The Total Question Workout: The Complete Guide to Asking Better Questions to Get Better Answers for Running Your Business or Your Life

By Kim Perkins and Bennett E. McClellan

Heres the one-minute description of TQW:
You have a Big Question of some kind. You know its a Big Question because its keeping you up at night, the outcome is important, and you dont have a ready answer.
There are four stages you need to go through to answer a Big Question. I dont know where you are in the process; so let me describe the four stages.
The first stage involves fully understanding your situation and your motives for wanting to resolve the question that comes from being in that situation.
The second stage involves separating yourself from the situation you are in. You cannot resolve a situation if you see yourself as part of it. You have to gain perspective by separating yourself from your situation in as many ways as possible.
The third stage involves letting go of something that keeps you attached to, and subject to, the situation you are in. Something is holding you back. Some fear, some projection of implications, some belief about what is possible and what is not possible. Something. As long as you hold onto these things they will hold you back.
Fourth, you need to perceive new possibilities for resolving your Big Question. For various reasons, you are not able to see alternative resolutions today. You need to reframe your question in a way that will enable you to apply the substantial resources you have to address each and every part of the question.
If you have a Big Question, you are stuck at one of those four stages.
At which stage are you stuck?

McClellan provides a complete roadmap for getting from the question you have to the question you need to answer. Dither no longer. Commit to the Total Question Workout. Address the Big Question you need to answer to take charge of running your business or your life. You can move forward. But first, you have to take the next step.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493159222

Kim Perkins

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Book preview

The

TOTAL QUESTION

Workout

The complete guide to asking better questions to get better answers for running your business or your life

Bennett E. McClellan, Ph.D.

in collaboration with

Kim Perkins

Copyright © 2014 by Bennett E. McClellan.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act 1988.

Rev. date: 03/28/2014

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

The Total Question Workout:

The complete guide to asking better questions to get better answers for running your business or your life

Introduction: Why a book on questioning?

Chapter 1: The Journey of Inquiry: Why is asking Big Questions a process?

Chapter 2: The Art of Ask: Why is asking good questions so hard?

Chapter 3: The Discipline of Structure: How can you learn to ask better questions?

PART I: ELABORATE

Chapter 4: Pop the Question: What is the Biggest Question you are facing?

Chapter 5: Size the Moment: What makes this a Big Question for you?

Chapter 6: Self Factualize: What are the facts of your situation?

Chapter 7: Attribute Causality: What created the situation you are in?

Chapter 8: State Your Intentions: What answers do you really want?

PART II: DISLOCATE

Chapter 9: Alienate Yourself: How can you remove the situation from you?

Chapter 10: Tense Up: What is the exploitable tension in your question?

Chapter 11: Dimensionalize the Sphere: What opposites bound your situation?

Chapter 12: Call Time In: How is your situation different in another time?

Chapter 13: Illuminate the Shadows: What realities are you ignoring or avoiding?

Chapter 14: Out the Orthodoxies: What beliefs are hiding in your question?

Chapter 15: Make A Metaphor: What is your situation like?

PART III: TRANSITION

Chapter 16: Burn Something: What do you need to let go of?

Chapter 17: Abandon Affect: What comes to you when you sit in dislocation?

Chapter 18: Open Channels: What do you need to accept as possible?

PART IV: RECONSTRUCT

Chapter 19: Level Up: How has your question re-formed itself?

Chapter 20: Recon your Resources: What comprises your resource stream?

Chapter 21: Particulate your Question: What are the particulars of your question?

Chapter 22: Plot Paths: What steps lead from your Particulated Question?

Chapter 23: Commit to Next: What do you need to do next?

Chapter 24: Much To Do: How can you organize yourself to move from to do to got done?

Chapter 25: Lessons Learned: How can you apply TQW to address everyday questions?

References

About the TQW Creators

DEDICATION

To those on a quest to answer the Big Questions

in business and in life.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Books are never the sole works of those who write them. Every author disturbs the dust of those who walked the path before him. Each author owes debts of gratitude to those who gave him aid en route and those who stepped out of the way.

Gratitude to my life partner, Jenny Teresi, who has provided unflagging and non-judgmental support as I have engaged in the prolonged quest for questions to life’s answers.

Gratitude to my colleague Kim Perkins. From the very inception of the TQW idea, Kim provided energetic encouragement, challenge, and common sense. As a positive psychologist, Kim’s contributions to this work were both scientific and spiritual. Kim insisted we test the TQW concepts empirically. As we co-facilitated workshops, Kim persisted in asking, What is the TQW methodology? Eventually a methodology emerged. While the written words are largely mine, each page in this book has benefited from Kim’s insights into the nature of the human psyche.

Gratitude to Ian McClellan, who provided incisive, brutal, and beautifully articulated editorial feedback. If Ian were not already my son, I would definitely try to adopt him. He has made me aware of the fact that sometimes your fiercest critics are those who care about you most.

Gratitude to my copy editor, Jan Hughes, for an excellent scrubbing of the text.

Gratitude to the many others who have in some way helped birth this book. The following are some of those institutions and individuals: California State Polytechnic University Pomona, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont Rotary Club, Claremont Wellness Professionals, Sunstone Business School, Thomas Amberson, Steve Henson, Doug McGoon, Jeff Stanford, David Wimbish, and Susan Zelkwitz.

Gratitude to those who trusted their Big Questions to us in our early Workouts. The Total Question process could not have been refined without their willing participation.

There are always unsung heroes involved in any great effort. I acknowledge their contributions and offer them my gratitude as well.

All books contain mistakes. I take sole responsibility for any and all such mistakes found in this text.

Gratitude to those who read this book and for their suggestions for improving its usefulness.

Introduction: Why a book on questioning?

Who am I (you may well ask)?

I have made a living as a strategy consultant and executive coach for the past 30 years. After earning my M.B.A. with high distinction from the Harvard Business School, I worked for several prominent consulting firms such as McKinsey & Co., Arthur D. Little, Inc. and PricewaterhouseCoopers. I have also served as a general manager with various organizations including Hanna-Barbera, Nickelodeon, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In 2010, I completed a Ph.D. in Management from the Drucker-Ito School of Management at Claremont Graduate University. Currently, I coach executives, train managers, and teach M.B.A. students on three continents.

As both an academic and a strategy practitioner, I have made a science of learning what helps business owners and corporations succeed. Facts are foundational. Creativity helps. Getting bright, perceptive people to help make decisions and acting on decisions made are prerequisite to success. Teamwork turns opportunity into strategy. Leadership holds it all together and keeps everyone moving in the right direction. At every step, businesspeople need to make decisions about what to do based on reality and their ability to understand how they might respond to that reality.

I have observed over the years that businesses typically can collect all the facts, generate creative ideas, and marshal the people they need to make good decisions. Yet an awful lot of business decisions turn out to be, quite simply, bad decisions. Why?

What problem do I want to solve?

The Harvard Business School is famous for having developed the case study method. Cases are neatly packaged descriptions of business problems. Over the course of two years, M.B.A. students digest as many as 800 cases. Most cases end with the question, What would you do? As an M.B.A. student, you start to believe that running big businesses involves finding solutions to problems.

After leaving business school, I realized that not all businesses run that way. Some managers do not want to address problems. Some executives shy away from asking solution-oriented questions. And not every CEO has a passion for initiating change.

As a junior consultant at McKinsey & Co., I had great difficulty accepting this revelation. It took me nearly two years to realize that some clients ask questions they do not want answered. Further, some clients pay enormous sums of money for strategic advice that they subsequently ignore. Why?

I first encountered this kind of behavior working for a high technology client. The year was 1982. The assignment involved trying to determine the potential market for hand-held portable data entry devices (PDETs). The company had developed the device to help a Mexican beer maker keep track of inventory in the warehouse. The CEO had asked us, What else can we do with this thing?

My consulting team spent six months roaming the U.S. looking for answers. We amassed a compelling body of evidence that showed markets existed, or would soon emerge, for hand-held data entry devices. We brought back dozens of examples of how the company could exploit their first-to-market position. We made our presentation, laying out all the potential market segments ripe for exploitation. We concluded that the PDET was on the connected edge of an economic bonanza.

At the end of the presentation, the President of the company and the VP of Marketing simply said, We’re not interested. The company subsequently walked away from exploiting the market for PDETs. Others rushed in, and the rest is history.

In case you are wondering, PDETs are the hand-held devices carried by every supermarket clerk and UPS driver in the world today. They were the forerunner of the tablet computer and the smart phone. The client company at the time owned over 60% of the PDET space. They had asked, What can we do with this thing? My team had given them some brilliant answers. And yet they chose to forgo a multi-billion-dollar opportunity. It just seemed so wasteful.

I felt heartbroken. That experience nearly sent me looking for another career. I have since discovered that most senior strategy consultants have at least one such spectacular story. They got paid millions of dollars for advice that was never used.

In 2007, I set myself the task of discovering why clients accept or ignore advice from the strategy consultants they employ. My first hunch was that businesspeople did not know how to evaluate the work that strategy consultants do. The concepts are too abstract. The processes are too complex. The data become too overwhelming. The costs are out of line with what people are used to spending on professional services. It’s all just too much to take in!

I interviewed 50 top professionals from around the world to test my hunch. I spoke with both senior strategy consultants and with the corporate decision-makers they serve. I talked with lots of Directors and Chiefs. Directors from McKinsey, Bain, BCG and other top firms participated. Chief Executive Officers, Chief Strategy Officers, Chief Financial Officers, and Chief Information Officers gave me their views. My sample included decision-makers who collectively spent $500 million on strategy consulting in 2009.

My hunch turned out to be incorrect. Generally speaking, executives who buy strategic advice understand how to evaluate the work consultants do. They understand exactly what they buy. I was stuck with having to come up with a new hunch about why clients ignore good strategic advice. I wondered:

Why do executives seek advice they do not use?

Some participants in my study suggested the disconnection might originate very early in the consulting project. They said, Look at the question. My doctoral research tactics shifted from looking at solutions to looking at questions.

What question do you want answered?

Discussions with industry leaders suggested that those decision-makers who act on their consultants’ advice had gotten satisfactory answers to questions they wanted answered. Those decision-makers who reject their consultants’ advice either asked the wrong questions or they did not ask questions they actually wanted answered. Those statements oversimplify things, but that’s what I learned in a nutshell. If you were satisfied with the answers you got, you acted. If you were not satisfied, you remained stuck.

Further, my research suggested two main ways senior decision-makers get stuck.

In the first case, the decision-maker realizes he or she has some kind of problem. They genuinely want their problem solved. They ask questions they believe will solve their problem. They hire consultants, tell them their questions, and get good answers to the questions they ask. The solutions they get address the questions they asked. The answers do not solve their problems. They get stuck on the question, Now what?

Decision-makers who do not get the answers they need may lament that their consultants did not give them answers they could use. Some individuals may seize victory from the jaws of defeat by recognizing that their consultants helped them arrive at the questions they really needed to address. Other individuals blame their consultants for not getting to the bottom of their problems. Either way, decision-makers and their consultants end up frustrated. Recommendations do not get implemented.

In the second case, a decision-maker knows she or he has a problem. But for this kind of decision-maker, the problem appears more political than substantive. Such decision-makers typically believe they have solutions to their problems. They just need to convince somebody else that they are right. Sometimes this second type of decision-maker wants to buy time. Or in the odd case, they are genuinely confused or misguided. They call in consultants to serve as line judges.

The second type of decision-maker may or may not realize that consultants inevitably see their situation in a different light. Those who hire consultants typically do not expect their consultants to suggest that they are working on the wrong problems. Or if they do expect this outcome, they associate it with having hired wily consultants. At the end of the project, decision-makers who do not want new solutions reject their consultant’s recommendations.

Under either scenario, a great deal of effort is spent in getting answers that nobody uses. Expensive consulting advice, and more importantly, unrecoverable time is wasted. I began to consider:

What if one could develop a methodology to help business decision-makers find the right questions to answer with less waste of time and money?

How can you ask a better question?

I narrowed my attention to the role of question-asking as the critical step in problem-solving. For example, I asked my study participants, How would you improve the evaluation of consulting results? The overwhelming answer was, Ask better questions.

The word overwhelming is not hyperbole. To put this in context, the directive to ask better questions represents the collective wisdom of over 1,000 years of senior level decision-making. Three fourths of the consultants interviewed and two thirds of the executives interviewed simply said, Ask better questions. A thousand years of experience comes down to this:

To get better answers you need to ask better questions.

Four thousand years of human history also confirms this wisdom. Ancient sages such as Euripides and Lao Tzu asserted that appropriate questioning provides the key to understanding. Modern advice-givers, such as neuro-linguistic programming advocate Tony Robbins and nitro-linguistic comedian George Carlin, have also reasserted the soundness of seeking good questions. There seems to be little disagreement in the literature from Archimedes to Albert Einstein:

To get better answers you need to ask better questions.

Conducting a scientific search for a better way to ask questions seemed like a simple quest. But when I looked for the book titled, How to Ask Better Business Questions, I did not find it. Rather, I did not find anything that showed me exactly how to accomplish that feat. What I found were tip sheets, biographies, quote collections, and business blogs. While each of these sources provided useful tidbits, none offered a comprehensive process approach for asking better questions.

I did not find a methodology, or even a methodological approach, for asking better business questions. A lot of people claim to be able to define a better question. They just don’t tell you how to formulate one.

Stories from great decision-makers inspire, but do not tell you how their minds worked to generate those questions. Lists are good as heuristics, but they do not tell you what to do if your specific question is not on the list. What can an average business leader, whether a sole proprietor or corporate chief, do to ask better questions?

I had stumbled onto an important gap in the literature of business management. There was a need for a process-oriented guide to help businesspeople ask better questions. This book attempts to fill that gap. Its objective is to help you ask weighty questions systematically, comprehensively and with a certainty of success.

How did the TQW solution emerge?

The Total Question Workout (TQW) represents a process approach to asking big questions that matter to people who run things. The things they run can be companies, organizations, teams, professional enterprises, or just their own lives.

I have culled the techniques described in this book from various disciplines over the past three years. I honed these techniques in workshops with corporate groups, entrepreneurs and individuals around the world. I have also relied on my intuition and the invaluable prodding of my colleague Kim Perkins from the field of Positive Psychology. TWQ melds the most useful techniques I found into an integrated structure.

During 2011, Kim and I conducted multiple workshops to refine the utility of the techniques described. We conducted workshops with both corporate groups and individuals. We made a great number of changes to the process as a result of what we learned from the workshops. The current book documents the resultant methodology. We continue to deploy and refine that methodology as our work continues.

The TQW process follows a set pattern. Participants arrive at the Workout with a Big Question (BQ). They work through the questions posed by the facilitator to help them experience their question from various perspectives. This process expands their understanding of their BQ and typically changes it to reflect a more accurate perception of reality. During the Workout, participants develop a precise question, called a Particulated Question, and a path forward or path-plan. They leave the Workout with a clear view of what they need to do next.

Many Workout participants have eureka! experiences when they recognize the question they truly need to answer. In some cases, Workout participants discover that the answers they need flow naturally from having discovered the right questions. Other Workout participants discover that they did not really want to answer the questions they presented. Asking the right questions forces you to consider aspects of your BQ that you might want to avoid. Every step of the process requires honesty and expands self-knowledge. Not everyone relishes that kind of experience.

I have engaged in TQW several times as a participant. I’ve tasted my own medicine. Without gaming the system, I listened to the facilitator, addressed the questions posed, and offered up the results. Each time, I made new discoveries and obtained better questions than I had originally presented. Sometimes you just do not know what you do not know. TQW helped me discover many unknowns in my own thinking. I’m confident that TQW will help you achieve similar results.

What I have reaffirmed in describing the Total Question Workout process is that taking a disciplined approach to asking questions generates better questions. Engaging in the TQW process results in participants getting the questions they need. If you get what you need, shouldn’t that be what you want?

The TQW demonstrates that taking a comprehensively structured approach to asking problem-solving questions creates possibilities for solutions you could not have imagined otherwise. Effort put into discovering the right questions, provided the outcomes matter, will move you toward answering the questions you need to answer. That is a guarantee.

What exactly is the TQW process?

Here’s the one-minute description of TQW:

You have a Big Question of some kind. You know it’s a Big Question because it’s keeping you up at night, the outcome is important, and you don’t have a ready answer.

There are four stages you need to go through to answer a Big Question. I don’t know where you are in the process; so let me describe the four stages.

The first stage involves fully understanding your situation and your motives for wanting to resolve the question that comes from being in that situation.

The second stage involves separating yourself from the situation you are in. You cannot resolve a situation if you see yourself as part of it. You have to gain perspective by separating yourself from your situation in as many ways as possible.

The third stage involves letting go of something that keeps you attached to, and subject to, the situation you are in. Something is holding you back. Some fear, some projection of implications, some belief about what is possible and what is not possible. Something. As long as you hold onto these things they will hold you back.

Fourth, you need to perceive new possibilities for resolving your Big Question. For various reasons, you are not able to see alternative resolutions today. You need to reframe your question in a way that will enable you to apply the substantial resources you have to address each and every part of the question.

If you have a Big Question, you are stuck at one of those four stages. At which stage are you stuck?

Who will benefit from reading this book?

This book is designed for businesspeople, whether solo entrepreneurs or corporate titans. The goal is to help you achieve your goals by helping you focus on the questions you really need to answer. The techniques presented have been tested with corporate chiefs, lifestyle entrepreneurs, professionals, and other decision-makers in between. If you are in business, work in one, or run one, and you have personal or professional questions about what you are doing, then TQW will help you. You don’t have to be a CEO hiring million-dollar consultants (although you can be). You just need to be an active thinker who wants to improve your ability to run your business or your life.

What will you learn by reading this book?

Most businesspeople would like to ask better questions. The question is, how do you do it? TQW addresses that question. TQW is a how-to guide for asking better questions.

You will recognize some of the tools used in the Workout. You will also discover some tools you have not used. Whether the tools employed are novel or known, you will be able to apply them immediately to your current Big Question. Each chapter provides a template to help you progress through the facets of your Big Question. You can make the TQW learning experience as immediate and as relevant as you want.

In addition to providing theory for asking better questions, TQW deploys a healthy measure of common sense. I want to make asking good questions as practical as reading a newspaper. Everybody should be able to recognize and ask good questions.

You may decide to launch into the process immediately. Or you may want to learn how TQW works for use at a future date. Most people find that the best time to take medicine is when they feel sick. You don’t have to wait to practice TQW. It also works preventatively.

I typically lead TQW sessions as either offsite meetings or as weekend retreats. The immersive experience of spending two or three days working through a Big Question inevitably gives participants new perspectives on the nature of the challenges they face. If nothing else, TQW provides a systematic way of stepping back to consider what is important in your life and in your work.

Following the method laid out in this book will also help you transform your ambiguous questions into actionable ideas. After working your way through the Total Question Workout, you will understand the process of asking better questions. You will be empowered to find the right answers by asking the right questions for running your business or your life.

What will this book not teach you?

TQW is not a single method for asking important business questions. Rather, TQW represents a synthesis of different approaches from insightful question-askers over the ages. TQW brings together these well-tested tools into a catalytic sequence. This sequence comprises the 20 questions of the Total Question Workout. Engaging in the entire set of exercises will give you a better question than the one you bring to the Workout. That is my guarantee.

I’d like to say, "This book will teach you all you need to know to ask good questions. Unfortunately, I cannot make that claim. Instead, this book will teach you all that I know at this point about how to ask better questions. I’m still on a journey of discovery. The book represents a milestone, not the final destination. The quest remains driven by the question, What else?"

You are about to learn some useful things about yourself, your situation and the way you ask questions. By engaging in TQW, you will discover the assumptions you have made and the limitations those assumptions impose on the ways you might address your question. You will learn different approaches to question-asking. You will build skills to re-visualize your resources so you can achieve a desirable outcome. And you will internalize a method to help you address the Big Questions you encounter.

I’m especially interested in learning what worked for you and what did not. As much as I like asking questions, I also like listening! What did you discover on your questioning journey? Send me a note. I’d be happy to hear from you.

Bennett E. McClellan

Kathmandu, Nepal

March 2013

Chapter 1: The Journey of Inquiry

Why is asking Big Questions a process?

Human knowledge is the byproduct of the quest to answer questions. The words quest and question share the same Latin root in the word quaerere, meaning to ask or to seek. Synonyms for quest include hunt, chase, search, seek, explore, query, probe, forage and pursue. To question is to engage in a process of inquiry. Knowledge is the product of inquiry. Knowing follows from asking.

I learned from my screenwriting teachers that a mythological quest has two essential components. In the beginning, the hero is enslaved. In the end, the hero has escaped that enslavement. Mythological quests involve a perilous journey during which the hero comes to understand the nature of his or her enslavement and the value of gaining freedom. Along the way, various opponents and trials strengthen the hero’s resolve to achieve freedom.

How do quests help us solve problems?

The Total Question Workout uses the mythological journey as its structural spine. Having a Big Question represents a kind of enslavement. Until you can fully address it, a Big Question holds you back from doing something you need to do. An unanswered Big Question is a debtor’s prison. You are stuck in it until you recognize it, explore it, and resolve it. In the beginning, you know you need to do something. You just do not know what you need to do. Nor do you know how to do it.

The mythologist Joseph Campbell asserted that the universal myth, or hero’s journey, served, among other functions, to provide a guide for accomplishing the transitions in life. The myth is a metaphor for addressing life’s adversities. A mythological journey represents the quest to solve Big Questions. The transition from childhood through adolescence into adulthood is one of the more universally shared human adversities. How do you do it? That’s a Big Question each adolescent faces. A great deal of mythology is modeled around the liminal transition from childhood into adulthood.

TQW is a quest designed to help you escape your state of stuckness. It involves recognizing your assumptions and defeating the limitations of your thinking. It requires you to traverse the dangerous, unknown territory of self-awareness. It tests your resolve to find a way forward from where you got stuck. And in the end, it points you toward a clear understanding of what you need to do next.

Inevitably, a quest involves a number of unexpected twists and turns. Like a roller coaster ride, the path of a quest ascends and descends without warning. Quests also involve lateral motion, shifting unexpectedly from side to side. A quest for knowledge involves action across multiple dimensions. A quest is generally a bumpy ride.

The questing process also iterates or loops back on itself. Once the question-asker finds answers to his or her original question, a new question, or a new set of questions, emerges. The search for answers inevitably brings those who search face-to-face with more questions. Knowledge expands. But the capacity for gaining new knowledge is never exhausted. Beyond each answer lies another question.

How is the questioning process like a journey?

There is a saying attributed to Lao Tzu, the 6th century BCE Chinese philosopher credited with founding Daoism: The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Lao Tzu obviously had not looked that far into the future. Otherwise, he would have realized that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a trip to the airport. Regardless of Lao Tzu’s limited perspective on future technology, he got the structure of things right. You have to put out some effort if you intend to go anywhere.

A journey can only begin when the individual initiates it. If you want to go somewhere other than where you are, you must make a series of concerted efforts. You must pick a direction. You must then take that metaphorical first step. And after that, you must take one step after another until you reach your destination.

The trajectory of life experience is rarely linear. Ask any successful person how they got to where they are. They will most likely tell you it was through a series of plans, mishaps and unexpected events. We cross and re-cross the paths we choose. We maintain our desire to travel the road that takes us where we want to go, but we reserve the right to change our destination.

Asking good questions and getting good answers involves initiating action in the direction of what you seek. What exists between a question and its answer? Or what happens between an answer and its question? What steps do you take after taking the first step? What steps do you take after those? And then?

Answering a Big Question is never a one-step process. You must prepare yourself to shift in any direction that you find informative. The path may be relatively short and direct. Or the path may be tortuous and convoluted.