A More Beautiful Question

that if you never actually do anything about a problem yourself, then you’re not really questioning—you’re complaining

observes that questioning is seen as “inefficient” by many business leaders, who are so anxious to act, to do, that they often feel they don’t have time to question just what it is they’re doing

he reckoned that if he had an hour4 to solve a problem and his life depended on it, he’d spend the first fifty-five minutes making sure he was answering the right question

Yet, for some reason, questioning isn’t taught in most schools—nor is it rewarded (only memorized answers are)

exceptionally good at asking

The most basic way to give form to an idea is to put it on paper (Nanda created rough sketches of what a Clocky might look like before she started building). Depending on the idea, putting it in writing—a summary, a proposal—may be sufficient, but keep in mind that visuals have great power

ent. “The important thing about telling everyone58 your idea is that it puts you on the hook for following through, because you’re going to look foolish if you do nothing

In committing to an idea, it becomes critical to find a way to share it in order to get feedback. We all have ideas that live in our own head and never go beyond that. Even just by telling other people about a question you’re working on, you’ve begun to form a commitment

One of the difficult early challenges at this stage is to make a commitment to one idea. At the wide-open What If stage of inquiry, one tends to ask many questions, to explore multiple possibilities—from practical to far-out ideas

The How stage of questioning is where the rubber meets the road or, in Nanda’s case, the clock hits the floor