A powerful question to shape decisions
Questions are one of the most powerful tools we have. They can trigger brilliant ideas, provoke us to question the status quo, and help shape an inspired path to the future. Struggling with a direction? Use this powerful question to explore it thoroughly and make an informed choice.
Hi everyone I’m Jodie, I’m the MD at Tiny Hunter. And many who know me know that I am an avid collector of questions. Questions are very powerful. I want to share today my favorite new question and that is by an adviser and strategist called Roger Martin a professor who used to be the dean at the Rotman School of Management. He’s written some great books, here is one, ‘Playing to Win.’ And he was in a scenario one day he was consulting to a company and they needed to make a choice between two big directions. And everyone was very divided and quite combative, I guess. And he realised that, what he needed to do was change the way that they were exploring these options. And he came up with this question, which is very simple but very powerful, like all the best questions. ‘What would have to be true?’ What this did is this turned everyone into more of an idea generating mindset. For each of these scenarios ‘What would have to be true?’ That would make this successful. That would make this work. And, what happened was everyone went through this process and in the end, they made a unanimous decision. This is a great process you can go through in a number of different scenarios when you’re making a decision. ‘What would have to be true?’ And what this will generate is a list of items that you can then explore to see are these true barriers? or are these barriers that we can overcome? And you will get a much richer picture when you’re making that decision to help you make the right one. That’s my favorite question today. That’s it from me, it’s time for brekkie.
Written by: Jodie de Vries
Published: April 5, 2023