| The $64,000 Question to Slumdog Millionaire
It started in the 40's with the $64 Question. Became the $64,000 Question in the mid 50's, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in the 90's and now morphed to the Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire (actually Slumdog $20 millionaire). Answer increasingly difficult questions with a 2x multiplier for each right answer. Take an all or nothing risk, be wrong - go home with empty pockets.
A game show on national television complete with scandal in the 1950's version and the presumption that you cheated if you are winning when your pedigree indicates you shouldn't in the 2008 version.
Interesting parallel with business, where there are some questions when right answers mean much more. Maybe more than a 2X multiplier and wrong answers might mean game over, or a mob-like throng of unhappy investors. Some may think that prison is the right place for the leader who chose the wrong answer.
Every day brings a host of questions that get answered in business. Answers that grow the business - or not, answers that engage and educate and excite - or not, answers that create customer, employee, supplier, investor loyalty - or not, answers that help to build a great business - or not.
Want better answers? Ask better questions.
Forbes Magazine says that there are 20 essential questions. These are foundational, price of entry sorts of questions about business strategy and positioning. Questions like: What is your value proposition? What differentiates your business? What are your strengths? Basic stuff- old hat yet essential, and the answers guide the day-to-day questions to be asked and answered in operating the business. The big difference now is that the foundational answers used to endure for decades. (See General Motors to close most US plants for 9 weeks). Now they may need to be questioned and re-questioned persistently. (See The World's Most Innovative Companies 2008 #1 Google). In today's speed and volume of change yesterday's right answers may not be tomorrow's.
What if you took a day occasionally and played the fool - challenged the group think and conformity of your business, your division, department or the project you are in charge of? What are your unasked $64,000 questions?
Let's be clear, the fool is not the devil's advocate. Devil's advocate is too commonly just a critic and there are already too many who are self-appointed. The fool is a different animal. The fool turns perspectives upside down. Irreverent, cryptic, metaphorical, the fool forces questions that cause us to consider that there is more than one right answer.* Therein lies the difference between a question, a $64,000 question and the multimillion dollar question.
It is a tough role for a leader to play. It could be a dangerous role for the court jesters of medieval times. Organizational politics, ego, and power get in the way. If you can't play it, get someone who can and promise not to separate them from their head as a result.
The look in the mirror:
Do you ask questions that challenge conventional thinking? Do you ask questions that drive thinking below the superficial? Do you ask questions that cause you to learn? Do you listen to understand or to build your rebuttal? Do you listen to answers in a way that is focused on understanding not only the content of the answer but also the thinking, emotion, and subtext that underlies the answer?
*See Roger von Oech, A Whack on the Side of the Head
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