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We are trained solution finders. At school we are asked questions and the quality of our solutions is assessed. As we evolve in our careers, management examines the solutions we propose rather than the questions we asked. In annual reviews, “performance” is usually defined as creating and implementing solutions, rather than finding the best problems to address. We become wonderfully efficient at solving problems, even if they are the wrong ones. Little recognition comes from asking the right question.

However, asking the right question is often the key to groundbreaking business success. With a properly framed question, it becomes almost easy to come up with an elegant answer. Bank of America has made a huge profit on its Keep the Change program, which rounds up customer debit card purchases to the nearest dollar and transfers the difference to a personal savings account. The patented program is breathtakingly simple for both the bank and the customer. The question might be, “How can customers save money without thinking, planning, or clearly cutting back on consumption?” Tylenol PM, marketed as a nighttime pain reliever, has long been America’s best over-the-counter sleep aid, despite being exactly the same Active ingredient contains like less expensive drugs that are marketed specifically to aid in falling asleep. The question: “How can people fall asleep and sleep without feeling like they are dependent on sleeping pills?”

Asking the right question is also important in establishing an effective business strategy. Far too many “strategies” are actually laundry lists with vague, flat goals (one of which always seems to be “developing our people”, even in some pretty brutal workplaces). Ordinarily, they could have been written by any competitor in the industry. As described in Richard Rumelt’s excellent book Good Strategy / Bad Strategy, an effective strategy must be centered around the right questions. For a current customer, these questions included:

1. How do we overcome the disadvantage of our No. 3 market position in an R&D-intensive industry in order to lead an up-and-coming, high-growth market segment?
2. When selling a single product to a market, how do we attract attention when competitors are selling an entire line of products?
3. How do we escape a downward spiral in our industry?

Each of these questions focused on a problem or challenge. While corporate strategies are often rosy internal sales documents to attract investment in a company, an honest and confidential strategy should focus heavily on difficult issues and methodically set out the challenges.

How do you find the right questions? Good questions are clear, even if they are broad. They not only have to be linked to an overarching goal (often, as Prof. Clayton Christensen put it, the “task to be done” of a customer), but also to competition issues, the challenges that arise from current approaches, decision criteria, and the Obstacles to the introduction of new solutions. For example, imagine a company wants to enable nurses to communicate better in a hospital (hint: the goal is not to sell more of something, but to help the customer get the job done). The questions could include:

Tasks to Do – How can we help nurses a) record patient information, b) obtain records from medical records, c) consult doctors, and d) review nursing policies?

Current approaches – Where do we need to be better than the traditional solutions of paging and going to the nurses station?

Competition – What are the inherent limitations of generic solutions like the iPad?

Decision criteria – How can this be an easy decision for buyers? How can we make it easy for nurses to use the solution even before they feel like experts?

Obstacles to the introduction of new solutions – What kind of device would sales channels be motivated to sell? What would enable them to offer little training? How can we eliminate risk perceptions when introducing new solutions in potentially life threatening situations?

Before the company defined anything about the solution, it became very specific about the question. Then it can develop detailed answers that answer the question without incorporating other features that may not be important to the customer.

This approach originated in product development but is generally applicable. When you think of a good employee who is difficult to manage, carefully phrase the question. When considering an acquisition, make sure you know what question the business will answer.

Another benefit of the correct question is that the quality of the answers can be assessed with confidence. Too often, unquestioned solutions are judged on the basis of implicit decision criteria that are never expressed. As a result, employees do not understand the logic of managers and suggest ideas that continue to miss the mark.

Detailed questions are not as exciting as brilliant answers. They are seldom celebrated at the dining table. But without the compass heading that comes with asking the right question, fascinating solutions can profoundly distract organizations.

For more information on this approach, see my book JOBS TO BE DONE: A Roadmap for Customer-centric Innovation.

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