A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas

by Warren Berger

This is a favorite question of the author Daniel Pink, though he acknowledges in his book Drive that it can be traced back to the journalist and pioneering congresswoman Clare Booth Luce. While visiting John F. Kennedy early in his presidency, Luce expressed concern that Kennedy might be in danger of trying to do too much, thereby losing focus. She told him “a great man is a sentence”—meaning that a leader with a clear and strong purpose could be summed up in a single line (e.g., “Abraham Lincoln preserved the union and freed the slaves”). Pink believes this concept can be useful to anyone, not just presidents. Your sentence might be, “He raised four kids who became happy, healthy adults,” or “She invented a device that made people’s lives easier.” If your sentence is a goal not yet achieved, then you also must ask: How might I live up to my own sentence?

“Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air, and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.”

That word process is key. You don’t just “find” answers to complex life problems (or any type of complex problem, including business ones). You work your way, gradually, toward figuring out those answers, relying on questions each step of the way.

As you make those daily choices about what to spend your time on and which possibilities to pursue, the author and consultant John Hagel suggests you ask yourself13 this question: When I look back in five years, which of these options will make the better story? As Hagel points out, “No one ever regrets taking the path that leads to a better story.”

Part of being able to tackle complex and difficult questions is accepting that there is nothing wrong with not knowing. People who are good at questioning are comfortable with uncertainty.

“every aspect of life is an experiment that can be better understood if it is perceived in that way.”

Millard Fuller, who said, “It’s easier to act your way33 into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.”

Mick Ebeling, the Eyewriter inventor, observes, “When we hit failure, I start41 to laugh. It’s almost like checking off a box—great, we got that out of the way. Now we’re that much closer.” Experienced creators have always known this. The poet John Keats wrote, “Failure is, in a sense, the highway42 to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true.” Those not comfortable enough to laugh at failure might start by questioning its nature, and how we perceive it. What does failure mean to me: Do I see it as an end state, or a temporary stage in a process? How do I distinguish between an acceptable failure and unacceptable one? (Not all failures are equal—and not all help you to move forward; some can shut everything down.) Can I use productive “small failures” as a means of avoiding devastating “big failures”?

Peavey believed that by employing the right kinds of questions—open, curious, slightly provocative at times, but never judgmental—one could have a meaningful dialogue with people who are very different from you, culturally, politically, temperamentally.

What do you want to say? Why does it need to be said? What if you could say it in a way that has never before been done? How might you do that?