Page 93 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

84 ASK A BETTER QUESTION

You were at your best creatively when you were young and didn’t
know anything. As a child, you were extremely curious. You lived in
your imagination nearly 100 percent of the time. But today, as an adult,
you know so much. Well, the Ask a Better Question technique can put
you in a position to know less and to be more curious and therefore
more creative.

CREATIVE PROBLEM CAUSING IN ACTION

We talk about problems causing us to stretch, and we mention that
we’re at our best when we are stretching. Like the athlete whose high-
lights film shows him stretching, your resume shows you stretching.
However, the athlete has to wait for the ball to be just out of reach, or
seemingly out of reach, in order to be able to stretch and make the
“impossible” play, whereas you can “place the solution just out of your
reach” by simply asking the right question. You can cause yourself to
stretch any time you want.
Think about it. When you have a dilemma, when you have a prob-
lem to solve, what do you tend to do? You tend to look for an answer
that you know. I can guarantee you’ll get more creative results if you
ask a better question. All you have to do is pose a question for which
you don’t know the answer.
A number of years ago I was working with a major dairy, looking
for more effective ways to sell milk, a commodity item to be sure. I
challenged the group with this question: “Assume because of some
manufacturing problem or other problem your price is twice that of
your competitor. Now how do you get people to buy your milk?” They
were pushing their minds in 100 different directions because they
didn’t know the answer to that question. They hadn’t experienced that
kind of a problem. They had no choice but to stretch. And it all started
with someone asking a better question.

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HOW TO ASK A BETTER QUESTION

When I first started my creative coaching, I was working with a
TV station whose news numbers were very low compared to the com-
petition. I remember taking a group of executives into a brainstorming
session and separating them into four or five smaller teams of five peo-