Connect | question x creativity
The structure of a sentence impacts how you think
Why are questions so incredibly powerful?
Last week a friend of mine wrote an amazing post about the book “A More Beautiful Question” by Warren Berguer. I was intrigued enough to start reading it immediately. It was, surprisingly, a real page turner and eye opener.
“It’s the question that drives us” said Trinity in The Matrix, so I should have known.
A week later we ran a workshop at Kinnu using a method mentioned in the book, perfected by The Right Question Institute (who knew this exists? Kind of sounds like the Ministry of Wizardry and Witchcraft). Apparently they had spent 10 years perfecting a method which you can summarise in 4 bullets:
1. Pick a theme
2. Ask questions about the theme
3. Change open questions to closed and vice versa
4. Discuss
I was intrigued. 10 years to arrive at THAT?
Oh boy, if by the time I finished the book I realised that questions were important, I did not realise just HOW important.
So what is it about questions and creativity? It turns out that:
- Asking questions about something makes you even more curious
- Asking more than 2-3 questions about something makes you ask more interesting questions
- Asking questions enables you to unlock new levels of creativity, because you do not commit yourself to a potential answer
- Changing the open/closed orientation exposes your biases and gut feelings about a potential answer
- As adults (especially designers) we are trained to ask open questions “Why?” “How?”; closed questions are the questions kids ask - but turns out both are insanely useful
- Closed questions make you realise you can find answers with high level of certainty to help you make better decisions
- Hearing other people’s questions blows your mind (why didn’t I think of this?)
- Questions are not threatening and fuel dialogue - you cannot disagree with someone’s question
- Questions inspire - I am inspired by my work on any day, but now I have reached new highs in my inspiration
Highly recommend running a workshop in this format. See for yourself.