We don’t mean to sound irreverent, but when was the last time you asked: “Do I need to be here?” Go/NoGo Questions are invaluable in helping us examine the bigger picture of how we use precious resources at work. Almost all of us feel like we have too many urgent things to do, too many meetings to attend, and too many channels of communication to monitor. So, we need to be asking ourselves and our colleagues more often: Do I need to be here? And do you? It is easy to work in a reactive mode, … [Read more...]
Precision Questioning
Conquering the fear of the stupid question
Ever catch yourself saying something like, "I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, but..."? We all use mindless preambles, usually without thinking about the impact on our credibility. But as with many things in Precision Q+A, preambles can become more precise and powerful. A preamble is a short statement preceding a question, that makes our intent or motivation clear. Preambles are useful because they defuse a potentially awkward moment (such as the worry about a "stupid" question) and they do … [Read more...]
The Go/NoGo Question you need to ask today
Go/NoGo Questions are the ones we use to ask about the process of our thinking rather than the content. When we are constantly bombarded by IM, email, text messages, and social media feeds, on top of our typical day full of work, a new type of Go/NoGo Question jumps to the forefront: we call it the Mental Ecology Go/NoGo. The Go/NoGo category of questions is one of the most underutilized categories, because we become prisoners of our habitual reactions rather than active managers of our own time … [Read more...]
Taking Precision Q+A personally
Vervago recently worked with a young CEO—we'll call her Ramona—whose technology startup company had failed. We suggested that after the standard technology post mortems and business analyses were over, Ramona could benefit from an additional review, this one completely personal. We asked her to work her way through some of the slide decks that had provided foundations for key decisions, asking herself in relation to each: "What questions did I ask?" "What questions didn't I ask?" "Was my style … [Read more...]
Three steps to higher impact questions
Does the following scenario sound familiar? You step into a status meeting and ask for an update: "Any new risks to the schedule?" Rashid, your counterpart in purchasing, responds quickly: "Delay in materials! When I called the supplier this morning…." You quickly realize this issue is uppermost in Rashid's thinking, but his response doesn't represent a thoughtful list of all the new risks to the schedule. What's a precision questioner to do? Before you blame Rashid and move on, consider how you … [Read more...]
Slippery Terms: Do you and I mean the same thing?
In the field of informal logic, "slippery terms" are words that mean one thing to one person and something different to another. They produce a consensus that is often an illusion, and therefore likely to fall apart. With long-time colleagues, the depth of shared context or background is usually enough to keep our meanings aligned. But when we work with people we don't know well, and we add differences in expertise, language, and culture, slippery terms create errors, misunderstandings, and … [Read more...]