Pick 3, and Change Your World

Another in the series, Asking Better Questions, by IQVIA Change Management and Enterprise Transformation teams. Goal: Faster, better, more human-centered change.

Three what? Three questions.

“It’s not that I’m so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.”?~ Albert Einstein

“Children ask better questions than adults.” ~ Fran Lebowitz

“Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.” ~ Tony Robbins

The wasteful downside of so much that fills our days is that it’s all about finding answers. The?one?answer. The?fastest?answer. The?best?answer. The answer that gets others off our backs, or moves To Dos off our plate.

And yet, all successes — personal, business, societal — rely on asking better questions, and sticking with those questions long enough.

I’ve organized a sampling of the some of best questions I’ve heard—from my years of coaching execs, creating large-scale changes, and learning from other coaches — into FastPackets of threes.

Pick any three (or create your own, or mix and match) and you have a life-long personal change kit, or a business success kit, or a disruptive change kit. (Skim. Within 30 seconds you’ll find the one or two pairings that resonate the most with you.)

1. What’s on your mind?
2. What matters most?
3. And what else?

1. Who is the wisest person you know?
2. What advice would they give you right now? Or…
3. What would they do in this situation?

1. Have you thought of… ?
2. What about… ?
3. Have you considered… ?

1. What needs to be killed off?
2. How can I help?
3. What bottleneck or barriers need to be removed?

1. What’s the?real?challenge here?
2. What if you?had?to choose?
3. Is there anything else?

1. What is stuck where it’s been? (or: Where are you stuck?)
2. Where is this really headed?
3. What’s holding you back?

1. What are you most proud of…and why?
2. What two things do you do well?
3. Why does that matter?

1. What are you?not?telling others?
2. How’s that working for you?
3. What keeps you awake at night?

1. Where will we play? (as a team or organization)
2. How will we win?
3. What capabilities must be in place?

1. What was most useful to you?
2. What created your biggest Aha?
3. What created the biggest challenge for you?

1. What one thing would greatly increase your effectiveness?
2. What’s keeping you from achieving that??
3. What support do you need to achieve it?

1. What do you need most in order to move forward?
2. What do you desire most right now?
3. What relationships matter the most to you?

1. What do you want?
2. What behaviors/beliefs limit your true potential?
3. What makes you feel good about yourself?

1. What do you want to be?
2. Is there anything else?
3. What one habit or belief has often stood in your way?

1. What needs to be completely changed or disrupted?
2. What can we keep and build upon?
3. What still works?

1. If someone else were watching you, what would they see?
2. If they were mentoring you, what would they say to you?
3. What are you afraid of that people are going to believe or say about you?

1. What is possible for you, now?
2. What is impossible for you now, but should be done?
3. How do you learn?

1. Why did you not improve this situation/problem before?
2. What would it look like if the problem was solved?
3. What’s really stopping you?

1. What do you really want?
2. And what would that look like??
3. What are your next steps?

1. If nothing was in your way, what would you do?
2. What would you like to achieve, and why?
3. Are you willing and able to make changes right now?

1. How do you define success?
2. What makes you… you?
3. How can you narrow the gap between what you do and what you want?

1. What are your top three fears?
2. What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
3. What would success look like one month from now?

1. What is it (the problem/situation) costing you?
2. If you had fixed the situation already, what would it be?
3. How will you apply what you what you just learned?

1. If you could do it again, what would you do differently?
2. Who are you becoming?
3. What is your biggest dream?

1. What if you did nothing?
2. What first step would create immediate success for you?
3. Is what you’re doing right now moving you closer to, or further away from, success?

1. What difference would you like to make?
2. Do you want to follow a path or leave a trail?
3. What can you do that no one else can?

1. What do you do that’s incredible/amazing?
2. Describe yourself: In two to four sentences
3. What lies at the heart of your work?

1. What is your passion?
2. What is your life’s work?
3. Who have you helped today?

The real test…?Will you put these questions to work??Or is this another blog post that you’ll retweet to others, and then quickly forget?

Shout out to my friend?Michael Bungay Stanier, whose lifelong quest is to ask better questions and whose excellent book,?The Coaching Habit, covers and structures many of these questions for their most effective uses.

This updated post originally appeared on Medium.

Bill Jensen?is Principal, Strategy/Life Sciences, at IQVIA.?Leading IQVIA's Applied Change Management Center of Excellence, Bill is author of nine best-selling leadership and change books, including?Simplicity, Disrupt, The Courage Within Us, and?Future Strong. He's also a Top 10 global keynote speaker on the future of work and digital disruption. Reach him at?[email protected].