QBQ & Servant Leadership

I once had a team member talk to me about some functional challenges of the software that we were selling. He was right that our software did not do some things that other products did. Of course, there were some things our software did that others didn't, but that is not the point of this anecdote. Rather, I asked him to not just bring forward problems, but solutions. Could we partner with another firm? Could we find a solution and incorporate it into our product via white labeling? Have we checked with existing customers to see how they have addressed the challenge?

His initial reaction was to say that those were product management functions. But I pushed back by noting that he is closer to the prospects and he would know better which of the universe of solutions would work best for their organization.

As I thought about his reticence, I immediately thought of the Question Behind the Question (QBQ), which talks about taking personal responsibility to solve problems, rather than look externally for solutions from others. But then I realized that there is a prerequisite to the QBQ approach. Namely, this employee had to trust that I had his back before he took the initiative and brought forth new ideas. Prior to my arrival in this position, if the employee had taken solutions to product management, he would have received negative feedback from both product management and the sales organizations. Product management would ask why they were not asked to do the research themselves. Of course, in the past when asked to do the research, the product management team got distracted by development and release dates and the research ultimately fell by the wayside. The sales managers would ask why the sales rep was not out selling and instead doing a product management task.

So, as noted in my previous post, it comes down to culture. And for me, culture is built around Servant Leadership. Servant Leadership stands the traditional business hierarchy on its head. Instead of the Board or CEO being the most important rank on the pyramid, it is the customer. The customer is served by the frontline employee, who is served by managers, who are served by executives.

With the servant leadership model, using a QBQ approach becomes a viable option. A question that I have wrestling with is whether servant leadership in some form is necessary for QBQ. Thoughts?