INSEAD professor Hal Gregersen on rekindling the power of creative questioning.
2013 was a watershed year for me. I, along with Clayton Christensen at Harvard Business School, embarked on a “Questioning Quest,” interviewing nearly 50 renowned global leaders to better understand how they formulate and ask disruptive questions—the ones that change the world.
Photo by Hal Gregersen
Based on research for our book, “The Innovator’s DNA,” we already knew that questioning is one of five innovator’s skills that holds the power to unlock completely new, creative solutions to key challenges, whether in work or in personal life. This year, we started to dig deeper into the precise mechanisms that help great leaders frame and ask the right questions. We probed leaders not only about how they surface the right questions, but also where this ability comes from and how they pass it on to the next generation.
As the world grows more turbulent and complex, I believe now more than ever that the sustainable future of our organizations, communities and global society hinges on our capacity as adults to keep disruptive questions vibrantly alive in the world’s 1.85 billion children. This hope was the inspiration behind The 4-24 Project, a community I founded to rekindle the provocative power of asking the right questions in adults so they can pass this crucial creativity competency on to the next generation.
This commitment fuels my journey for 2014 and beyond. I want to build a world in which children are rewarded for asking, instead of just answering, questions in schools, at home… anywhere. I want our future leaders to be armed with the ability to ask the right questions so they can navigate the profound, perplexing challenges that lie ahead—ones that will outstrip the complexity of anything we’ve faced thus far. So if The 4-24 Project ends up inspiring even one adult to motivate one child to ask more questions, then my new year’s wish for 2014 will come true.
What about your questioning quest for the coming year? What questions will light an intellectual and emotional fire inside? What burning questions will you care enough about to do something about? What questions will purposely and profoundly shape your life, and the lives of those around you? Whether we realize it or not, the questions we ask become the questions we live. Choose and chase them wisely.
Hal Gregersen is Co-Author (with Clayton Christensen and Jeff Dyer) of “The Innovator’s DNA,” Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank Chaired Professor of Innovation and Leadership at INSEAD and Founder of The 4-24 Project, which challenges organizations and individuals to question the way we think and act to make our world a better, more creative place. For more information, visit www.halgregersen.com.