#26 Warren Berger: Improving The Questions You Ask

The quality of your outcome depends on the quality of your questions. Through asking the right questions we can spark innovation and creativity, gain deeper knowledge in the topics that are most important to us, and propel us forward in our personal and professional pursuits. Yet very few of us do it well — if we do it at all. My guest on the podcast today is Warren Berger — journalist, speaker, best selling author, and self-proclaimed questionologist. His insightful book A More Beautiful Question shows how the world’s leading innovators, education leaders, creative thinkers, and red-hot start-ups ask game-changing questions to nurture creativity, solve problems, and create new possibilities. In this episode, we discuss the importance of asking the right questions, why they’re critical to your success, and how you may be one great question away from a major breakthrough. You’ll also learn: How Warren manages the constant input and stimulation from online consumption when it’s time to create. The small habits that pack the biggest punch and make the most difference in Warren’s life What makes a question more or less effective How to create a culture where questions are welcome and encouraged Why answering all your kids’ questions may be doing them a disservice — and what to do instead What “collaborative inquiry” is and how to use it to get the most out of your teams in the workplace How Warren transformed one of his most painful failures into one of his most proud achievements Why Warren insists that everyone is creative, and what we can do to fan the flames of our own creativity If you think you could improve the quality (and frequency) of your questions to enhance key areas of your life, this is not a conversation you’ll want to miss. Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:08Shane Parrish?

  Hello listeners, welcome to the Farnham Street Podcast called The Knowledge Project. I'm your host Shane Parrish, the curator behind the Farnham Street blog, which is an online community focused on mastering the best of what other people have already figured out. The Knowledge Project is where we talk with interesting people to uncover frameworks you can use to learn more in less time, make better decisions, and live a happier, more meaningful life. On this episode, I have Warren Berger, author of the book A Beautiful Question. I was so curious to talk to Warren because I wanted to learn how we can ask better questions. After all, questions enable us to innovate, solve problems, and progress. They allow us to gain perspective, come at things from a different angle, and hone in

• 0:52Shane Parrish?

  on the variables that really matter. To get the best outcomes, you need to start with the best possible questions. And yet, in reality, questions can be dangerous. A lot of leaders see questions as inefficient. These leaders think that questions slow them down. And in some organizations, asking a question can even come with a career risk. And yet, improving outcomes is so often tied to asking the right questions. The questions that challenge the conventional wisdom, the questions that challenge our assumptions, the questions that allow you to see something in a new light. Far from slowing you down, these questions propel you forward. Questioning isn't really taught. It's not something we learn how to do, we just do it.

• 1:34Shane Parrish?

  And because we do it without being conscious about how we're doing it, we never really get better at it. We don't have a question coach. And as we'll explore, asking great questions is as much art as it is science. In this conversation, Warren and I explore not only asking better questions, but also overcoming failure, common advice he thinks is wrong, and his small habits that make a big difference. Let's dig in.

• 2:02Shane Parrish?

  In your career, you've gone from writing about business generally to writing about advertising and design, and finally towards writing about inquiry or questions. How did this progression in your career and your professional interests come about over the years?

• 2:17Speaker 01

  You know, I think it was really just following my interests. Well, I guess in terms of, originally, it was probably practicality. You know, I started out as a business journalist because, I don't know, it seemed like that's where the work was. And then, within the business journalism world, I tried to, I gravitated towards things I found interesting. And so I started to go towards the creative side of business. And that got me really into, deeply into, the world of marketing and advertising and how creativity is used in the advertising world. And that was a big, kind of, obsession of mine for a long time.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  And then, from creativity and advertising, I started to move into design, because I noticed a lot of interesting things were being done by designers. They seemed to be, sort of, within the creative world, design was becoming more and more important in the business world. So I started to talk about design. And then, the leap from design to questioning was really just because, as I started to analyze design and design thinking, I kept coming back to questioning. It always seemed like questioning was at the center of everything.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  It was, it was, it was how designers tended to think, and how they, how they solved problems, and how they framed a challenge. So, so I just kept noticing that questioning was such a central issue, and I felt like it hadn't been talked about. It certainly has been talked about in limited ways. You know, you see a lot of books that have a chapter on questioning, or you see a lot of articles written about the importance of questioning. But I couldn't find a book that had really gone into it the way I thought it deserved. So, so I did, and that led to a more beautiful question. And now I'm kind of hooked on it. I think I'll be...

• 4:27Speaker 01

  You know, I'm calling myself a questionologist and I just like feel like I'm gonna stay with this. I'm gonna stay with this subject for a while. I think I'm finishing up my second book on it now. And you know, there's just so much to do within that subject.

• 4:42Shane Parrish?

  I really want to talk a lot about questioning and we're gonna get into, we're gonna geek out on that in a little bit. But I want to go back to something that you said earlier, which is you were a freelance business journalist. And I was wondering, what do you think of the state of freelance journalism today?

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's a very mixed, mixed bag. I think in some ways you have more opportunity than ever before because there are so many outlets. I also think you can, if you're a self promoter, which I'm not really, but if you have a little bit of self promoting capability, there are ways to promote yourself as a freelance writer now that you never, ever had before. Using social media, using blogs, using podcasts. I mean, you can really get yourself out there and get your name and your brand as a freelance journalist out there in a way that, you know, in my early years of my career, it was just, you just, there was no possibility of doing that. The only way you got your name out there was your byline. That was it.

• 5:43Shane Parrish?

  You can go direct to the customer now.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Like getting your name out to, to readers, but also to potential outlets, clients, you know, people that might hire you to write. So I think the, that's all changed and that is a huge change for the better. Just the ability to, to get yourself out there. What has changed for the worse is I think a devaluing of the content. Because it's so easy to get yourself out there because there are so many outlets. It feels to me like, you know, the, the content is often seen as not being worth as much as it was years ago.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  You know, you still have some magazines that are hanging in there and, and paying well for, for content. But you know, more and more, you know, we're moving into this digital realm where the, the, the pay scale is totally different. And, and the, the valuation of your writing is just completely different. And I guess it has to be. I guess that's the way the economics work. But, um, but you know, that has definitely been a, a, a negative side of all of this.

• 6:56Shane Parrish?

  With all of this information out there, I'm curious how you personally filter and read and consume not only journalism, but more in-depth research and articles and books.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I tend to have a very haphazard consumption of media. Um, I have, I have certain blogs that I follow, um, uh, pretty closely. Um, and then from there, um, I just kind of bounce all over the place. And, um, you know, I have certain print publications. I still, I still read regularly, The Times, The New Yorker, uh, things like that. Um, but I'd say my media consumption is, is, um, is kind of all over the place. And I feel like, um, I, there's, you know, there's so much media out there now that I feel like it's dangerous. Um, you know, I just feel like, uh, you know, one of the things I'm

• 7:51Speaker 01

  talking about in my newer book is, is creativity, you know, and how you, uh, can use questioning to spark your, your own creativity. But, but to me, one of the biggest issues, um, confronting or, or, um, putting a damper on creativity now is all of the stuff that's coming at us all the time. And I think to me, that's the, it's an enemy of creativity, you know? Um, it, it can at times inspire creativity because you can come across something that, uh, triggers a thought or an idea, and that's really good. But more often what it's doing is putting you into react mode. Um, you're just, you know, taking stuff in and, and

• 8:32Speaker 01

  just reacting. And I think that makes it harder to shift into create mode, which to me is a whole different thing. When you're in create mode, you really have to put everything else aside. And it's not about taking in stuff anymore. It's about output, you know? And, um, and I really think that there's a, there's a problem right now. Um, and I know I, I have it firsthand, you know, I have it myself pretty badly. But I think a lot of people do of just not being able to get away from the the constant stimulation of of incoming incoming stuff.

• 9:08Shane Parrish?

  Tell me a little bit more about that. You had two paradigms there, create mode and kind of react mode. Are there other modes? Do you enter them? Do you have a routine around them? How do you think about that?

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, what I do is I now try to separate my day into an online portion of the day and an offline portion, because I found I can't do I I just find the online part of my day just takes over and it will dictate my behavior in ways that I can't even control. So so what I have to do now is I will spend, let's say, the morning dealing with lots of internet searches, lots of catching up on stuff, responding to email, communicating with people, maybe doing some interviews, things of that nature. And then I try to

• 9:59Speaker 01

  create a block of four hours, five hours, where I am actually cut off. I have no internet contact and I do it in an office where I I don't have internet connection there. And so I have decided it's like a cave. I've created a cave for myself. And that's what I've been doing for the past, you know, six or seven years in various different locations. But I always try to have a cave that I can go to. And I feel like it's, you know, it's the only thing that that works for me, because once I go into the cave, then I'm no longer

• 10:43Speaker 01

  looking things up or or bouncing around from one blog to another. Now I am I have no choice but to actually create something, because otherwise there's nothing to do.

• 10:53Shane Parrish?

  You're focused.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  So so that's that seems to work for me.

• 10:57Shane Parrish?

  That strikes me as a little bit counterintuitive. Can you talk to me about why react mode would be in the morning and not the other way around?

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Um, that's just way the way I've done it. I think probably. To be honest, I think you'd be better off flipping that because a lot of people are more creative in the morning. And, and also, you know, there's that whole thing about the, the waking dream, you know, the idea that, um, when you've been sleeping, your, um, your mind has been making a lot of, uh, your subconscious has been making a lot of connections and there's been a lot of interesting stuff going on. Uh, and so, some people feel, um, it has never really worked for me that much, but, but some people feel that if you can kind of rise out of bed and, and just go straight to, uh, uh, your creative, um, workspace and start writing or creating, um, you will

• 11:50Speaker 01

  be able to tap into some of that nighttime creativity. And, um, so, so I, I would, I would think it would be perfectly fine to do your, your creative block in the morning. In fact, it might even be advisable. Um, I think really people have to figure out for themselves what their creative peak time is. It's probably different for different people. You know, it probably depends on your biorhythms or something, but, um, I think in the morning, I'm a little, um, slower and, and I feel like that's a good time for me to be doing, you know, internet stuff and just kind of catching up. And then I kind of build up to that afternoon period where I just go and, and that's when I'm gonna work, um, basically until I burn out.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  And, and that's, then that's the end of my, my work period.

• 12:39Shane Parrish?

  I, I think that's fascinating. I mean, I think the important thing is we all come up with our own routines that work for us individually. Um, there's no prescription about what works for everybody and adapts to the contexts of their lives.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's it. And, and maybe there are some people that can work while they're connected. Um, it's possible, you know, I'm, I'm sort of of an older generation, so I may not have that, um, um, split attention span thing or whatever, but, um, but I, I find that in my case, doesn't matter what time you do it or when you do it, but I think this idea of creating uninterrupted blocks, um, is, is really, is really interesting. Um, I, I saw, I heard an interesting, I came across an interesting quote. Um, from, it was written by the guy out in Silicon Valley. Um, I think his name is Paul Graham. Do you know Paul Graham?

• 13:34Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, well, I don't know him. I know who he is. Yeah.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, he's, he's with the incubator, um, company out there, Startup Incubator. But he also writes a lot about, you know, he writes essays about creativity and stuff. And he had an interesting thing about how, um, people are either on a, uh, a manager's schedule or a creator's schedule.

• 13:55Shane Parrish?

  Yep.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  And when, you know, and when you're on the manager's schedule, you're scheduling everything hour by hour and it's, it's all like meetings and, and I'm gonna do this for an hour and I'm gonna do this for an hour and this for an hour. And then the, the other type of schedule is where you create these big blocks. Um, and you, you just try to arrange your schedule so that at some point in the day you have a large block that is uninterrupted and, and it's got no meetings, it's got no phone calls, it's got no nothing. And, and that, I, I subscribe to that theory. I really think we need to create those blocks somewhere in our day and then really stick to them. Like, don't, don't get up and leave,

• 14:36Speaker 01

  um, if, you know, if in the first hour you're having trouble, uh, because you have to sort of commit to the three hours or the four hours. And, you know, if you do that, a lot of times midway through the three hour block, all of a sudden, things will start, you know, flowing. At least that's the way it is for me.

• 14:52Shane Parrish?

  When you lose your focus, how do you, how do you get it back? What do you do? What's your, your habit or your routine or questions you ask yourself?

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Um, I may, uh, just get up and, uh, walk around a bit. I find walking helps a lot. Um, but I try not to allow myself to, you know, stray too far, uh, you know, like I'll give myself a, maybe a short break, but then I'm committed to coming back to my chair and, and, and taking another crack at whatever I'm working on because I just find that it's so easy to give up. Um, it's so easy to feel like, oh, it's just not flowing today. You know, I just don't have the, uh, I don't have the right vibe today, so, um, I should just pack it in. And, um, I, I've just seen so many instances where I have that feeling and if I can get

• 15:44Speaker 01

  past it, if I can get past. That that hour, that difficult hour, then all of a sudden, things will start, things will start clicking. So, but it's really hard to get through that hour because everything in you is telling you, you know, it's not going to work. You don't have it today. You might as well just pack it in. And it's really hard to get past that, that tough period.

• 16:06Shane Parrish?

  I found one of the, the things that most people have to deal with is saying no. So they just don't get overwhelmed. I mean, our default seems predisposed to say yes to things.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 16:18Shane Parrish?

  How do you end up saying no to people? How do you weigh opportunities?

• 16:22Speaker 01

  That's a hard thing for me because I always feel like, you know, everything, I look at everything as an opportunity, you know, that's just my mindset. So like, every person that comes to me and says, oh, I'd like to talk to you or I'd like to do this or that. I always like think, oh, that's interesting. That's a, that could be a good opportunity. So I, my, yeah, my default position is definitely to say yes. And you know, what I, what I've tried to do is to say, okay, I will, I will at least create these sacred time blocks. And, and what I'll say is, um, I'm not going to do anything after, um, you know, let's say two o'clock, three o'clock in the afternoon.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Because I know that from two to seven or whatever, three to seven, uh, that's a sacred block. And so, um, so at least I say no in terms of that kind of stuff. I, I will keep that block fairly uninterrupted. Uh, but I do say yes to a lot of stuff otherwise. And, and so I'm, I'm saying yes to a lot of stuff in the morning and in the, you know, in other parts of the day. So I, I'm probably not a good person to ask about that because I don't think I have a huge amount of discipline when it comes to saying no.

• 17:37Shane Parrish?

  Well, that's interesting in and of itself. When you say yes to something and you feel regret, what are those opportunities like that you are like, man, I shouldn't have said yes to that? Is there any consistency to them or do they have any traits that they share?

• 17:51Speaker 01

  I think a lot of times it has to do with saying yes to, like, I don't usually regret saying yes to, say, an interview or something like that because it doesn't take that long. What I have regretted saying yes to is going somewhere.

• 18:06Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Or an event or, and, and a lot of times it's because the event as it's being described to me is different from the reality. The reality ends up being something a lot less organized, you know, or, or less, you know, like I did an event in Seattle that was billed as like, you know, it was going to be at Seattle Town Hall and it was, it was being organized by someone who was in the Seattle City Government and it was going to be this amazing event, bringing together all these great people. And I got there and it was like 12 people at Seattle City Hall and, oh, Town Hall, Seattle Town Hall. So, and I just got there and thought, oh, man, you know, wow, I really,

• 18:51Speaker 01

  I really spent a lot of time on this and it's just not going to amount to anything. And I've had a few of those kinds of things where, where, so now I try to be really careful about, you know, traveling to an event and try to make sure that there's enough going on, there's going to be enough people there, there's going to be enough energy there that it's, at the end, I'm going to feel like it was worthwhile.

• 19:16Shane Parrish?

  I like that a lot. I mean, so often, travel is one of the things I regret too. In hindsight, you go, you do an event, you stay an extra night, it just consumes so much time getting there, so much time coming back. And like you said, it's, it's often not what it's kind of purported to be. I want to drill back just into a little bit about your habits around reading. Are you, how big of a reader are you?

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Um, I'm not a huge reader. Um, I, I tend to, um, these days I'm, I'm doing a lot of reading online. Um, I'm reading, you know, online magazines, online, uh, I'm reading blogs.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  I'm reading, uh, as I mentioned earlier, uh, some magazines and then books. Um, uh, you know, I, I will usually be working on one book at a time and I'm having a lot of trouble. Um, I just have a lot of trouble, uh, getting through books. It takes me a long time. So, cause I'm a slow reader. So, um, so you know, it's, uh, it's just a weird thing. Like my wife is, is an amazing reader. I mean, she knocks off a book in like one or two days and I, I'm just, I'm just not built that way. I, I, I seem to, uh, read very slowly and, and deliberately. I kind of, um, um, pour over sentences.

• 20:29Shane Parrish?

  Nothing wrong with that.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  I seem to take a long time to read. And I, I think it's part of it is, is a good thing. I mean, I'm paying, I pay a lot of attention to what I'm reading. Um, but part of it is just that I'm slow too. I'm a slow reader. And so a book is a major, um, you know, a major undertaking for me and, uh, and, and it usually takes me quite a while.

• 20:50Shane Parrish?

  How do you traverse this world between books and online? Like, how do you collect and organize your notes when you're in the process of writing a book?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Um, I, I am just constantly, um, taking things, uh, anything interesting I find off the internet and, and just sourcing it and printing it. And then I, I still use paper files. I'm, I'm somewhat of a dinosaur. So I have bulging files based on, uh, subjects. Um, anything to do with, you know, if, if I'm, if I'm, if I'm writing about decision making, you know, I, then I'm just collecting tons of, uh, tons of articles, um, tons of, uh, posts, um, interviews, uh, excerpts from Ted speeches, you know, just whatever. And

• 21:37Speaker 01

  I'm just getting it all printed out and keeping gigantic bulging files on, on that, that subject. And then. Then I have to go through those files and a lot of times what I'm doing is trying to just take all these pieces, first of all, figure out which pieces are really the ones I want to use and then figuring out how they all fit together and fit with my larger theme or my vision. So a lot of times I feel like I'm putting puzzles together, you know, and the information that I've gathered are the little pieces of the puzzle. So it's just like, what do you do with this really interesting bit of information that you have? It might

• 22:20Speaker 01

  be one line that somebody said about something and what do you do with that piece and where does it fit with your larger narrative?

• 22:29Shane Parrish?

  I want to geek out just for one second on this. When you're reading these file folders, are you doing this constantly? Like, is it you pick them up once a week, you kind of go through them? Or as you read, are you taking things out and being like, oh, this isn't relevant anymore with this new direction that I've gone in?

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I will sometimes weed them out or I'll put, or I'll create a second folder that's sort of like B-level stuff. Like, once I start to think something might not be as relevant, I'll put it into the B folder, which means I'll probably never look at it again, but I might. I might remember something and say, oh, you know, I had an article on that. And then I'll want to go back into the B folder.

• 23:06Shane Parrish?

  But your brain knows it's there, so it doesn't have to think about it?

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, my brain knows it's there. And of course, I should be doing this, you know, in Evernote or something like that because, you know, it would be so much easier to access it digitally by putting in a keyword or something. But I just am, you know, I'm just a kind of more comfortable with working on paper. I still work on paper a lot. I even do, I do outlines on paper. I do outlines where I'm just scribbling and writing outlines longhand on paper and then going to the computer and putting them into my, you know, into my document. But it's amazing how much I work on paper and I don't know.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  I feel more creative on paper and I don't know why. I've heard other people say that too. I just feel like when I'm in that really rough stage of things, I want to be able to scratch things out. I want to be able to use arrows to point this over to that. And it just works better for me. And then when I get in on the, when I'm on the computer, it's more like I'm in writing mode. Now I'm actually writing. And I don't know, it's just, it's two separate stages to me.

• 24:22Shane Parrish?

  The way that I think about that is it's easier to play with ideas and digest them on paper because you can kind of manipulate them. You can manipulate structure a lot easier than you can on the computer with arrows or diagrams or just scribbles.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  It feels more visual, like it feels like you can do visual thinking. And one of the things also that I need to do, and I seem to need to do it more and more these days, which maybe is a sign of aging, but I seem to need to see everything in front of me at the same time. So when I'm, when I'm creating outlines, a lot of times, you know, I may have information spread out over 20 pages, but I need to figure out how to get it into a form where I can look at two or three pages side by side in front of me and see everything, see all the ideas that I'm playing with. And then I can, I'll get ideas about structure.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  At that point, I'll say, oh, okay, this is obviously the structure is I need to take this stuff that I'm talking about and shift it up here. I have trouble doing that on the, in the document, when I'm typing in the document. I have trouble doing that kind of structural thinking because I need to see it, I need to see it in front of me. And so, and so I do a lot of playing with outlines, sometimes on oversized sheets of paper or all kinds of crazy stuff. So yeah, that seems to be a visual thinking thing that I'm doing.

• 25:51Shane Parrish?

  What was kind of the last thing that you read that maybe changed your understanding of the world?

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. The last thing I read that changed my understanding of the world. Hmm. Well, I'll tell you the last thing I experienced that changed my understanding of the world, and it wasn't, it wasn't reading. It was, it was, Ken Burns's Vietnam, which I just finished, I just finished getting through that, um, uh, the other day. And, uh, you know, eighteen hours.

• 26:17Shane Parrish?

  Oh, I've never seen it, yeah.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  It was intense. Um, and it, it changed my, um, my understanding of, of that whole period. And, and it, it was so amazing. Um, I think it was, uh, I thought of it as really a work of art that he created there in, in terms of the way he, he put together the elements of it. And, uh, so that was something that definitely, um, that definitely changed my, uh, my thinking, uh, completely. Let's see, what am I reading that has changed my thinking lately? Um, reading an interesting book called, uh, Getting Schooled. I've, I've, I've been trying to get into the mindset of teachers these days because I talk to teachers a lot. And, uh, there's a book I'm reading by a, by a teacher, um, in New England,

• 27:04Speaker 01

  um, Garrett, Garrett Kaiser is his name. And, um, and he wrote a book about his experiences teaching in a rural community. And, um, and it was just, um, it changed the way I thought about teachers. Um, you know, it, it gave me a different perspective into the, um, into the mindset of, of, of a teacher that I, I just, I just never had before. So, um, so that's basically everything I read, I feel like changes my thinking, you know, if it's any good. Um, it, it's, it seems like, um, anything that is, is well done, um, and you read it, um, I just feel like it, it shifts your, your whole understanding of a subject

• 27:48Speaker 01

  or of a person or a perspective.

• 27:51Shane Parrish?

  Do you stop reading if it's not good? Or do you feel some sort of guilt to continue?

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I, I stop reading if something is, if something is not good. Um, I, I, I definitely, you know, um, uh, I can't, you know, I can't waste my time on something that isn't, you know, compelling to me.

• 28:11Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, I, I feel the same way. I mean, I just put stuff down. Uh, I'll often come back to it and I'll say I'm not ready for it, but, uh, or if it's just complete garbage, then I'll, I'll kind of like give it away or something, but. What would you, like, I'm so curious about your habits now. Like, what would you say is the smallest habit you have that makes a big difference?

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Smallest habit that makes a big difference? I would say outlining in my work is a habit that makes a big difference. I'm always producing outlines, as I said earlier. And I think what that does is it helps me really organize, organize like, complex subjects well. And so that's a, that's a kind of a little, a little habit. Walking is a habit that, that helps me. I try to walk like every day if I can.

• 29:03Shane Parrish?

  How does that help you?

• 29:04Speaker 01

  It helps me to put thoughts together and it helps me make connections in my thinking. So I'll do a lot of walking in the morning and I'll, I'll come up with ideas. And then a lot of times I'll sort of, you know, put the idea, I might jot it down when I get home or I might just kind of store it in my, in my brain. I'm pretty good at, you know, if I come up with an idea, you know, kind of remembering it later. And so I find that walking is, is a big, big, a big, big plus, but it, it helps to do it outdoors. Treadmill is not as good. I, I just find with a treadmill, I'm, you know, there, there's too much stuff coming at me and there's a TV in front of me and there's people all around talking.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  And if I can get out into the outdoors and walk, preferably in a park or in the woods, that seems to work really well for my creative thinking.

• 29:59Shane Parrish?

  I'm guessing you don't have like one of those new, modern treadmill desks?

• 30:03Speaker 01

  No, I don't use that. I, I think it's a, it's a good idea to have a treadmill desk, but from, for health reasons, I don't know if it would help with what I'm talking about with, with creativity. It's probably just good for your circulation, you know? But, but I, I do think that. For me, anyway, outdoor walking seems to be, seems to do the trick. For some people, it's taking a drive, or some people, it's doing the dishes. You know, I mean, it's, it's different for everyone. Seems to be you need to do kind, some kind of a low, a low, a, a, an activity that, that immerses, where you become immersed in the activity, but not so much that you can't think and daydream.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  And so that's sort of the sweet spot, you know, finding those activities where, you know, obviously, going to a movie doesn't work, right? Because you get too immersed and, and you, and there's no room for your own thinking. So you need to find those activities where you're a little bit immersed, but you can still have your own thoughts.

• 31:07Shane Parrish?

  A little bit immersed and no distractions?

• 31:11Speaker 01

  No distractions, and, and maybe even seeing something stimulating, but not so stimulating that it takes over. So, walking out in nature, the trees are stimulating, but they're not so stimulating that you're, it's like you're in an action movie or something. You know, they're not going to take over your full, your full brain. So, the same with going to a museum. Going to a museum, there's a great quote from George Lois, advertising guy, who I got to know pretty well, but he said, museums are the custodians of epiphanies. And so he, what he, what he was saying is that, well, he, he meant that on two, in two ways.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Number one, museums are full of things that were epiphanies for the people who created them. But at the same time, you have epiphanies in a museum, because you're exposed to these great influences and ideas.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  But it's not so overwhelming like a play or a movie that you can't do your own thinking. So for me, you know, if you can find that that kind of an environment, that's that can really help with your creativity.

• 32:28Shane Parrish?

  Sounds like you you've done a lot of work on the creativity. What's the most surprising thing that you've discovered as you've started diving into it?

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Um, well, I don't know. Let me think about that. The most surprising thing about creativity.

• 32:41Shane Parrish?

  Or something that's counterintuitive, which you you thought one thing and you've discovered something completely different.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I I don't know if it's counterintuitive, but I but I I find it interesting. The the research showing that, you know, creativity seems to decline as we as we um, like like we're we're incredibly creative as as children. And then it is, it seems to be on the decline after that, which which is also true of questioning. And they probably go hand in hand, you know, curiosity, creativity, questioning. What was surprising to me was to learn that these things start to drop off fairly quickly. At least some of the research indicates that.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  And we we move away from, you know, that kind of thinking into much more predictable patterns of thinking. And we start to do it very early, you know, we start to do it in grade school and uh, you you know, and it's it's that to me was um, when I, as I learned that and started to look into that, that was a big surprise for me. I I don't think I realized quite what was going on in our in our education system or in our culture or both, where we are, we're not doing a good job of fanning the flames of of creativity and curiosity that we seem to be born with.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  I mean, we seem to have this from age three or four. And, you know, it's just there. Nobody had to train us to be curious and creative. But it seems to decline and that suggests to me that, you know, we're not doing a good enough job of nurturing that and allowing that to be expressed and then gradually it just gets kind of suppressed.

• 34:33Shane Parrish?

  I want to talk a little bit more about that. On one hand, you have the fundamental role that questions play, you know, in enabling us to innovate, solve problems and kind of just progress in life. And then on the other hand, you have this rapid decline, as you've just talked about, in terms of our either ability to ask questions or shyness around that. Or why does that drop off? I have no idea.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Well, it's, I don't know that anyone has the full, complete answer to that. I think it's about five or six factors that are all coming into play with each other. Part of it is probably biological. There are interesting things going on in our, in our brains at a young age that have to do with, you know, the, there's a, there's a mode when we are in total absorption and expansion, you know? And, and then we, we kind of go through this synaptic pruning stage where we're, we're, our brain is, is trying to consolidate all this amazing amount of stuff we've been learning

• 35:41Speaker 01

  and, and maybe trim some of the things that seem unnecessary. So, so I think, you know, there are definitely, a neuroscientist could, could probably explain this a lot better than I could, but there, there, there are things going on in our, in our, in our brains that probably affect how, how curious and how questioning we are at certain ages and why it might seem to decline a little bit. But, but I, I think there's also several other things. I mean, I think that. We will do whatever we are rewarded for doing. And we do not get rewarded for questioning.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  You know, we, we basically, the message we send to children at a very early age is that the reward goes to the person who has the answer, not to the person who asks the question. So I think kids internalize that pretty early. And, and, and it's like, the question gets, eventually gets seen as a distraction. It is a distraction from, you know, taking care of business, whatever the business is covering the material we have to cover in class, answering the teacher's question, whatever. The question is a distraction. If someone asks a question at the end of the lesson, it extends the lesson and it keeps

• 37:09Speaker 01

  you from moving on to the next thing. So it's, again, it's seen as this negative thing. And that continues right into adulthood in the business world where, you know, people who ask questions in a meeting are often seen as, they're slowing down the meeting. They're slowing us down. We should be moving on to the next item. So.

• 37:29Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, it can be hazardous to your career to ask questions.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. I mean, it, it, it is definitely seen as inefficient. That's what, that's the word that Clayton Christensen at the Harvard Business School used when he was, you know, I talked to him about questioning and he said, the attitude among business leaders is that questioning is inefficient, that we would be much better off using our mental resources to answer things instead of asking questions. And of course, that's crazy because you can't answer something until you have a question. But, but that's just the way that they perceive it. They perceive that the answers are going to fall from the sky and you don't really have to bother asking questions.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  So, so I think this message gets ingrained into young people and then.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  As they get older, not only is it seen as um as something that's inefficient or that the teacher may not want, or the other students may not want, it gets seen as really uncool, you know, and I've talked to a lot of high school kids about this and, you know, if you ask questions, you are A, either you're revealing weakness, right? You're revealing you don't know something. Um, B, you're showing that you care. And you're not supposed to care that much, you know, when you're, when you're in high school, you're supposed to be like, if I care about it, then I already know it. And if I don't know it, then I don't really care, you know? And so, so that attitude tends to make questioning uncool.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  It's like something that nerds do, or um, or people who are just at a step. Um, so, so anyway, you've got all these factors coming into play against uh, against curiosity and questioning. It's just isn't seen as the uh, thing that's gonna, you're gonna get anything out of it, you know? It's, it's gonna make you look bad and um, and, and what's the big reward? What's the, what's, what's the payoff for doing it? So I, I think all of this, um, you know, all of this conspires against questioning. And then lastly, of course, what conspires against questioning is knowledge. You know, knowledge um, uh, is, i- i- if, if we feel we know something, then we don't have to ask.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  And so, um, you know, as you get older, you start to feel like, oh, I know, I, I know what this is all about. I, I, I get it. I get what the game is here. And uh, and so you don't feel that you have to ask. Uh, and then that continues again, straight into the business world, where we all become experts within our own domain, uh, in our job, and we don't feel we necessarily have to ask questions about it because we've, we've got it figured out. We've been doing it long enough, we've got it figured out. And you know, what I discovered is innovation is about being the person who asks those questions instead of going through the routine. And uh, and, but you know, it's difficult for a lot of people.

• 40:31Shane Parrish?

  Let's dive into that for a second. I mean, what, what is the payoff to asking uh, better or more difficult questions? Like, what's the relationship between the questions themselves and maybe being more creative or coming up with uh, better solutions to problems? How does one lead to the other?

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think that the question enables us to tackle the unknown. You know, there's a great definition that I came across from this group called the Right Question Institute. They're a nonprofit group that studies questioning. And they describe questioning as a tool that enables us to organize our thinking around what we don't know. So there's a lot of stuff out there we don't know. And through questioning, we can attack it. And the different form of question you use will allow you to come at this unknown thing from a different angle.

• 41:30Shane Parrish?

  But key to that is admitting you don't know.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's it. I mean, and even being aware that you don't know. I mean, you know, you could say that awareness of what you don't know is one of the real measures of intelligence. Right? Because people that are less intelligent are completely unaware of what they don't know. You know, they kind of feel like they know it. They know all they need to know, and they don't care about what they don't know. So I think, first of all, having the awareness that there's a lot of stuff out there that you don't know. And caring about it, caring about the fact that there's a lot out there that you don't know. That's almost a starting point for questioning.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  And then what the questioning will do is enable you to move forward in the face of the unknown. It's almost, I think of it almost like an app. You know, it's like an app that we all have that allows us to proceed when we don't really know what the heck we're dealing with or what we're doing. And this is why innovators, it's such a key tool for innovators of any kind in any area, whether it's the arts or business or whatever. Because what they can do is look at an area that is unknown. You know, nobody has ever done this kind of thing before. How do I dive into that?

• 43:02Speaker 01

  And the way they dive in is through questioning. You know, they dive in by saying, well, you know, why am I interested in this vast unknown area? And what do we know about it already? And why hasn't someone? Figured out this, this, this particular take on it that I'm interested in. And, and what if you took, you know, this little bit of information we have on it? And combine it with this other bit of information that maybe is from another field or another area, what if we put those two things together? So I, I think, you know, what the innovator is doing is just using questions to attack what is unknown.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  And then through questioning, you begin to shape things. You begin to frame the problem you wanna work on. You, you frame the challenge, maybe, that, that you wanna take on. And, and then the question keeps changing as you're working on it. Maybe you realize, I framed it, but I didn't quite frame it right. I didn't, my question wasn't big enough, or it wasn't small enough. Maybe I need a more specific question. You know, so I, I just think that that ends up being the way that, that innovators move forward. They use questions to, to move forward into the darkness. And what's interesting about that is a lot of people think exactly the opposite about questions.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  You know, they think questions keep you from moving forward. They think questions paralyze you. If you ask too many questions, you're just not, you're not gonna know what to do and you're gonna be paralyzed. And exactly the opposite is true, at least from my experience.

• 44:47Shane Parrish?

  I kinda think of good inquiry as a sort of like meta-skill that it helps me improve every other skill that I have, because a good question leads me to learning something. But I'm probably asking questions incorrectly now. Like, how can you coach people to improve that skill?

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Um, you know, I don't really think there is a, a, a right or wrong way to be asking questions. I think that, interestingly, you know, questioning, you know, I've studied taxonomies of, of questions and, you know, I've, I've seen a lot of people categorize questions by, by type and, and higher order questions versus lower order questions. Um, and- I mean, I understand the why that's done. That's done a lot in the academic world. And, you know, I think there's a, there's a, there's a reason for doing it, I guess. There's a purpose to it. But I, I come at questioning very differently. I mean, I, I think of, I don't try to categorize questions that much.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  And I don't try to say, this is a, this is a lower order question, and this is a higher level of question. I, I think, okay, for starters, a good question is a question that's rooted in curiosity. Okay? That's the only, that's the only thing that's standard that I put on, on something being a good question. It has to be, it has to stem from authentic curiosity. A lot of times, people ask questions that are not, that are just, you know, how are you? Or, you know, what were you thinking when you did that? And, and they're not really based in, in, in questioning.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  They're more like criticism in disguise, or...

• 46:37Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, or they're, or they ask questions they know the answer to.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  They know the answer.

• 46:40Shane Parrish?

  They just want you to confirm what they already know.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Which, which is, is okay in certain instances for clarification. And it's okay for, if you're doing sort of Socratic teaching, then, then that kind of questioning is, is fine. But generally, I, I believe a good question should be rooted in curiosity. And, and if it is, if, if there is authentic curiosity behind it, then I, I sort of welcome all questions. Now, of course, the question will get better if you have, the more informed you are, the more informed your question will be. So if you have curiosity about something, and you've started to do a little bit of learning on your own,

• 47:24Speaker 01

  a little bit of research on it, then you're probably going to be able to ask a better question about that particular subject than someone who is a, is a complete outsider. On the other hand... There's something to be said for the outsider question because a lot of times as you start to do research on something, you immediately start to gather assumptions together. You're gathering together the assumptions that are out there, kind of the conventional wisdom, right, that's out there by people who've already studied this thing. And so you start to get steeped in their expertise and their conventional wisdom.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  And that starts to inform your own thinking about it, right? Whereas the outsider, the total novice can come in and ask, you know, why are we, why are we doing it that way? You know, I'm not part of the accounting field, but why do accountants always do this system that they do? And there's a huge benefit to that type of question. Because the people inside the accounting field never ask it. They are way too steeped in what they're doing. They're way too close to it. So when they ask questions, they're asking really technical questions. But the outsider can come in and ask the totally naive why question,

• 48:51Speaker 01

  the way a four-year-old child would ask it. And it's amazing how often that leads to something dramatic. That can lead to, that can just cause people to step back and say, whoa, wait a minute, you know? We really do need to rethink what we're doing here because we haven't thought about it for the last 10 years. So I think there's a real value to both kinds of questions. Both the informed, the informed question and the uninformed outsider question.

• 49:21Shane Parrish?

  I like that a lot. I mean, that's how we, they get away with it. There's this cultural, it's okay for you to ask questions because you're new. But how does somebody who's been there for a long time balance this, you know, need to ask questions to learn something? And it's coming from a good place with not coming across like a knee-jerk skeptic or a pest or a bother?

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the only way you can do this stuff is through conversation and trying to create a culture. And the culture, by culture, I could be talking about a group of four people, you know, that are part of a team working together. Or it could be talking about a household. Or we could be talking about a, an entire company. But I think there has to be an understanding that questioning has value and that all types of questions that are rooted in curiosity have some value. So if, if, if we, if we can get that idea out there,

• 50:29Speaker 01

  then all of a sudden, when someone who is an expert asks a novice question, instead of people, you know, you know, taking, taking the person's head off and saying, you know, you should know better than that. You, you've been in this field, you know, 10 years. What are you doing asking a question like that? If you've developed this understanding with your peers or your group, they will say, oh, I see what you're doing there. You know, you're asking, you're, you're asking us to step back and look at this from a, from a fresh perspective or an outside perspective. And it will generate a worthwhile discussion, right? So I think the culture, you have to create a culture

• 51:11Speaker 01

  where people understand what's going on when these questions are being asked, instead of having a knee jerk reaction and saying, oh gee, that question, that's a waste of time, or that's, that's a naive, stupid question. You know, there needs to be a better understanding of the value of questions and what questions do. And then I think people will be less likely to have that kind of gut reaction to it.

• 51:36Shane Parrish?

  So what should parents do? Like, what should I do when my seven year old just keeps asking questions all the time? What would your advice be? Or what should a teacher do?

• 51:45Speaker 01

  I think what you want to do is encourage the questions, possibly give focus to them if they need, if they need more focus and direction. I think you don't have to answer them. I think sometimes you may want to answer questions from kids, but sometimes you don't. Sometimes you want to encourage them to take ownership. Of the question and and um and figure out how they would answer it if it were up to them. What what steps would they take? Uh, and I think that can be, you know, I I hear all the time, parents say, and teachers, by the way, worried that they're not going to have the answers for all these questions that kids come up with.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Um, and they don't have to, you know, that's not necessarily um the job of the parent or the teacher in that situation. They're not supposed to be answer machines. Um, we already have an answer machine at our fingertips with uh with Google, you know, so um you don't have to, you don't have to be in that role. Um, the role that that you should play as a parent or a teacher is more like a coach. And and just to say, you know, that's a, that's an interesting question. Um, and the reason it's interesting is because of this, I I find it interesting because X, Y, Z.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  And I don't really know the answer to it, but um, you know, there are some ways you could, you could look into this. Do you have any thoughts on how you'd you would look into this if you wanted to find out more about it? And uh, have you thought about maybe uh, okay, go online and start with uh, start with this? And and then is there someone you could talk to offline? Uh, you know, so I think the, that would be one of the greatest services you could do for a young person is to teach them that questions are really valuable and they should take ownership of the really good ones. They should, they should stick with them, they should explore them, and they should have fun with them.

• 53:48Shane Parrish?

  And ownership means you you start looking into it and doing some sort of appreciative inquiry into what that answer is?

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Exactly. Ownership of a question is is what every innovator does. Every innovator starts out with a question, uh, like, why hasn't someone come up with a better way to do X? Okay? And most of us, when we ask that question, uh, you know, we're using our snow shovel and it it it doesn't work well enough or whatever. We ask that question almost reflexively, why hasn't someone come up with a better snow shovel? And then we don't do anything about it. You know, we just, we just let it go. We let that question just float away into the ether. And what the innovator, what the innovator does is they ask that question and then they take ownership of it.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  They say, okay, I'm gonna find out why someone hasn't come up with a better shovel. And, and then I'm gonna work on, you know, what if you made a shovel that did this and that? And how would you do that? So, so that's all part of, you know, the, the innovation process is just, you know, uh, taking ownership of a question and staying with it until you work your way gradually, hopefully, to an answer. And if you don't get to an answer, you know, you've had fun, you've probably had a fun journey anyway, um, exploring.

• 55:08Shane Parrish?

  What do you consistently struggle the most with, uh, with either questioning other people or answering other people?

• 55:17Speaker 01

  Um, I think, you know, what, what, one of the things I, I struggle with is, um, and, and I'm just learning about this now, it's gonna be in my next book, but the idea that, um, that I think when I'm asked questions, sometimes I try to, um, give too, too much of a definitive answer, um, just because I feel that, that I'm supposed to do that, you know? And, and what I've learned is that, you know, what's really interesting to do with questioning is, is when you are, you know, when you're asked a question, is to, um, explore the question with the person who asked it of you and sort of, you know, turn, turn the

• 55:59Speaker 01

  question back around, um, to like, you know, well, you know, basically, what do you think about that? And, and then in groups, a lot of times I get asked questions in groups, um, when I'm giving a talk or something, and my habit is to always just answer the question, right? But, um, but what I've realized is it's really interesting if you invite the group to help you answer the question. You know, there's an interesting dynamic that happens there where you say, um, You know, you might say, well, I think, I think, I tend to think this or that. But what do other people feel about that? What have other people found about this question? And you get some really interesting group thinking happening then.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  So, so that to me is a, is something that I'm gonna, I'm trying to get myself to, to not so reflexively answer questions, but to, to sort of turn it into more of a conversation where I'm getting input from other people in the room. And it's not just me trying to answer, answer the question.

• 57:04Shane Parrish?

  It seems like, I mean, we need other people to go with us to accomplish anything significant. Right? So we need other people, not only on our team, but often working on the same questions. How do you, how do you get a group of people to work towards the same question?

• 57:21Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I, I, I refer to that as collaborative inquiry. And I don't know if I'm the first one to use that term or not, but I, I just started using it when I was working on the book. And I, I think collaborative inquiry is, is really, really important. And it's, it's the idea that we're going to work on questions together. And we're going to share big questions and we'll pursue them. And obviously, you know, scientists are doing this all the time. Lots of people are doing this.

• 57:48Shane Parrish?

  Isn't that what a startup is effectively?

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is, it is, but it never gets really, it rarely gets explained that way or articulated that way. You know, it's usually like, oh, we're all together and we're going to change the world. Or we're all together and we're going to make a lot of money. And, but really, yes, that's what a startup often is. It's, it's about, it's about a group of people trying to answer the same question together. And. I don't know that, you know, I don't know that startups always put that idea out there to everybody working within the startup. They should, but I don't know if they do. I think maybe the partners know they're working together on a question. You know,

• 58:34Speaker 01

  the top four or five people know that. But when you go down the line to some of the people, you know, further down the, further down the food chain, then you start to get into that thing of, oh, this is your job. Okay, we are working on this big question, but your job is to take care of this little function here. And if you do that, then we'll be able to hopefully answer the big question. And what I think that companies should be doing is making sure everybody feels they're part of answering the big question. Because if you do that, you'll get them, they will be so much more engaged. You know, one of the things I said in the book is a more beautiful question is, I said that companies should

• 59:19Speaker 01

  forget about mission statements. They should have a mission question. And the mission question should begin with, how might we? And whatever it is they're trying to do in their field that they haven't gotten to yet, the really big thing, the really big accomplishment, that should be phrased as a how might we question? And it should be shared with the entire company. And the purpose of everyone within that company is to contribute to answering the how might we question.

• 59:47Shane Parrish?

  Do you know anybody doing that?

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Since I came out with the book, there have been several companies that have said they're thinking about shifting their, there was one small company that actually did it. And it was interesting. They had, they had interesting reaction that people really liked it. I've had a number of companies say to me, we, we might do that. But we don't know, you know, and so it's been kind of bouncing around in the business world. And I think companies are a little hesitant to mess with their mission statement or their value statement. They kind of feel like it's this sacred thing and they're a little bit uneasy about the idea that they might be attaching uncertainty to their mission statement.

• 1:00:33Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, it's almost a proposition where there's no upside. I mean, if they do it.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's what they're worried about. I don't see it that way. You know, I see it as very courageous and confident. I think a company that is able to ask a mission question would signal to the world that they are extremely confident and they don't need to brag about what they've already done or make some statement about something they haven't done, which sounds like an advertising slogan. They don't need to do that. They can be honest and they can be humble and they can say, well, here's what we really want to do. I mean, we really want to change the world by doing X, Y, and Z, and how might we do that? And that's what we're aiming toward.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  I think it would be a very positive thing, but you know, I do understand that, you know, companies are very worried about, you know, how shareholders are going to perceive things. I think the employees would love it. By the way, every company I've spoken at, when I talk about mission questions, the employees absolutely love it, right? The senior management is like, well, maybe, I don't know, maybe. But the employees always think, yeah, that's great. I would love it. The employees generally say, I hate the mission statement. I don't pay any attention to it. It's boring. It's, I don't even know what, half of them don't even know what the mission statement is. But they say, a mission question, I would love that. I would love to be able to have this question that represents what we're trying to do.

• 1:02:08Shane Parrish?

  I like that a lot. That was a great conversation about questions and how we can get better at asking questions and how we can do better as employees and parents. I want to end with a couple of personal questions for you. Um, which is who had the most impact on you intellectually when you were young? And has that changed as you've gotten older?

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  Um, let me think, I, I would say, um, uh, the most impact on me intellectually when I was young. Uh, probably, um, I would say probably I had an older sister who, uh, went into journalism. Uh, and I was still, uh, you know, in, in high school and, and I was trying to figure out, you know, what, what I could do with my life and, uh, and had no idea. And, and she became sort of a, a model for me of, of, you know, this, this way of life of, of being a journalist. And, um, and it, it kind of inspired me. Um, I, I thought, well, that, that's something I could aim for. I could, I could do that.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  And it, it became, you know, this, this sort of, um, this tremendous, uh, influence on me as a, as a, as a young person. So I would say that was, that was probably a big, um, a big influence on me. As I've gotten older, um, what has influenced me? I think a, a lot of the people I meet and interview, uh, end up having a big influence on me. You know, when, when I wrote that book, uh, Glimmer, you know, I, I spent a lot of time with, uh, uh, several designers. One, one was Bruce Mao, um, and, but there were several others too. And, um, they all ended up really changing the way I think. You know, I, I, I could see something in their way, the way they saw the world

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  that then changed the way that I saw the world. Um, I just almost embraced a little bit of their philosophy or their, their, um, their way of looking at things. So I think, uh, I'm, I, I hesitate to say, to like to point to one person because I think it's, it's always changing and it's always someone new will come into my orbit. Uh, that is a fascinating person and I will, um, come under the influence of that person for a while. And, and they will begin to change me in some way.

• 1:04:33Shane Parrish?

  I, I like that a lot. I mean, i- if you're in tune with people, it's hard not to learn or change from just being around somebody. I mean, you're, you're evolving, they're evolving.

• 1:04:44Shane Parrish?

  Can you tell me about a time where you failed, um, and it set you up? And at the time, it felt like you were, you know, the world was over and how that, how you got out of that and how it made you stronger.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I mean, I've had a bunch of failures, but one that really shook me was when I did that book, Glimmer, which was back in 2009. And it was, it was an interesting case where I'd, I'd, I'd written this, you know, really great proposal for the book. And then the book ended up, you know, getting a, it was like a bidding war between all these publishers, top publishers, and then it got bought by one of the top publishers, Penguin. And, and it was just great. I was just like really riding high. And, and then the book

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  came out and for all kinds of reasons, I'm sure it was partly my fault. It was partly the publisher's fault. It was partly everyone's fault. But it just didn't connect. And so, you know, from a commercial standpoint, the people who read it really liked it, but it just wasn't connecting in the marketplace. It just wasn't getting any traction. And so that was really, that was really hard. I mean, that was really hard for me because I felt, number one, I'd had, I'd had really high expectations and so did the publisher.

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  And they were just dashed. And, you know, the book was just not selling at all. And so, you know, I kind of went, didn't know how to react to that at first. And I thought, yeah, I'm probably not going to do another book because number one, who's going to publish me? You know, this, this book just tanked. And so I'm probably going to have trouble getting another contract and all.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  And then somewhere along the line, as I was going around talking about Glimmer and, you know, giving little speeches here and there, I noticed that everyone was interested in one chapter of the book about questioning. Yep. And, you know, and that was, that interest among people just sort of put the idea in my head, well, you know what, what if I, I still love some of the things I was talking about in Glimmer, but maybe I was like talking about too much, you know, I was talking about all this, the way designers think and I was, I was just exploring a lot of different directions. And maybe if I just zero in on questioning, you know, that could be, that could be a more

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  focused approach. So I, I went back, I went back to the publishers, my original publisher wanted nothing to do with me, but I, you know, I, I, even my agent was kind of like, if he's, I found another agent. And I said, look, I think even though this last book didn't do well, I think there's something still, there was a potential within it. And I got another agent to help me get it out there. We got a new publisher and the book's done great. So I think there is a, there's a lesson in there. Oh, and another important thing I should add is a lot of the things that I didn't do in marketing Glimmer, I then did in marketing this next book. I realized, oh, you have to get, you have to get started early with doing blog posts. You have to do a lot of your own marketing and publicity.

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  You've got to really take things into your own hands. Don't just count on the publisher. So I, I did that with this, with the newer book as well, and it made a huge difference. So I think the lesson is, you know, within that failure, a lot of times there are seeds for a success. There are seeds for a follow-up effort. And you have to be willing to go back and revisit that failure, which is really hard to do, you know, because we want to run away from failure. We want to just like say, I hadn't, I'm not going to think about that again. I'm not going to, I'm just going to leave it, leave it behind. But sometimes, there is good reason to go back and extract whatever you can from that

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  failure. Any lessons you learned about, gee, I did it this way, what if I'd done it a different way? Or this part of the thing failed, but this other part seemed to do pretty well. What if I focus on this other part? I think there are tremendous lessons you can pull out of a failure.

• 1:09:19Shane Parrish?

  Were you always resilient throughout that process? Or were you having highs and lows?

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  Oh, I was definitely low when it was, you know, when it was happening, when I was first realizing that the book was not going to succeed. I was like, you know, very low and I was feeling like, again, like, I should just drop this, get as far away from it as I can, and go on to something totally new and totally different. But I got myself, you know, again, mostly by reacting to what audiences were telling me. You know, I was able to gradually get myself to become interested in this new idea that was pulled out of the old idea. And I think it was definitely a process.

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  It definitely took time. And, you know, you are gonna have to lick your wounds when you have a failure. There's gonna be a period where you're just not gonna, you're not gonna feel great about it. I mean, I think there's a little bit of a false thing out there now around failure that we should be happy about failure and we should just embrace it like it's the greatest thing that ever happened to us. You know, I'm sorry, that does not strike me as realistic. Failure is always gonna hurt a little bit. Whenever you don't do what you set out to do and you don't achieve exactly what you set out to do, you're going to feel disappointment. And I don't think we can, you know, we can just like mask that or hide that. I think that is, that's a human, that's human nature.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  You know, you're gonna feel that way. So I think what we have to, the more realistic way to talk about failure is, you know, yes, embrace the suck, as they say in the military. You know, feel the pain at the time, but be willing to, you know, lick your wounds and examine the failure and see what you can, see what you can pull out of it, see what you can gain from it.

• 1:11:18Shane Parrish?

  So Ray Dalio said on the podcast that pain plus reflection equals progress. And you had mentioned about going back and looking at your kind of failure and learning from it. Did you do that in the midst of the failure? Or did you wait until some amount of time had passed and then start evaluating?

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  I think it was some time had passed. I think that it was at the time I was failing. I was just desperately trying to save that project or do whatever I could to salvage that project. And gradually it became apparent that, you know, this just, if a book doesn't get on the radar at a certain point, it's just really hard and you can't, you're not suddenly going to put it on the radar. So, you know, it took a while before I even acknowledged or admitted to myself that this was not going to be a successful book. You know, I was fighting against it for a long time and, and I think it takes a while.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  And then again, as I said, there was a period after that where once you do accept that it's not a successful project, then there's a period where you say, I want to distance myself from it. I don't want to be associated with it because I want to, you know, get away from it. Cause it's a negative, it's totally a negative, you know, negative thing. So I think, I think that's, that's part of, you know, that's, that's part of the time, the process that has to happen.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Before, at least for me, I could go back and think about, okay, what is here that I can use? What can I learn? What can I, what is, what is possibly some good stuff within this failure? That didn't get used as well as it should have, but still has potential. You know, I think if you can look at your failure and almost, you're almost trying to pull. The gems out, you know, the things that got buried in the mess, but that were good. They were good things, you know? So if you can pull those, those good things out and figure out, okay, you know, how do I take what's good there and come at it in a fresh way?

• 1:13:34Shane Parrish?

  And when you go back, I mean, you have more perspective. Your life isn't over, you know, you didn't, all of these fears that you might have at the time probably didn't play out. So now you can go back and be like, ah, that didn't play out. You get this relief and now you can start evaluating, you know, kind of your role in uh, what happened because just because it was a failure doesn't mean you didn't do the right things.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Right, right. And then that's, that takes time. I mean, it takes some perspective, you know? Um, you need the, the perspective of maybe a little bit of distance from the actual um, event uh, or the actual realization that things were not going to work as well as they did. You know, you tend to be in a negative mindset when that first happens. And um, you know, it may just take a little bit of time before you can then look at it with a not so, not such a um, a negative uh, mindset.

• 1:14:27Shane Parrish?

  Totally think that's worthwhile. Uh, all too often we avoid going back and reflecting. Um, last question, what's a common piece of advice about business or creativity that you're not buying?

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  A common piece of advice about business or creativity that, that I'm not buying? Well, I, I, I think I just named one right there about the idea that failure is a wonderful thing. I, I don't think it necessarily is. Um, so that's, that, that would be, that would be one thing. Um, I think um, you know, the, the idea, there's an idea that is, is out there in the, in the business world about creativity that suggests um, you know, uh, some people are um, are very creative and uh, everyone else isn't and, and we should create a separate department or a um, a spinoff um, within the, within the organization for the creative people or the innovators.

• 1:15:24Speaker 01

  Uh, we should create a uh, a skunk works or, or something uh, that, that is where the, all the innovators will, will reside. And um, I, I'm not buying that. I, I, I think that um, I think that um, everyone is creative. And I think if you, if you create a division within an organization that says, "These people are creative and the rest of you aren't," I think it's a, sends a bad message to...

• 1:15:55Shane Parrish?

  Oh yeah, it basically says creativity is not part of your job and then...

• 1:15:58Speaker 01

  It's not part of your job.

• 1:15:59Shane Parrish?

  Anybody who's, who's ever done that has probably never worked successfully in the software or engineering culture because you take away creativity from people. And then not only that, you, you tell a certain group of people they're innovators, they come up with a solution. And the more interesting thing for me is like they throw it over the fence. And if things don't work, you just get this finger pointing between these two factions in the organization where the so-called innovators are saying, "Well, it's the implementers who messed it up." And the implementers are saying, "This never worked to begin with." And you can't really hold anybody accountable for those.

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's a big mistake. And, and, and yet I see people do it all the time. And, and you know, I saw it in the advertising industry, of course, you know, where you were either in the creative department or, or you weren't. Everybody else was just something else. But, but the people in the creative department were the creatives. And, and you know, it, it just always struck me as an odd, an odd division. And I understand people have different skills and I understand some people are going to be more involved maybe in their, in their copywriting than, than other people. But I just thought that broad division of creative versus non-creative never made sense to me. And I see it now playing out in lots of other organizations where, you know, they, they will, they will

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  basically say, "This is our innovation group," you know? Well, what does that say to the rest of the company? The rest of the company is the non-innovation group? You know, so I think this is, this is an idea that is, you know, I think it's, it's, it's definitely not a great, not a great idea. One other thing that I'm, I'm not totally sold on is, and I think we're starting to see a backlash against it, is the whole open office culture, which I think is, makes sense up to a point, but I think it's been oversold. And, and I think the idea that nobody needs any private space or, or their own space, I, I've always

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  felt that's, that's kind of a mistake. And I, I feel like... It's a real struggle with office cultures to get the balance right. But I think there's some kind of a balance you have to achieve that somehow has a lot of interaction and openness, but also gives people the space they need to think and to work and to create.

• 1:18:23Shane Parrish?

  Would you say, based on your research with creativity, that the open office can have a negative impact on an organization's overall creativity?

• 1:18:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it is. I've seen it. I've seen it happen. I've seen it. I've seen, you know, companies go to an open model and it's been a disaster. And I think what happens is that it's not respecting the individual. It's not. It's saying, you know, that like when we're here at this company, everyone just has to be part of this blob. And it's like, yes, there are times when you want that sense of communal behavior and interaction, but you don't necessarily want it all day long, every day. And I think it's, you know, a lot, to be frank, a lot of times when companies are doing

• 1:19:16Speaker 01

  this, it's a real estate decision, too. I mean, you know, it's a lot easier to put an office together that is an open office because you need a lot less space, you know? And so, okay, if they have to do that, well, all right, maybe that's a reality, but don't try to sell it to people as, you know, we're creating this utopian environment for you because we want it. We want to do that. If it's a real estate decision and you can't afford to have individual offices, okay, be honest about that. But what I like is, what I want to see companies do is try to balance it with some type of

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  a hybrid, a hybrid architecture and structure that has both open spaces and closed spaces. I think you're seeing a number of companies do that now. I think I'm starting to see that sort of mix, and I think that's a really good way to proceed.

• 1:20:13Shane Parrish?

  Listen, Warren, this has been a fascinating conversation. We'll end it here, but I really appreciate you taking the time and hopefully we can do this again.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's been really great, Shane, and so I look forward to talking to you again soon.

• 1:20:33Shane Parrish?

  Hey guys, this is Shane again. Just a few more things before we wrap up. You can find show notes from today's show at fs.blog/podcast. You can also find out information on how to get a transcript there. And if you'd like to receive a weekly email from me filled with all sorts of brain food, go to fs.blog/newsletter. This newsletter has all the good stuff I found on the web that week, and I've read and shared with close friends, the books I'm reading, and so much more. Last, if you enjoyed this or any other episode of The Knowledge Project, please consider subscribing and leaving a review. Every review helps make the show even better, expand our reach, and share our message with more people, and it only takes a minute.

• 1:21:16Shane Parrish?

  Thank you for listening and being part of the Fernam Street community.