Finding the Right Question To Ask
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Let's be Fwends is a journal about agility, organisations, technology, and the larger media landscape. And most importantly the role of all of us in all of that.
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Let's be Fwends #127:
Finding the Right Question To Ask
This is the game we play: The only thing you really know is what you can put into words
~ Alan Watts
Welcome to Let's be Fwends number 127. Today, we look at a really simple but powerful way of improving your questions, and consider how the way we talk about things shape the way we do things. I also share what I've learned so far about work (or at least, what I think I know because what do I know), and we round out this issue with a great gallery of exoplanets.
Improve Your Way of Asking Questions
The Right Question Institute has an easy way for you to improve your way of asking questions: The Question Formulation Technique
The steps are simple:
- Choose a topic for your questions
- Ask as many questions as you can, without discussing, judging or answering any of them. Change any statements into questions.
- Improve your questions: Identify open-ended and close-ended questions and try flipping them. Group and cluster questions and synthesise them into new ones
- Create a strategy by prioritising your questions and creating an action plan
- Reflect on the process
The QFT is a great application of divergent and converging thinking. Try it - alone or in a group, and I'm sure the best questions that land on the top of your list are not the ones you came up with first.
Metaphors Have Consequences
I use metaphors a lot in my daily work. It's hard to talk about abstract concepts like organisations, workflow frameworks, analytics or metrics without conjuring some sort of analogy with something more tangible.
When crafting an analogy, I take great care that the implied meaning matches what I want to say. That it doesn't introduce any misconceptions or creates false ideas about the thing I'm using the analogy for. Every analogy creates both the mental image you intend, as well as many other mental images which are just in the heads of your audience, and you cannot see or control. So it's important to anticipate those images as well, and make sure that they will not lure your audience on a wrong track.
In a great essay, Benjamin Santos Genta follows the work of Georg Lakoff and Mark Johnson to find additional important aspects of the usage of metaphors. He writes:
In English, the abstract concept of an argument is typically metaphorically structured through the more concrete concept of a war: we say that we ‘win’ or ‘lose’ arguments; if we think the other party to be uttering nonsense, we say that their claims are ‘indefensible’; and we may perceive ‘weak lines’ in their argument. These terms come from our understanding of war, a concept we are disconcertingly familiar with.
There is nothing particularly new about this thought. If you're reflecting on your use of language, you're probably well aware of instances where you borrow language from one thing to talk about another.
The interesting idea is that the metaphors you use actually form the way you behave:
‘Many of the things we do in arguing are partially structured by the concept of war.’ To see this, they suggest another conceptual metaphor, ARGUMENT IS A DANCE. Dancing is decisively a more cooperative enterprise than war – the goal of an argument under this framing would not be to ‘win’ it but to produce a pleasing final product or performance that both parties enjoy. The dynamics of how we’d think about an argument under such a framing would be very different. This highlights the role of metaphors in creating reality rather than simply helping to represent it.
The impact of changing metaphors is well-established in empirical studies:
In one (...) study, two groups were shown a report on the rising crime rate in a city. One group received a report that opened with the statement ‘Crime is a virus ravaging the city,’ while the other group received a report that started with ‘Crime is a beast ravaging the city.’ (...) They were then asked about which measures they would implement to solve the crime problem. Those who were primed to have the conceptual metaphor CRIME IS A BEAST were much more likely to recommend punitive measures, such as increasing the police force and putting criminals in jail (just as one would, presumably, put a beast in a cage). Those who were primed to entertain CRIME IS A VIRUS tended to suggest measures that are associated with epidemiology: to contain the problem, to identify the cause and treat it, and to implement social reforms. Remarkably, the participants were not aware of the effect these metaphorical framings had on their choices. When asked why they chose the solutions they did, respondents ‘generally identified the crime statistics, which were the same for both groups, and not the metaphor, as the most influential aspect of the report.’
The big question now would be how an argument would look like if one participant wants to dance, while the other one wants a gun fight.
What I've Learned So Far
Here are six things I have come to believe to be true:
- The easy problems are already solved
- Curiosity is a Super-Power
- People Want to do Outstanding Work
- Delivering Value is the Only Way to Build Thriving Organisations
- Making Mistakes is Making Progress
- You're Never "There" (And That's OK)
Here is more context , and what that means to my interpretation of the role of a Scrum Master.
Strange new Worlds
Explore all exoplanets discovered so far in "Strange New Worlds", an interactive gallery complete with hypothetical visualisations.
That's it for this edition of Let's be Fwends. As always, thanks for reading. And if you know someone who also might enjoy reading it, please forward it. Think of this mail as a happy puppy wagging its tail looking for new people to meet and play with. 🐶 (If that metaphor doesn't make you forward this mail then I don't know which one would)
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