Questions Are the Answer: A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life

by Hal B. Gregersen

2018 Nautilus Book Awards Silver Winner What if you could unlock a better answer to your most vexing problem—in your workplace, community, or home life—just by changing the question? Talk to creative problem-solvers and they will often tell you, the key to their success is asking a different question. Take Debbie Sterling, the social entrepreneur who created GoldieBlox. The idea came when a friend complained about too few women in engineering and Sterling wondered "why are all the great building toys made for boys?" Or consider Nobel laureate Richard Thaler, who "would it change economic theory if we stopped pretending people were rational?" Or listen to Jeff Bezos whose relentless approach to problem solving has fueled Amazon’s exponential “Getting the right question is key to getting the right answer.”   Great questions like these have a catalytic quality—that is, they dissolve barriers to creative thinking and channel the pursuit of solutions into new, accelerated pathways. Often, the moment they are voiced, they have the paradoxical effect of being utterly surprising yet instantly obvious. For innovation and leadership guru Hal Gregersen, the power of questions has always been clear—but it took some years for the follow-on question to hit If so much depends on fresh questions, shouldn’t we know more about how to arrive at them? That sent him on a research quest ultimately including over two hundred interviews with creative thinkers. Questions Are the Answer delivers the insights Gregersen gained about the conditions that give rise to catalytic questions—and breakthrough insights—and how anyone can create them.

336 pages, Hardcover

Published November 13, 2018

About the author

Hal Gregersen is committed to creating insight with impact. As the Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank Chaired Professor of Innovation and Leadership at INSEAD and a senior fellow at Innosight, a consulting firm based in Watertown, Mass., he pursues a lifelong vocation of learning how leaders in business, government, and society discover provocative new strategies, develop the human and organizational capacity to realize those strategies, and ultimately deliver positive, powerful results. Putting insight into practice, Gregersen regularly delivers inspirational keynote speeches, motivational executive seminars and transformational coaching experiences. He has worked with a diverse set of companies to help them master the challenges of innovation and change, including Accenture, Adidas, Aramex, Cemex, Christie's, Cisneros Group, Coca-Cola, Daimler, Essilor, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, LG, Lilly, Marriott, Nokia, Philips, PwC, Randstad, Sanofi-Aventis, Time Warner Cable, Twinings, Young Presidents' Organization, and the World Economic Forum. He also serves on the advisory board and HR Committee at Pharmascience (a privately held pharmaceutical company based in Montreal, Canada).

Gregersen's most recent book, "The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators" (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011) uncovers the code for the successful innovator in business -- and beyond. Unlike other books that help organizations simply maximize execution, "The Innovator's DNA" demonstrates how execution alone can become a dead-end destination unless you cultivate enough competent innovators within your company to make crucial new discoveries. Co-authored with Jeff Dyer at Wharton/BYU and Clayton Christensen, the best-selling author of "The Innovator's Dilemma" at Harvard Business School, "The Innovator's DNA" comes from an eight-year study on the origins of disruptive innovations and how executives, entrepreneurs and employees build highly innovative companies. In collaboration with HOLT at Credit Suisse, Gregersen and his co-authors identified the 50 most innovative companies in the world and interviewed their founder entrepreneurs and current CEOs. They also surveyed more than 5,000 high performing entrepreneurs, managers and inventors to see how the Innovator's DNA skills led to the creation of hundreds of successful new products, services, processes and businesses. His presentations are packed with examples of high-profile innovators (as well as low-profile ones) that illustrate not only how they got great ideas, but how they transformed them into economic powerhouses as well. The book, which was named Book of the Year for Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Chartered Management Institute in association with The British Library, builds on the ideas found in Gregersen's Harvard Business Review (HBR) article of the same name, which received the 2009 McKinsey runner-up award for the best article in HBR.

Gregersen has co-authored ten books, including "It Starts With One: Changing Individuals Changes Organizations" (Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008) and "Global Explorers: The Next Generation of Leaders" (Taylor & Francis, 1999). He has published more than 70 articles, book chapters and cases on innovation and change in leading business journals such as HBR and Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal. His research has been highlighted globally on CNN and in magazines including Across the Board, Bloomberg Businessweek, Chief Executive, Fast Company, Forbes, Fortune, Psychology Today, and the Wall Street Journal.

Before joining INSEAD in 2006, Gregersen taught at the London Business School, Tuck School-Dartmouth College, Helsinki School of Economics, Brigham Young University and Turku School of Economics as a Fulbright Fellow. Gregersen also works extensively with governments and educational, not-for-profit and NGO organizations around the world, such as Teach for America and Room 13, to generate greater innovation a

Reviews

[Steve Percoco · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first heard Hal Gregersen describe his maxim, “Questions are the Answer,” at the 2018 MIT Sloan CFO forum, I was underwhelmed. Wasn’t this just common sense? Who doesn’t use questions to scope out potential solutions to problems? How could this possibly be a “breakthrough approach?”

But Hal then gave specific examples of people who had used questions in specific ways to solve problems. He told us about Fadi Ghandour, the founder of Aramex, a logistics and transportation firm, who decided to have a delivery driver pick him up at the Dubai airport instead of a limousine ahead of meetings with local management. Questioning the driver about local operations, he learned about problems that his local management team had not seen.

Then there was Rose Marcario, a private equity executive who began to question her career direction after catching a glimpse of herself in the window of her taxi when she was fuming about being stuck in traffic. She later quit her job, became CFO of Patagonia, the apparel company, and was appointed CEO of Patagonia five years later.

Then Hal had the audience form small groups to run a “question burst” exercise. He posed a problem – how can your organization become a stronger strategic partner is a world of digital transformation? – and gave each group about five minutes to come up with a list of questions that would help address this question. After the time was up, he asked whether the initial anxiety that each of us had felt when he posed the question began to melt away as we built out our question lists. The answer for me and for all of the members of my group was yes.

Hal’s presentation piqued my interest; so I was happy to claim one of the copies of his book that he offered to conference attendees. Although I was still somewhat skeptical, I found much more in the book than just the maxim. Hal describes in great detail and from different angles the often difficult task of instilling a culture of questioning within an organization (and within ourselves).

The exercise of power can impede the questioning process. Children often get signals early on in school that their questioning is frowned upon, especially by teachers who are teaching to standardized tests who do not want their lesson plans delayed by responding to individual questions. This bias against questioning also carries through later in life to many organizations, including the military and corporations that have operating procedures and rules. To break through these barriers, many organizations try to institutionalize the questioning process – for example, Pixar’s Brain Trusts – to challenge their thinking and avoid blind spots. Like Fadi Ghandour, they also use questioning as a way to break down organizational barriers to get at the core of problems.

Questions can be an effective way to get at key issues without bruising egos – both for the person asking the question (who may be afraid to look stupid or to challenge a superior) and for the person receiving the question (who may take offense at any suggestion that his proposal might be flawed). As Hal and the people he quotes say repeatedly in the book, the key to getting the right answer is to ask the right question. Questioning is both an art and a skill.

The book is well researched. Gregersen often cites published research to support his major themes. The book has many examples of how managers have used questioning in a variety of ways to obtain better results. It provides additional information sources on key topics for those who want to dig deeper. It is also very well written (which makes it a quick read).

While Questions describes a collaborative approach that is politically correct in the current environment, it does have limitations. For example, it does not really address non-collaborative environments. In times of crisis, organizations may not have the time or the luxury to support a collaborative approach; so an authoritative or autocratic approach may be more appropriate. How can Gregersen’s approach be utilized in such circumstances?

I picked up some new tools for my management toolbox from reading “Questions are the Answer.” Those looking to add to their own will almost certainly do the same.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book...one that I strongly recommend. It looks at the lost art of asking questions to gain a better and deeper understanding. Hal Gregersen, the executive director at the MIT Leadership Center, laments the fact that as children progress through school, questions are valued less-and-less. Teachers provided answers. Students accept the answers. Questions are a derail rigid, for-the-text lesson plans. As we move into the workforce, questions and questioning are seen as insubordination and can prove detrimental to career upward mobility. Gregersen tackles these problems with evidence-based research and rich, on-point case studies. He persuasively argues that more questions and better respect for questions are a formula for success. If this book was edited for length and reduced in half, I believe it would have a more willing audience across the curriculum at the college level. I also believe there would be greater play in management and leadership development initiatives at the corporate level. Parents would also be interested in this book.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my favorite book so far this year. As a leader, the tendency is to simply provide answers. The methodology laid out in the book sets up a great foundation for a stronger team and business by asking more, taking more risks and slowing down enough to be quiet and listen to what others are really saying.

[Rita Malcata · Rating 5 out of 5]

really enjoyable and motivating book. special in a period when I am asking questions to myself and want to have questions being asked back. still loads to develop, but fantastic examples of the power of asking better questions. some lessons for managers, teachers and parents!

[Mark Eliason · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concept of the book is great… but I didn’t find the book paradigm shifting at all. I am continually looking for a high quality book about asking good questions.