Smart Questions

There are many reasons that business leaders, managers, and private individuals go about problem solving in the wrong way. As Gerald Nadler and William Chandon point out, most people have learned to use the wrong framework or paradigm for working through issues and problems. In essence, they approach problems using a thinking mode that leads to excessive if not pointless data collection, analysis-paralysis, and static solutions that tend to only patch up the situation for a short period of time. Smart Questions offers an entirely new framework for creating solutions. Drawn from the authors' many years of research and field experience, the Smart Questions Approach reveals how the leading creators of solutions in almost every profession and walk of life--including business, government, education, and even in families--think and approach their assignments. The author's holistic thinking approach shows how to use three "foundation" questions--focusing on uniqueness, purposeful information, and systems--which must be explored for every problem. These three questions, an essent ial starting point for exploring problems, in turn lead to other key questions that will ultimately create effective solutions.
Smart Questions will completely retrain the reader to become a more intelligent thinker and a better creator of solutions--with an ability to develop creative, purposeful, long-term answers in a wide range of situations.

Preface xi 1 Introducing the Smart Questions Approach: Moving Beyond Problem Solving to Creating Solutions 1 2 SQA Phase
1: Getting People Involved 43 3 SQA Phase
2: Selecting a Focus Purpose 87 4 SQA Phase
3: Creating an Ideal Future Solution 132 5 SQA Phase
4: Building a Living Solution for Today and Tomorrow 180 6 The Power of SQA: Two Case Studies 230 7 SQA in Organizations and Society 264 References 283 Acknowledgments 285 The Authors 287 Index 289