Are You Asking a Question?

In a recent post on John Cutler’s, Beautiful Mess blog, he wrote about Those Pesky Question-Askers.

It made me reflect on how I’ve handled questions of all sorts in my—

• Own personal leadership journey,

• While teaching my classes,

• And while coaching my clients.

Even if I—

• Don’t like or appreciate the question

• Don’t want to answer it

• Have answered it before and find it repetitive

• Find it offensive or personally challenging

I rediscovered that how I answer questions sets the cultural landscape for my context. It impacts— 

• Transparency

• Safety

• Ideation and creativity

• Deep Democracy

• Engagement

And as I reflect more, I’m now committing to being much more self-aware of how I engage question-askers.

Thank you, John!

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

Principles as Questions

I saw a tweet by Cory Bryan that referenced a tweet from John Cutler from April 2021. I’m not sure how widely cast it was, so I thought I’d share it again here.  

To say that I love where John went is an understatement. And Cory’s edition of—

• “How” can we…

• “What” can we…

• And “When” can we…

Added even more value for me.

Here are John’s questions—

• Can we do more work we are proud of? 

• Can we work more joyfully, and sustainably? 

• Can we work together more often? 

• Can we learn more effectively? Can we accelerate/amplify feedback loops? 

• Can we shorten the distance between our team and customers/users? 

• Can we create more lasting value for our customers, users, and company? 

• Can we connect more of our work to real impact instead of proxies? 

• Can we delay certain decisions until we have more information? 

• Can we reduce the cost of changing our minds (both now, and in the future)? 

• Can we reduce our “inventory” of unfinished, non-value-producing work?

• Can we reduce waste that doesn’t serve the team, our customers, and our company? 

• Can we lay the foundations that will support our future success?

I think this list is particularly useful for my colleagues in the product space. I hope the questions are as thought-provoking for you as they were for me. John is a treasure in the community in that he makes me (us) think more deeply.

I need to do more of that…

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.