We might reinvigorate our lives by learning to ask new questions. Asking large questions seeds the ground with new possibilities. While at first glance this may seem to be un-strategic work, I suggest that inviting senior leaders in any setting to reflect on the deeper questions that animate them, and that animate our organizations, is some of the most important work they can do. This is because it forces them to think about their choices, many of which are often made unconsciously, out of habit, and out of fear. Choices sown with these energies inevitably collapse. Think of inquiry of this sort as the ultimate act of efficiency: dealing with problems far upstream, before they surface and require expensive rework and change.

– William Isaacs, Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together

I recently picked Isaacs’ book off my shelf to consult a diagram that I knew was in there. The book fell open to the passage above which was circled boldly by me a few years ago when I read it. Wow! How great for me to re-read this beautifully written passage that confirms the importance of holding the tension of resistance steady with every leader that tells me, “We just don’t have time. This is a lovely idea but we just do not have time to indulge in those sorts of thinking activities.”

No time is the first reaction of most leaders to whom I recommend deep, systematized organizational reflection. I am always amazed at how rushing to do more of the same feels better and more productive than thinking divergently, from whole to parts, questioning original assumptions in order to do better, more effective work. I think we as leaders get sidetracked from our purpose by feelings of comfort and efficiency. We lose our sense of intention in order to get items complete. The result is our work becomes rote and develops a diminishing relationship to the declared purpose.

How sad that we exchange comfort for the invigorating work of developing depth and meaning.

“You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.”
- Naguib Mahfouz

I have a friend who is in the throes of considering where to celebrate his 50th birthday. High on the consideration list is Cairo. Wow! What a great place to celebrate fifty years of his journey so far - a place of great wisdom, mystery, and historical impact. Of course, if it is indeed Cairo, I know just what I shall give him.

One of my favorite writers is Naguib Mahfouz. Mahfouz, born in Cairo in 1911, spent his life until 1972 as a civil servant in the Egyptian government bureaucracy. His appointments included Director of Censorship in the Bureau of Art, Director of the Foundation for the Support of the Cinema, and consultant on Cultural Affairs to the Ministry of Culture. Concurrent with his government work, Mahfouz was writing. He published his first novel in 1939 and published ten more before 1952. His retirement in 1972 saw a great burst in Mahfouz’s creative output. Before his death in 2006, Mahfouz published about thirty novels, more than a hundred short stories, and more than two hundred articles. Many of his novels have been made into films. Naguib Mahfouz was award the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988.

Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy (Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street) is a great piece of work. I read the three novels straight through one summer and was mesmerized. Even now I can transport myself to the courtyard of the family house. The sights and smells of Egypt, a foreign land to me, became burned into my mind. Mahfouz writes about the political and the mundane in such combination that a shared sense of journey across continents, a shared humanity, emerges. The other becomes familiar through the motions and meanderings of daily life. This trilogy will make a great gift for my friend if he travels to Cairo.

To be a clever man or a wise man, a question of old. Mahfouz’s answer in the above quote speaks to me. I believe that cleverness is about power and ego, while wisdom is more about seeking solutions that solve root causes. A clever man shows, sometimes spouts, his knowledge. A clever man relishes in center stage. A wise man, however, is still learning, still searching, and still open, regardless of age or position. Wisdoms questions, without fear. Questioning, a wise man knows, leads to a fuller, more expansive outcome.

During the summer I spend a lot of time traveling, meeting new people in new places. Inevitably one of the first topics of conversation is the proverbial what do you do? I usually ease my way into the conversation by saying I am a consultant. As expected, the comeback is what do you consult about? Sometimes I have trouble explaining what I consult about because working to improve the effectiveness of a group of people that work together is different at each place, with each group, within each different industry. I don’t really have my two minute elevator speech down. The other day I came across this poem by Robert Bly, and I think I shall adapt his first line to create my answer from now on because it is really the key to doing differently, to doing new things, and to doing same things with a renewed spirit.

I teach people that work together to think in new ways — simple, to the point, under two minutes, authentically descriptive. I like it!

Things To Think by Robert Bly

Think in new ways you’ve never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you’ve ever hear,
vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he’s about
to give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,
Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time, or that it’s
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

“Everyone should seek to be creative, even though
creativity is full of risks and uncertainties.”
— Edward de Bono

Edward de Bono www.edwarddebono.com has made a career of teaching the skills of creative thinking. Yet, isn’t it sad that most people think they are either creative, or not. And, by extension, we think the same of our children - some are creative, and some are not. Believing that one is either born creative or not is, using Carol Dweck’s, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, definitions, a very fixed mindset about creativity.

Edward de Bono believes that everyone has the capacity for creativity and that creative thinking can be learned and further developed. So, what happens to our natural creativity? I think we are taught at a young age to play it safe, not to take risks, not to follow an uncertain path, not to experiment and see what we learn. We are shamed if we fail at anything, regardless of what that failure gives us the opportunity to learn. Thus, we are taught to value safety and certainty more than creativity and learning by doing. We are taught and encouraged to be staid, steady followers. As Buckminster Fuller laments, “we are all born genuises but school un-geniuses us.” Not just school, but also our parents, our culture, our society.

For me, the question becomes what are the costs we pay individually and collectively for not fully developing and valuing creativity? What problems could have been solved long ago by a impetus of collective and coorperative creative thinking? What level of happiness could have been achieved by so many had their creativity not be stunted, thwarted, and shamed? Recognizing that creativity is a critical competency for the 21st century, how shall we design for creativity’s resurgence?

It will take creative minds to answer these and many other questions about the way forward. The first step? Ask the right question. These are but a few of the right questions.

Leave a comment or your right question.