"Who Else Should I Be Speaking To?"

The question above is something that I heard asked recently and it has stayed with me since. It was posed by a reporter at the end of a call with an executive at my company, as the reporter was working on a long feature. (Disclosure: Our executive didn't wind up mentioned in the final piece.)

What I love so much about this question is that it reveals intense curiosity about a subject while at the same time acknowledging that you don't know every stone to turn over in pursuit of answers. How often we all default to looking in the same places, and leaning on the same people for education or edification. I wonder if really we should be asking our inner circle to lead us in the right direction by asking who the real experts are on any given topic. Who are the people who have strong opinions and advice to offer because of their years to decades of experience thinking about and working on solving issues?

It doesn't have to be a purely professional conquest either. In our private lives, too, instead of defaulting to the same sources for best practices, we might all be better off instead asking who we should look up, reach out to, and turn to for helpful responses and necessary insights. "Who else should I be speaking to?" is arguably the simplest and most effective way to get pointed in the right direction, not toward what you want to find out rather to what you're missing complete clarity and comprehension on. If you prefer and are willing to pursue wisdom on something, that's going to be the best place to start.