Questions Are the Answer

A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life

By: Hal Gregersen

Narrated by: Rick Adamson

A 2018 Nautilus Book Awards Silver winner.

What if you could unlock a better answer to your most vexing problem - in your workplace, community, or home life - just by changing the question?

Talk to creative problem solvers and they will often tell you the key to their success is asking a different question.

Take Debbie Sterling, the social entrepreneur who created GoldieBlox. The idea came when a friend complained about too few women in engineering and Sterling wondered aloud: "Why are all the great building toys made for boys?" Or consider Nobel laureate Richard Thaler, who asked: "Would it change economic theory if we stopped pretending people were rational?" Or listen to Jeff Bezos, whose relentless approach to problem-solving has fueled Amazon’s exponential growth: “Getting the right question is key to getting the right answer.”

Great questions like these have a catalytic quality - that is, they dissolve barriers to creative thinking and channel the pursuit of solutions into new, accelerated pathways. Often, the moment they are voiced, they have the paradoxical effect of being utterly surprising yet instantly obvious.

For innovation and leadership guru Hal Gregersen, the power of questions has always been clear - but it took some years for the follow-on question to hit him: If so much depends on fresh questions, shouldn’t we know more about how to arrive at them? That sent him on a research quest ultimately including more than 200 interviews with creative thinkers. Questions Are the Answer delivers the insights Gregersen gained about the conditions that give rise to catalytic questions - and breakthrough insights - and how anyone can create them.

©2018 Hal Gregersen (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

Awesome

I loved it. I enjoyed listening to the audio book. I recommend it to everyone wants to improve his skill.

Are you ready?

This is an excellent book that is hard to put down once you start. It's engaging and makes you think about many things. You won't be disappointed with this excellent book.

So glad I read this

This book really pushes my boundaries as a leader. It helped me realize the power of questions. It has strengthened my practice and leadership skill set.

Breakthrough

This is one of those books that simply changes your outputs, making them simply better. I have the performance less than five stars because the narration, although well-delivered, was poorly directed and detached from the subject matter expertise clearly held and driver's by Hal Gregersen, the author. Mispronounced terms of art, as with the word "ideation" have this away. If Hal was in the sound engineering booth giving any level of guidance, that would have been caught and fixed. Instead, there's assume evidence this recording may not have been important enough to tend to more caringly.

Otherwise, a must-listen for anyone determined to find breakthrough answerers to to challenging issues.

first half was good, second half "meh"

Found the practical examples and tactics useful in the first half. Second half was some tactical but more examples of questions leaders asked or how they fostered fresh thinking in different context. To me it's "meh" because the examples didn't feel novel, so it felt like you're listening to stories you've already heard.

Masterpiece

Thanks for writing this book Hal , Will go as top book in my decesion making books

Thought provoking

This book made me examine different areas if my life, and made me try to find my personal question. What do I want for myself and my family? What is my purpose? Thank you

Great book with relevant reflections

A great reflection on your way to engage situations for you personal or professional life. A must read to improve your self to get better outputs and outcomes.

Learning that asking Questions opens up so many other avenues that.you would never have considered to explore

Loved the context in how Questioning came about for the different people and industries. and the practical ways it can be implemented.

This book is worth your time

Questions Are the Answer is both like and unlike other business books. It is personal and philosophical while advocating for business strategies to establish or enhance an organization's capacity to innovate. It ends up not exactly asking big questions ("How will you measure your life?" is one that comes to mind), but challenging readers to do so. Hal Gregersen is an extraordinary person, judging from this book. I'm so glad I read it!