The Power of Dumb Questions

Tools and techniques don’t necessarily teach us to be better problem solvers

Wed, 07/25/2012 - 11:11

Often it is the simple and basic question that unlocks the mystery of our business or process problems. What’s more, we don’t have to be trained experts in process improvement techniques to ask the all-important, all-powerful dumb questions.

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I was listening to a friend and colleague describe the course of a “CI event” (continuous improvement meeting) she was asked to attend. Her short tale struck me as fairly common and ordinary, but she made a very profound observation. I’ll tell the short version.

The event was focused to solve a process problem with a scheduling system. Fundamentally, team members and project managers all knew that the dates in the system were bogus, and they pushed them back by a month or more almost as soon as they were published. Yet, they were expected to put resource allocations into the system. The whole scenario described a complete waste of expensive man-hours to produce useless information.

After a long discussion identifying more than 50 different ways the system was broken, the group sat there uncertain how to fix it, but not yet willing to abandon it altogether, either. Finally, my friend spoke up. She asked, “What is the purpose of the system?”

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Comments

Hi Alan,

a nice short article and as a "KISS" kind of person I can full agree with the message.

I just get a bit hung-up on the reference to 'dumb' question, as the way you describe it it seems there is such a thing as a 'smart' question, whereby that question cannot be a simple question (as simple questions has been defined as 'dumb' questions in your article" 

I think  it is better to conclude => There is no such thing as a stupid/dumb question. A question is always good, as it is asked because the person does not know the answer of the question and the resulting answer to the question will bring always a form of new information.

As for simple versus complex questions => A complex question in almost all cases is a combination of multiple smaller questions. Hence they are complex, as answering the complex question requires the combination of answers to multiple 'sub-questions'. Hence breaking down any complex questions back to it's simplified sub-questions, returns you to a situation where anyone and everyone can understand anders give answer to a given question, making it possible for a biggest-possible selection of people to find answers and maybe more importantly, agreeing on the answer.

Just my 2 cents. Would love to you know response on this comment.

Hi Alan,

a nice short article and as a "KISS" kind of person I can full agree with the message.

I just get a bit hung-up on the reference to 'dumb' question, as the way you describe it it seems there is such a thing as a 'smart' question, whereby that question cannot be a simple question (as simple questions has been defined as 'dumb' questions in your article" 

I think  it is better to conclude => There is no such thing as a stupid/dumb question. A question is always good, as it is asked because the person does not know the answer of the question and the resulting answer to the question will bring always a form of new information.

As for simple versus complex questions => A complex question in almost all cases is a combination of multiple smaller questions. Hence they are complex, as answering the complex question requires the combination of answers to multiple 'sub-questions'. Hence breaking down any complex questions back to it's simplified sub-questions, returns you to a situation where anyone and everyone can understand anders give answer to a given question, making it possible for a biggest-possible selection of people to find answers and maybe more importantly, agreeing on the answer.

Just my 2 cents. Would love to you know response on this comment.

Dear MARKHANOI83, Thanks for your comment. I agree with your perspective that any question is worth asking if it gets the people involved to better understand and improves communication. We should, as you suggest, ask questions when we want better understanding. My use of the phrase "dumb question" was meant to put a title or description to those questions we typically don't ask because we assume that they are so obvious that someone must have already done so. Similarly, sometimes we don't ask obvious questions because we are afraid of the looks we might get from our peers for doing so. Ironically, when the answer to the obvious or "dumb" question is not ready, obvious, or apparent, then we have begun to hit on the root of the issue (many times). So, to address your challenge of my word choice, I could have used "obvious" or "fundamental" instead of "dumb," but I chose "dumb" because I felt like the colloquialism best summed up the categories of questions that we are naturally reluctant to ask even when we would like to know the answers. I hope you will indulge my literary prerogative. Regards, Alan

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