Warren Berger's Blog, page 14
August 16, 2012
The power of questioning
August 13, 2012
The Olympics as a “Beautiful Question”
July 19, 2012
When things go wrong, how do we bounce back?
July 17, 2012
Ask why five times
The first in an ongoing series of tips on the art of questioning, posted under the category “Q-Tips.” (Should I trademark that?)First up: “The 5 Whys”—which I’ve known about for a while (I mentioned the 5 Whys in my last book, Glimmer), but which I was reminded of recently by AMBQ collaborative team member Bill Welter. He posted on the site’s forum:
Toyota shifted the Japanese car market in the 1980s with an emphasis on quality. Factory workers were encouraged to ask ‘Why?’ at least 5 times. The ‘5 Whys’ technique is still the foundation of quality programs around the world. (Too bad about the recent quality issues at Toyota—maybe they forgot to ask the questions that made them famous.)”
This process of asking 5 whys is not just applicable to making cars—it can be used in almost any type of creative endeavor. It can even be used to make sense of your own life. The design firm IDEO, which is a big practitioner of the 5 Whys methodology, offers this as an example of how asking 5 whys can help you dig down to a deeper truth.
One might ask, Why stop at five? Why not just keep asking why endlessly? The answer is that you will drive the people around you insane. The comedian Louis C.K. captures this nicely in this bit.
July 16, 2012
John Cage, master questioner
Found a great quote the other day on the site Brain Pickings (which, by the way, is highly-recommended reading for inquisitive minds). The site was reviewing a new book by author Kay Larson called Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists, about the legendary composer and creative maverick John Cage. The book covers a number of fascinating aspects of Cage’s life, including his lifelong habit of questioning everything—in his work, in his life, in the world around him.
Here’s Cage, talking about questioning:
“What can be analyzed in my work, or criticized, are the questions.”
-and-
“My composition arises out of asking questions.”
Cage, who was greatly influenced by Zen Buddhism, clearly embraced the Zen concept of shoshin or “beginner’s mind” and applied it to his work. Every composition, every artistic challenge was a chance to “begin again” (which is the title of another Cage biography, this one by Kenneth Silverman). I’ve been finding in my research that many of the best questioners adopt a naïve mindset when taking on new challenges; it’s what enables/permits them to ask the fundamental questions that no one else is asking.
A fertile collaborative partnership with questions at its heart
While Cage was questioning and re-inventing music, his longtime life partner and creative collaborator, Merce Cunningham, was doing likewise in the world of dance. When Cunningham died in 2009 (17 years after Cage’s death in 1992), The New York Times wrote: “Over a career of nearly seven decades, Mr. Cunningham went on posing ‘But’ and ‘What if?’ questions, making people rethink the essence of dance and choreography.” The same article describes Cage and Cunningham’s creative partnership, in which Cage often composed music for Cunningham’s choreography. “The two began to develop what would emerge in the 1950s as the most radical of their ideas about dance theater: that dance and music should be performed at the same time but prepared separately, both autonomous and coexistent.”
The partnership of Cage and Cunningham serves as a wonderful model of collaborative inquiry. It’s clear that each man was asking his own, individualized questions about music and dance—but when they inquired together, the result was fascinating and groundbreaking.
July 13, 2012
Morgan Freeman, and other famous questioners
Dave Baldwin, one of the members of the terrific AMBQ collaborative team, pointed out to me that on a recent episode of The Charlie Rose Show, Morgan Freeman talked about his “Through the Wormhole” TV series which has been tackling big questions like, “Can we live forever?” and “What makes us who we are?”
At one point in the interview, Freeman said, “I have a passion to know things and to question.” This prompted Charlie Rose to talk about his own lifelong passion for questioning.
The full interview is available here: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12393
Freeman’s Wormhole series, whose third season started on July 11, can be seen on Discovery’s Science channel whose slogan is, I happily note, “Question Everything.”
Have you heard any other famous people asking beautiful questions?
I’d love to hear from the AMBQ team—and also from any readers out there—about famous people you know of who have expressed a strong interest in Questioning. (The actor Alan Alda, for example, is particularly fascinated by science questions, such as “What is a flame?”).
Let me know of anyone you hear about who belongs on this list of “Famous Questioners.” In the course of my research in weeks/months ahead, I’ll try to contact and interview some of these well-known people—and if I’m successful, I’ll post excerpts of interviews here on the blog.
July 12, 2012
A question that defined a life
Last month, Rodney King died at the age of 47. If you’re looking for an example of what I would call a “beautiful question”—a question that takes on a big and important idea, one that causes people to step back and reassess the way they think—consider King’s famous question, “Can we all get along?”
He said it at a news conference during the 1992 Los Angeles riots; those riots, of course, were touched off by the videotaped beating of King by police officers, and the subsequent acquittal of several of those officers. In its obituary of King on June 18, the Associated Press noted that, “Twenty years later, Rodney King’s simple yet profound question still lingers, from the street where Trayvon Martin died all the way to the White House.”
How Rodney King phrased his beautiful question
In thinking about the famous question, I find King’s wording interesting. One might have expected him to phrase the question as “Can’t we all get along?”—as in, C’mon everybody, what’s wrong with us—can’t we all just get along?” Worded that way, the question could have sounded rhetorical; or it might have come off as scolding. But the way King said it, it sounded like he was truly wondering: Can we get along? Is it possible? The question became a challenge; King was asking, in effect, Are we up to this huge test?
Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson told the AP that King asked “a critical question at a moment of crisis that forged our human bonds with one another.” Asked whether the nation has risen to the challenge in King’s question, Dyson said, “The jury is still out.”
It could be said that King himself didn’t rise up to the opportunity he created for himself when he asked his question. Having gotten the nation’s attention and secured the moral high ground, he might have gone on to do remarkable things as a champion of Civil Rights or civility in general. He might have devoted himself to taking at least small steps toward answering his big question. But King, unfortunately, was grappling with other problems and challenges—his life “was a roller coaster of drug and alcohol abuse, multiple arrests and unwanted celebrity,” the New York Times reported. In an instructive interview earlier this year in the L.A. Times marking the 20th anniversary of the L.A. riots, King said,
People look at me like I should have been like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks. But it’s hard to live up to some people’s expectations.”
Did King ask the right question?
I recently came across an interesting take on King’s question on the site Big Think. An article featuring the philosopher Slavoj Zizek suggests that in terms of race relations, when we ask whether we can all just “get along,” we may be asking the wrong question. Zizek notes that such questions seem to focus on tolerance—a “retreat from the ambitious vision” of the Civil rights movement, “which was not simply appealing to liberal magnanimity, but demanding equity.”
It’s an interesting point, but I think King’s question about tolerance was valid, appropriate for those turbulent days—and was expressed simply and beautifully. It had a certain calming effect that was much needed at the time. For that, we owe him our thanks.
May 4, 2012
The Atlantic features AMBQ
Wonderful article on The Atlantic’s website this past week, all about “A More Beautiful Question”—covering the subject, as well as how I’m working with a collaborative team on the book. The author of the piece, Steve Heller, is a leading design journalist and professor (and one of the most prolific book writers around—140 books and counting). He’s obviously a great questioner himself—as evidenced by the astute questions he asked me in our interview.
Read “The Quest to Ask Better Questions” in its entirety (don’t worry—it’s short) at TheAtlantic.com, and if you have any thoughts, add them to the comments section following the article there. I’m sure Steve would appreciate hearing from readers.
April 9, 2012
The rise of zennovation
Was the revolutionary circular scroll wheel on the Apple iPod inspired by kinhin, the Zen practice of walking in circles while meditating? There's no hard evidence, but a new book, The Zen of Steve Jobs, suggests a connection. The illustrated and partly fictionalized book, which focuses on the real-life relationship between the late Apple co-founder and a Zen Buddhist priest, juxtaposes the lessons Jobs learned from his Zen master with design breakthroughs in his products. In so doing, the book picks up and expands on a theme also discussed in Walter Isaacson's recent biography of Jobs: that the great innovator was, himself, greatly influenced by Zen principles and practices.
Which raises a question that may seem crude, aggressively Western, and not at all Zen: Can the rest of us boost our innovation mojo by applying some of these centuries-old principles to modern-day challenges?
This article was originally published by me on FastCoDesign.com. Please click here to read the rest of it.
March 12, 2012
We have lift-off
March 2012: I'm pleased to announce that a major international book publisher has purchased the worldwide rights to my next book, A More Beautiful Question: An Inquiry into the Value of Inquiry . The book was recently bought at auction by Bloomsbury, the highly-regarded publisher that brought Harry Potter into the world. I hope they can bring a tiny bit of Harry's magic to this book.
I'll be working on the book throughout much of 2012 (with publication the following year) and I could use your ideas, your thoughts, your questions, your help. if you're interested in being part of the "Beautiful Question" team I'm putting together.
A More Beautiful Question (AMBQ) will be chockfull of great stories that show the connection between a "beautiful question" and a major breakthrough or innovation. Those stories will span business, social issues, and everyday life.
While there will be a focus on business/innovation—I'll look at how the most successful entrepreneurs and leading-edge companies create a "culture of questioning"—I'll also examine the way bold questioners are having an impact on the way we deal with society's challenges. And I will go in-depth on the role of questioning in education: The book will consider some of the ways we can get students to ask more questions (and thereby become more engaged).
Perhaps most important, AMBQ will discuss some of the ways that all of us can become better questioners. Through my research with various "master questioners" from all walks of life, I've been able to distill and develop a methodology that can help anyone begin to ask bigger, more meaningful, more beautiful questions about the challenges they face. But it's not just about raising questions: The book will also show how you can begin to tackle those big and imposing questions, as you work your way to beautiful answers.
As I'm working on the book, I'll constantly be sharing thoughts, ideas, and related links and articles on this blog—and seeking feedback that, I hope, will help shape the finished book.
While I encourage you to sign up for the automatic email updates from the blog (they won't overwhelm you, I promise), I also hope you'll keep visiting the site to be part of the ongoing conversation here. Please keep submitting your beautiful questions to be posted on the site. Keep sharing your stories and comments about the importance of questioning in your business or your life.
My journey of inquiry begins now, and I hope you'll join me.
