Reliable methods and powerful analytical tools are widely available, yet the step between them — the definition and formulation of the questions — is routinely given scant attention. This editorial argues that questions are the engines of intellect, and that command-and-control structures quietly train them out of an organisation.
The overlooked step
Over centuries, deceptively simple but incredibly powerful questions have been key to advancing science and civilisation. In business today, proven research methodologies and very powerful analytical tools are readily available.
High performance leadership requires the best possible understanding of the reality that describes an organisation's tasks, relationships, markets, routines, norms and myths. Too often, most of the attention goes to a project's methodology and analytical output. Between methodology and analysis lies a step that is routinely overlooked: the definition and formulation of the research questions.
The questions that decide survival
What business are we really in? Who are our most profitable customers today? Which customers do we serve at great expense, and should we move away from them? Who will our customers be in the future? How will we be affected by new technology, much of which has not yet been invented?
The training and experience of senior executives has tended to reward finding markets where complexity, change and competition are at a minimum. Those are not the characteristics of today's reality. For high performance leaders these forces need not be feared, if you can ask the right questions and get ahead of the curve.
Command and control does not question
Much of today's organisational structure and development is based on the command-and-control approach inherited from the military. That approach does not support questioning: orders are given from the top and expected to be followed without question.
Experience teaches that profound strategic and tactical forces can suddenly change reality, making the original orders obsolete and often dangerous. Orders should then be questioned to preserve resources and support success. Shifting from an environment where questioning is not valued to one that encourages it requires a difficult change in firmly entrenched management paradigms.
Questions are the engines of intellect
Short-term approaches tend to drive questioning out of an organisation's strategies, especially the big and most fundamental questions about corporate survival and prosperity. With market, environmental and socio-political uncertainty, organisations often do not know what they do not know — and do not question their need to question.
At NSC Group we believe questions are the engines of intellect: the cerebral machines that convert curiosity into manageable and effective inquiry and action. We emphasise the form, style and sequencing of the questions we ask, and we question how to question, daily.