Asking For Career Success
The Right Questions Can Be More Important Than the Right Answers
In a rapidly changing work environment, asking the right questions can be more important than knowing yesterday's right answers.
Learning all one could about how things were done in an organization has helped many people get ahead, and deservedly so. A reputation for "Knowing all the answers" was an asset from the classroom to the board room. But in a world of work characterized by constant change and ever-advancing technology, it can be more important to ask the right questions than to know yesterday's right answers.
This observation is not meant to discourage seeking knowledge; it is to point out that a different type of knowledge is becoming crucial. Understanding missions, objectives, capabilities, resources, as well as current and potential problems is the foundation for asking intelligent questions about an organization's performance and future.
What We Need to Know
Knowing in fine detail how things are done today must yield to regular questioning about whether current priorities and procedures continue to advance bedrock missions and objectives. At entry and intermediate levels, team members can logically question why things are done in a certain way. At upper levels, they may appropriately question even the missions and objectives themselves.
In either case, questioners will likely encounter resistance from colleagues comfortable with methods in which they have become expert, or goals and priorities in which they have become heavily invested. Frankly speaking, questions can engender personal resentment from colleagues and negative reactions from the wrong kinds of bosses. While the potential value to the organization of good questions is considerable, the risk to the questioner's career and happiness on the job must be taken into account.
How to Ask
Recognizing these realities of human nature, it becomes vitally important to frame and present questions with great care. First, questions about "why things are done this way" must reflect the questioner's homework on the objectives of the work and the available resources, and, if possible, carefully thought-out alternatives. Second, they should be presented tactfully with evidence of an open mind for the explanations that will be offered.
Nothing can undermine an attempt to question the status quo more than an impression that the questioner is shooting from the hip, scorns all that has preceded his arrival on the scene, or is unable to give serious consideration to views other than his own. On the other hand, nothing can ensure attention to questions more than a well researched, careful and tactful presentation.
The Bottom Line
The individual who can get his team or larger organization to focus on the right questions can be more valuable to its future than the one who has all of today's answers.
