Over the past few years on this blog, I’ve talked a lot about asking questions.
Ask tough questions. Have more questions than answers. Learn to answer the same questions.
Going further with it, though, is trying to find the questions that you don’t even know exist. It’s similar to some minor hiccups we’ve had running our agency — we accepted them as “part of doing business” until others showed us that they were problems that could be solved. It can be very eye-opening!
In his book “The Dip“, author Seth Godin puts it this way:
“The people who are the best in the world specialize at getting really good at the questions they don’t know.”
Of course, that’s easier said than done. If you don’t know what the question is, how can you come up with it? I think a good place to start is with the classic “5 Whys“. That lesson alone can lead to some new questions that you hadn’t considered.
Dead car
I had something like this happen last week with my daughter’s car (note that I’m not an expert on cars, so this took a few more steps than you likely would have gone through). It wouldn’t recognize her key fob, so it wouldn’t start. Why wouldn’t the key fob work? That’s easy, dead battery in fob, so I replaced that battery. No luck.
When I got in the car, there were a few strange lights on the dashboard. Why were those lights there? As I was Googling for answers to those, I noticed that the pressing the lock button her door wasn’t working. Why wouldn’t the lock work? That led me to the battery, which was presumably dead.
So, I tried to jump-start the battery, but that didn’t help. Why did the jump start not work? Was I doing it wrong? A neighbor came out and helped, and still no dice. So now why couldn’t I jump start it?
The battery was really dead and wasn’t coming back. I bought a new battery and life is good.
Why didn’t the car start?
I only knew one main question (“why won’t the car start?”), but I took it to a half-dozen more questions to finally get down to the real answer.
Given how long it took me takes us back to where Seth said that “best in the world specialize at getting really good at the questions they don’t know“. Someone that was the “best in the world” with cars would have asked the right question much more quickly than I did.
I’m ok with that, and I have people I can trust that can help with car issues. My goal is that in other areas of life (marketing, web development) that I’m able to come up with the right question more quickly than others.
What kind of work are you most likely to uncover the “question that you don’t know”?
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