Ask Childlike Questions

Edwin Land (1909 - 1991) was an American inventor who had studied Chemistry. On holiday he took a photograph of his three year old daughter. She asked why she could not see the result straight away and she kept asking why. Land pondered this question and an idea formed in his mind. He went on to develop the Polaroid camera, a revolutionary product which sold over 150 million units and made Land into a celebrity. His daughter's naive question had led him to challenge the assumptions that the whole photography industry took for granted.

One of the problem analysis exercises that I run on my Creative Leadership workshops is called Why, Why? You state the problem or challenge and then ask the group why. You write down their answers and for each one you ask why. You keep asking why - just like a little child. This carries on and in the process you gradually reach deeper and deeper into the underlying issues. The object of the exercise is not to solve the problem but to unpack it and to reach a fuller understanding of the causes. You then prioritise the causes and brainstorm to find solutions for the most pressing.

At work we tend to ask one or two questions and then plunge into ideas and discussion. But by asking more questions, and more basic even childish questions, we can discover insights that challenge our assumptions and allow us to reach deeper issues and better solutions - just as Edwin Land did.

Other articles by Paul Sloane:

Unleash your Inner Genius

Beating the Meeting Monster

Don't Take the First Answer