What Lurks Behind Every Breakthrough

Questions are the ‘frame’ into which answers fall. By changing the frame, you dramatically change the range of possible solutions.

my focus as a scholar and consultant has FOR THE PAST DECADE, been on corporate innovation. In particular, I’ve been studying the effects of asking new questions in start-ups and established organizations. Twenty-five years ago, my very first conversation with Clayton Christensen — the Harvard professor who gained fame for his theory of disruptive innovation—focused on what causes people to ask the right questions. Our collaborations since— which include co-authoring The Innovator’s DNA — have only sharpened my appreciation for the critical role that questions play in breakthroughs.

If you trace the origin of any creative breakthrough, it is possible to find the point where someone changed the question. Questions can do amazing things: Knock down the walls that have been constraining a problem-solver’s thinking; remove one or more of the ‘givens’ in a particular line of thinking; and open up space for inquiry that had been closed off. We commonly refer to this as ‘re-framing’.

Stanford Professor Tina Seelig, who studies creativity and innovation, is a big advocate of re-framing. In her words, “All questions are the frame into which the answers fall. And by changing the frame, you dramatically change the range of possible solutions.” Prof. Seelig suggests that one way to re-frame things is to think of someone quite different from yourself and try to adopt that person’s perspective on a situation. For instance, would a child interpret something differently than you do as an adult? Would someone from a different country, versus a local, start out with a fundamentally different set of assumptions?

Questions are the most effective way to re-frame any issue. In a tentative, non-aggressive way, they crack open taboo territory and encourage us — individually and collectively — to re-examine the fundamental assumptions we are making. Elon Musk’s term for this is ‘first-principles thinking’. When Tesla landed at the top of the list of Forbes’ Most Innovative Companies a few years ago, the team of us who compile that annual ranking talked to him about his knack for coming at enormous problems from new angles.

First-principles thinking, Musk explained to us, hacks away all the things that have been treated as givens, but shouldn’t be, getting down to the base layer of incontrovertible truth; then, it works back up from there. Musk’s example for us came from the automotive world in which Tesla competes. Why simply accept that to put lightweight aluminum wheels on its cars, Tesla must incur the going rate of $500 apiece? Instead, Musk said to himself: ‘That seems odd, because the cost of cast aluminum is

maybe two dollars a pound, and the wheel is 25 pounds, so that’s 50 bucks. There are some processing costs involved, so let’s double that and now we’re at a hundred. This wheel should not cost 500 dollars.’

Musk is very aware that people don’t normally push back very hard on what is presented to them as reality. Analysis of a problem by first principles, as he summed it up, involves trying to boil things down to the most fundamental truths in a particular area by asking ‘What are we sure is true?’ The things that you are highly certain of are ‘base truths’, your axiomatic elements; and then you apply your reasoning using those.

Re-framing, this example suggests, is almost always a case of ‘larger framing’ — opening up a space of inquiry that has been closed down to some extent. This is what Clayton Christensen does when he advises innovators within firms to stay focused on the ‘jobs to be done’ by the goods and services they produce. If, for example, a company produces cars, it should not fall into the trap of asking, ‘What would make our cars better?’ Instead, it should take the larger perspective of remembering that a car is just a solution the customer ‘hires’ to get a job done, which is to transport her to where she needs to go. Think in terms of ‘How could we transport the customer even better?’ and the frame for innovation in the company’s offerings suddenly becomes vastly larger.

How to Ask Better Questions

It isn’t simply a matter of asking more questions; it’s a certain kind of question that inspires creative problem-solving. As indicated, breakthrough solutions start with re-framed questions, and we are in need of breakthrough solutions in many, many realms. In my own practice I have developed a technique called a ‘Question Burst’. This is an exercise that you might like to try if you are — individually or as part of a group — looking for new insights to solve a problem that you care about. It consists of three steps:

To begin, select a challenge that you care STEP 1: SET THE STAGE. deeply about. Perhaps you’ve suffered a setback or you have an indistinct sense of an intriguing opportunity. How do you know it’s a problem ripe for a breakthrough, given the right unlocking question? It’s probably a good candidate if it makes your heart beat fast. Next, invite a small group to help you consider that challenge from fresh angles. You can do this exercise on your own, but bringing others into the process provides a wider knowledge base and helps maintain a constructive mindset. When you ask others to participate in a question burst, you’re also summoning empathy and energy, which directly support idea generation, and ultimately, idea implementation. It’s best to include two or three people who are starkly different from you in terms of their understanding of the problem and their general cognitive style or worldview. They will come up with questions that you would not — questions that might prove surprising and compelling, because they have no investment in the status quo. They’re also more likely to point to elephants in the room — because they don’t know not to.

With your partners in the exercise assembled, give yourself just two minutes to lay out the problem for them. Once you’ve gone to the trouble of engaging willing helpers, it would be a pity to pollute their minds with your preconceptions before you’ve gained any benefit from their thinking. Quickly sharing the challenge forces a high-level framing that doesn’t constrain or direct the questioning. So just hit the highlights: Try to convey how things would change for the better if the problem were solved; and briefly say why you are stuck — why it hasn’t already been solved.

Before launching into question generation, it is important to clearly spell out two critical rules of engagement: First, ask people to contribute questions only. Explain that those who try to suggest solutions will be redirected by you. And second, announce that no preambles are allowed. Explanations and details — short or long — mainly guide people to see the problem in a certain way — the very thing you’re trying to avoid.

You will also want to do a quick emotion check up front. Ask people to reflect on the challenge right now. Are their feelings about it positive, neutral or negative? No need to spend more than ten seconds on this. You’ll do it again after the session is over.

Breakthrough solutions start with re-framed questions, and we are in need of breakthroughs in many, many realms.

With the problem now preSTEP 2: GENERATE THE QUESTIONS. sented in broad-stroke fashion and everyone apprised of the rules, set a timer and spend the next four minutes collectively brainstorming surprising and provocative questions about the challenge. As with all brainstorming, no pushback is allowed on others’ contributions. The goal is to jot down at least 15 to 20 questions.

Is there some precise magic about four minutes and 20 questions? No, but it works for several reasons. The time pressure forces participants to stick to the ‘only questions’ rule. I often see that people find it excruciatingly difficult to resist responding with answers — even for four minutes — when people start throwing out questions. This impulse is understandable. But in this exercise, the emphasis is on quantity. Any time spent answering someone else’s question means less chance of hitting the 20-question goal. Also, if people are focused on generating as many questions as possible, they’ll more likely generate short, expansive questions that are unburdened by qualifications and assumptions, and will not feel obliged to explain questions that come from left field.

Throughout the four minutes, you will write everyone’s questions down. Capture everything verbatim, and ask your partners to keep you honest on this — otherwise, you might commit an unconscious censoring that repels lines of inquiry you don’t immediately ‘get’ or want to hear. As you’re writing, add your own questions to the mix. Doing so might reveal patterns in how you have habitually framed the problem (and unknowingly perpetuated it).

Once the timer goes off, do a second quick emotional check. How does everyone feel about the challenge now? Are you more positive than four minutes ago? If not, and you’re doing this in a setting that allows, maybe re-run the exercise or get some rest and try again tomorrow. Or, try it with some different people. Research has established that creative problem-solving flourishes when people work in positive emotional states. I am convinced that much of the initial power of the question burst lies in its ability to alter a person’s emotions towards the challenge, by dislodging that negative feeling of being stuck.

Your partners have now done their STEP 3: UNPACK THE QUESTIONS. job, and you should be feeling more energized by the possibility of making progress. On your own, study the questions you jotted down. Be on the lookout for ones that suggest new pathways. About 80 per cent of the time, this exercise produces at least one question that usefully re-frames the problem and provides a new angle for solving it. Select a few that intrigue you and strike you as different from how you’ve been going about things. A few criteria can help as you consider each question: Is it one you have not asked or been asked before? Is it one for which you honestly don’t have a good answer? Is it one that evokes an emotional response, positive or negative? In other words, subject the questions to a surprise test, an honesty test and a gut-check test.

Now try expanding those few into their own sets of related or follow-up questions. A classic way of doing this is the ‘five whys’ sequence developed by Toyota founder Sakichi Toyoda — and the variation on it suggested by Stanford’s Michael Ray in The Highest Goal. Ask yourself why the question you chose seemed important. Then, having answered that, ask why the reason you just gave is important. And so on. The point is to keep opening up the space the problem occupies — which also broadens the territory of possible solutions and deepens your resolve to do something about it.

Finally, commit to the quest — the pursuit of at least one new pathway that the process has enabled you to glimpse—and do so as a ‘truth seeker’. Set aside considerations of what might be more comfortable to conclude or easier to implement, and instead focus on what it will take to get the problem solved. Devise a near-term action plan: What concrete actions will you personally take in the next three weeks to find potential solutions suggested by your new questions? In my experience, we would all be more likely to come up with innovative solutions if we made it a regular practice to engage in question bursts. Think of it as a sheer numbers game. Most questions aren’t earth-shattering, but given enough repetition — and I always advise doing three rounds on a given issue — the technique will reliably yield its share of great ones.

The point is to keep opening up the space the problem occupies — which broadens the territory of possible solutions.

Whether at work or in life, this is a quick way to rapidly bring different perspectives to bear on a problem you are wrestling with — and if you can make it a regular practice, it can help to create a culture of collective problem solving and truth seeking.

In closing

Elon Musk is one of those problem-solvers who loves to talk about the power of questions. On various occasions, he has recalled reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when he was 14 and taking away an important point: A lot of times, the question is harder than the answer. And if you can properly phrase the question, then the answer is the easy part.

Today, Musk applies his prodigious intellect to summoning up ever-better questions — questions that knock down assumptions and channel energy into new pathways of discovery. Why is he so much more capable of this than most people? In large part, because he started early; and he kept at it. Hal Gregersen is Executive Director of the MIT Leadership Centre and a Senior Lecturer at MIT’S Sloan School of Management. His latest book is Questions Are the Answer: A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life (Harpercollins, 2018).