INNOVATIVE QUESTIONING

Abel Aganbegyan, a leading Russian economist during the time of Gorbachev, shared with me that the source of his success in transforming an area of Russia into a relatively free economic zone was innovative dealings with suppliers. In order to create something that slightly resembled what we would call a productive enterprise, the problems that needed to be overcome did not have to do with customers. The customers were delighted with even the slightest improvements that occurred. The problems that continued to persist were related to quality, delivery time, and the acquisition of machinery that would produce something reliably.

John Neil, CEO of Unipart states, We've achieved 90% of what we started within our own company. The challenge now is to get our suppliers to participate in the same way so that we can achieve a 90% improvement in that domain. Unipart challenged themselves with the question, 'What is crying out for change'? The prevailing conditions of the industry, when questioned, produced vital answers with which to work. Significant innovations occurred across the board. Unipart's achievements required overcoming the conservative nature of language systems.

The ability to ask questions produces remarkable results as we endeavor to reformulate our way of doing business. Mastery of language and dialogue enhances that ability. Our linguistic capacity carries with it the potential for transforming us from mere complex adaptive systems into intelligent individuals, teams, and organizations and allows us to challenge the patterns that prevail and our current relationship to them. We become able to design ourselves. When new patterns are identified and new distinctions are created in language, they are the source of the emergence of new structures, new forms, new practices, and new results.

A simple and successful approach to the kind of innovation that will shift things in an organization in any substantial way is to combine the intention to innovate with questioning. Question everything that is said in day-to-day affairs about the company's particular historical emergence and the entire industry. The source of effective questions will be in knowing what to question and this is where listening cues are critical.

The listening cues which I have enumerated below all occur within the context of a larger question and this senior question must always be present for them to be effective. The question is: "In what ways can we reveal the common principles that shape our industry, our company, and our systems?" Without maintaining a strong interest in the senior question, our listening and questioning will probably remain at a very shallow level and in turn be abandoned after the easy and immediately profitable responses have been revealed. This senior question is meant to provoke increasingly more comprehensive levels of understanding which lead to an ever-expanding process of transformation of what is possible for an individual enterprise.

Listening cues are designed to elicit information that can be used to foster the emergence of new levels of understanding. They are not formulaic, nor will they provide automatic answers of what should be done. Listening cues, and the inquiries they initiate, are designed to encourage the emergence of new distinctions and from those new distinctions innovation emerges. These cues can be used as listening tools in any conversation to reveal whether the direction of the dialogue is being determined by prevailing conditions or by the intention to question, reveal, and transform the prevailing conditions .