Recap of Strategic Questioning: Unleashing the Power of Inquiry for Organizational Transformation

​In Strategic Questioning, Juanita Brown, David Isaacs, Eric Vogt, and Nancy Margulies explore how asking the right questions—rather than chasing the right answers—can unlock learning, innovation, and transformation. Highlighting examples like Hewlett-Packard’s shift in purpose, the authors show how strategic questions can reshape organizations. For dialogue practitioners, the article offers practical insights on creating spaces where powerful questions and collective wisdom can thrive. Read more in the blog post below. 

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The Question

​In an era where "having the right answers" is often valued above all else, Brown, Isaacs, Vogt, and Margulies make a compelling case for the transformative power of asking the right questions. Their seminal article in THINKER® magazine challenges our answer-focused culture and presents strategic questioning as a catalyst for organizational learning, innovation, and meaningful change.

From Answer-Obsessed to Question-Curious

The authors begin by highlighting a troubling pattern across homes, schools, and workplaces: the systematic discouragement of questions. Children are told to stop asking so many questions. Students are demanded to provide answers, not questions. Employees are expected to demonstrate knowledge, not curiosity.
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This cultural aversion to questioning, the authors argue, is fundamentally limiting our capacity for discovery and innovation. By prioritizing the "right answer" over the "right question," we inadvertently stifle the very creativity and collective intelligence needed to navigate complex challenges.

Strategic Questions as Transformational Tools

What makes a question "strategic"? According to the authors, strategic questions:
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• Attract energy and focus attention on what truly matters
• Are genuinely open-ended, avoiding yes/no responses
• Invite ongoing inquiry rather than immediate action
• Continue to surface new ideas and possibilities
  
  

Perhaps most powerfully illustrated through their Hewlett-Packard case study, strategic questions can catalyze profound organizational transformation. When HP Labs shifted from asking how to become "the best in the world" to becoming "the best for the world," this simple preposition change sparked a reimagining of the organization's entire purpose and contribution to society.

Building Inquiring Systems

For dialogue practitioners and facilitators, the article offers valuable guidance on fostering environments where strategic questions can emerge and flourish. Leaders are encouraged to:

• Create platforms for authentic conversation around catalyzing questions
• Shift from problem-orientation to possibility-orientation through appreciative inquiry
• Foster shared meaning through stories, images, and metaphors
• Nurture communities of practice where frontline questioning is valued
• Leverage collaborative technologies to enable widespread participation in inquiry

Implications for Dialogue and Deliberation

This work holds particular relevance for the dialogue and deliberation community, suggesting that our most valuable contribution may not be providing answers but rather helping groups discover and engage with their most powerful questions.

The authors remind us that "the usefulness of our knowledge depends on the quality of the questions we ask." By embracing strategic questioning as a cornerstone practice, dialogue practitioners can help organizations and communities tap into their collective wisdom, foster genuine exploration, and catalyze the emergence of new possibilities.
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In a world of increasing complexity and polarization, perhaps our path forward begins not with asserting what we know, but by courageously asking what we don't yet understand—together.

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This recap is part of NCDD's ongoing commitment to sharing valuable resources for dialogue and deliberation practitioners. For more information about the original publication,
please contact the authors or reference the full article in THINKER® magazine, Vol. 13 No. 9, November 2002.

read the full article