the intentional and purpose behind our action. This not only inspires us but also gives us meaning and a sense of self-actualization.

3. Questions Fuel Imagination

“I am enough of the artist to draw upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” Albert Einstein

Why is this so? Why shouldn’t it be so? These questions stir up our imagination. With imagination, we are able to see beyond the obstacles at possibilities, explore different perspectives, and dream up new ideas. Asking the right questions will engage your imagination to see possibilities on how it should be not how it is.

4. Questions Change The Context (Point of View)

By asking questions and listening carefully to answers, we can discover valuable perspectives other than our own.

How should it be? By asking this question and listening carefully to answers, we can discover valuable perspectives other than our own. We get into the mind of others to see from their perspective and this changes our context enabling us to see what others are missing.

5. Questions make You Listen & Reflect

“My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.” Peter Drucker

What made it so? Asking this question helps us uncover the root cause of the problem. We don’t want to solve the symptoms of the problems. We want to understand the root cause and then proffer a solution that will prevent it from repeating itself.

6. Questions Foster Open Mindedness

“A major stimulant to creative thinking is focused questions.” Brian Tracy

How might we? Asking this question opens a world of options, potential, and possibilities to us. It is an optimistic way of seeking out new possibilities in the healthcare space. This helps us to look at what is in existence and how we can improve it, on one hand, and on the other, what doesn’t yet exist and how we can create it. It enables everyone to come up with different ideas on how to improve the healthcare system.

6. Questions Challenge Status Quo

“The future belongs to the curious. The ones who are not afraid to try it, explore it, poke at it, question it, and turn it inside out.” Anonymous

How do we make it better, easier, and simpler? Asking this question helps look at ways to improve the healthcare system and service delivery. It enables us to study the entire value chain of the healthcare system and uncover areas that need improvement.

7. Questions Cultivate Humility

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.” Rick Warren

Who has what it takes to help us achieve it? Asking this question helps us to focus on who can help us achieve part of our goal or has the capability that we need. It helps us focus on who we need to achieve our goals and not how we are going to achieve our goals.

If you want to make discoveries, if you want to disrupt the status quo, if you want to make progress, and find new ways of thinking and doing, you need to ask questions. Questions are the first link in the chain of discovery and innovation.

You can still make donations in kind or cash to enable us to bring innovation to the Nigerian and African healthcare industry. You can make your monetary donation to Engineers Without Borders Assoc GTBank 0051937347. Thank you.