The Power of Probing Questions

In 1983 Apple Computers was looking for a new CEO. Steve Jobs was brilliant when it came to new products, but he was a terrible manager. So, the board asked Jobs to find a promising CEO. After interviewing 20 candidates, Jobs decided that Pepsi executive John Sculley was his choice. When Jobs asked him to lead Apple, Sculley said no. He didn’t want to leave Pepsi. Jobs kept asking, Scully kept declining.

Jobs made a final pitch. He asked Sculley one question: “Do you want to sell sugar water to teenagers for the rest of your life, or come to Appel and change the world?” Sculley said the question landed like “a punch to the gut.” He took the job. Years later Sculley reflected on his decision: “I came out of the world of corporate combat. If Pepsi went up, Coke had to go down. It was a zero-sum game. These guys [at Apple] were talking about a ‘noble cause.’ I had never heard those words before. It stuck with me.”

Sometimes the best way to get someone to change is to take the direct route; say what you want and give them a reason. But that often doesn’t work. If you want your spouse/partner, your adolescent kid or a subordinate to change a habit, it can get complicated. There’s a back story; you need to think about timing and whether it’ll just make person defensive; about your ongoing relationship. Rather than telling the person you want them to change something, what if you were to ask this person what I call a probing question? Here’s an example:

When I started writing a new book in 2019, I asked Warren Blank and two others to read and critique drafts of the manuscript. Warren is a gifted instructor and author. After he read the book’s Introduction, I learned that he’s also a skillful coach. When I asked him a few questions about the Intro, Warren said, “Actually, Russ, I wanted to start by asking you a question. If you had to summarize what your book is about in 30 seconds, what would you say?”

After I talked for a couple of minutes, I laughed. Then Warren joined in. It became clear that I couldn’t state the book’s overriding purpose in a few words. Warren had asked one simple (and fundamental) question. He didn’t have an answer in mind. He thought that the Intro was fuzzy, but rather than say so he asked his question.

Asking a probing question – one that asks the person to reflect on what they’re doing or how they’re thinking – has many advantages. It’s an invitation, not a demand. The person is free to think without pressure. It helps the person reflect on their assumptions and beliefs. Sometimes, it leads to enormous change. For instance:

In 1988, when leadership expert Jim Collins was in his first year on the Stanford University faculty, he wanted feedback on his teaching. So, he asked an older colleague, John Gardner, for his thoughts. Gardner, former Sec. of Health, Education and Welfare and founder of Common Cause, knew the power of probing questions. He made it brief: “Jim, it occurs to me that you spend too much time trying to be interesting. Why don’t you invest more time being interested?” Later, Collins reported that this one question changed his life. He needed to become an active learner and stop trying so hard to impress others.

When a probing question is part of a story, one that grabs us, it can be especially effective. That happened at a fund raiser I attended. The attendees had all decided to donate, the only question was, how much? When the leader made his pitch, he ended with this story:

“The Sea of Galilee is beautiful. Its water is deep blue, it is full of fauna and flora. Life exists. Trees line its banks. The Jordan River feeds the sea, coming down from the north. The Jordan continues flowing south from the Sea of Galilee. and ends in the Dead Sea. This sea is well named. There are no fish, no birds above, no trees along its banks. Nobody would ever drink its water.”

What makes this enormous difference? The Jordan River? The soil? The people? No. So, what is the difference?

“For every drop that flows into the Sea of Galilee, another drop flows out. The Sea of Galilee gives as it receives. But the Dead Sea only keeps. It has no outlet. Every drop stays there. The Sea of Galilee gives, lives, and flourishes. The Dead Sea keeps everything, shares nothing and is dead. Which kind of sea do you want to be?”

As you can guess, I donated more than I’d expected! I’m sure many others did the same.
Sometimes a probing question can be used to reframe a conversation when it’s not going the way you want. Here’s a great example:

A musician named Calvin Earl was trying to line up support for a Congressional resolution to ‘Recognize the African American Spiritual as a National Treasure and honor the enslaved Africans for their gifts and contributions to our Nation.’ When he asked one Congressman to sign on as a co-sponsor, the man answered, “We’ve never had slaves in America, and I don’t know what a spiritual is!” Calvin described what happened next:
“I just took a deep breath, understanding that his intention was to be demeaning to me. I explained that a spiritual was an original song created by the enslaved Africans here in America. Then I said, ‘Did your grandmother sing one of the spirituals to you as a young boy?’ At that point I began singing the African American spiritual ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot.’ After I sang a few bars of the song, he asked me to hand him the legislation and he signed on as a co-sponsor.”

A changed heart? Of course not. That wasn’t Calvin’s goal. Rather than take the bait when the man said, “We’ve never had slaves in America,” he reframed this as a part of the man’s memory. He changed it from the political to the personal.

Finally, the Torah includes several probing questions. One occurs near the beginning, after Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, become frightened and try to hide from God. God calls out, “Where are you?” It’s a rhetorical question; God obviously knows where they are. What did the question mean? Some religious commentators suggest that God is asking something specific: now that you have disobeyed me, have you changed your mind? Do you regret your act? Others believe that “Where are you?” is far broader. It is God’s question to us all: Where are you in the world? What have you accomplished?

So … where are you? What probing questions have helped you rethink something important about your life? Is there a probing question you want to ask someone else?

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Adapted from Russ’ new book: Loss and Discovery: What the Torah Can Teach Us about Leading Change. [more info]

Dealing with Disruptive Change? Protect the “Core”

Adapted from Russ’ new book: Loss and Discovery: What the Torah Can Teach Us about Leading Change.  more info]

When the country closed down in March 2020, Jill Clark sat at her desk wondering how the Jewish preschool she directed would survive. More than the financial challenge, she worried about the children; kids 2-5 thrive on social interaction. There was no way she and her staff were going to ask them to tune in on Zoom for daily instruction. What to do?

Jill, like all of us, was struggling with disruptive change. For decades, organizational theorists have said that the only constant is change. But today’s leaders know that it’s not just change that they contend with. It’s disruptive change, change that comes suddenly and makes a massive impact on millions of people. For instance, from 2001-2021 our country experienced:

• The 9-11 attacks.
• The Great Recession.
• Extreme weather events related to climate change: In 2020 we had so many major hurricanes that we ran out of names for them!
• The massive social justice movement launched after George Floyd’s murder.
• The @Me Too movement.
• The deep 2020 recession.
• Our hyper-partisan politics, which divide political parties as well as families.

And I haven’t even mentioned the coronavirus pandemic.

We humans aren’t suited for this kind of turmoil. Our brains are wired for predictability and control, and disruption threatens both. At the same time, disruptive change often leads to a surge of innovation. In 2020, numerous drive-in movie theaters that had sat empty for years became sites for weddings, private movie screenings, concerts, art shows and stand-up comedy. Communities which worried about Fourth of July parades that could create a surge in virus infections created “reverse parades;” the bands and floats sat stationery along the side of the parade route while spectators drove very slowly along the street to take it in. A Texas history teacher got in her car and took a 15-day road trip to several historical sites, narrating the history of each location, posting it on her YouTube channel, Instagram, and Twitter accounts so she could interact with her students in real time. And that’s a tiny sample of the remarkable innovations we saw in 2020.

How Can We Manage During Times of Disruptive Change?

There are numerous answers, of course. But here’s a good place to start. Take a tip from the authors of Built to Last, who captured the characteristics of 18 companies that maintained high performance for several decades. One of the characteristics was, “Preserve the core, stimulate progress.” The “core” is the firm’s set of shared beliefs and purpose. It provides a sense of identity, a base of continuity that doesn’t change. At the 3M company, those include collaboration and innovation. At Johnson and Johnson they have a “Credo” that identifies the stakeholders they’re committed to serving, in order of importance. Their consumers are first; interestingly, shareholders come last. And “stimulate progress” acknowledges the fact that in a continually changing and unpredictable environment, the organization must change with it—everything, that is, except its core.

When managing during disruptive times:

1. Preserve the “core,” and
2. Be willing to change everything else.

When disruptive change hits, it’s critical to focus on the organization’s core. It reminds people what’s most important and must be protected. Moreover, it helps meet our brain’s need for predictability and control. But we also need to be innovative on everything else because disruptive change demands flexibility. Perhaps ironically, reaffirming the core makes it easier for people to be creative in a changing world: it’s much easier to be adaptable when you know what you’re adapting from.

During the pandemic, drive-in theater owners maintained their core purpose—providing a way for people to be entertained together, separately—and found new ways to use its purpose to help people starved for social contacts. The history teacher protected her core purpose—bringing history alive for her students—as did local communities planning for July 4th—celebrating our nation’s independence together—in imaginative ways they never would have considered during “normal” times.

Back to Jill Clark and her dilemma: how could she keep her preschool running safely during the pandemic? In a webinar she learned about “forest schools,” which use the outdoors to help kids learn through exploration and discovery. There are some structured classes, but most of the time is spent learning holistically in the natural environment. This was a safe way to help kids learn together, which would protect her school’s core. But it required major changes in just about everything else: what would the parents and teachers say? Where to hold it? What training would be needed?

Jill started by consulting with the teachers. They had dreamed about integrating the
outdoors into their curriculum, so this was a great our opportunity. They were intrigued, but also nervous. It was a huge change, and some were in their 50s. Then she met with parents.

“They were shocked!” she recalled. But as she described it parents got on board, and many helped design it. The staff organized kids into multi-age pods, keeping kids from the same families together. They worked out safety protocols, found a camp that wasn’t being used during the school year, and had the teachers attend a training program on the forest school model. Within two months the school was up and running. Here’s part of the letter Jill sent the parents as they and the teachers planned the new school program together:

“We want to be safe, we want to support each other, and we want what’s best for our children. We know we will not bounce back to how we operated in the past, but instead we will “bounce forward” to a new reality. We will partner in a way that we can be together, use new safety protocols, and imagine a new school focusing on developmental growth while emphasizing Jewish values and practice through a nurturing and stimulating environment.”

The forest school opened in the summer of 2020 and has been a resounding success. Jill’s story demonstrates the power of preserving the core and adapting on everything else when dealing with disruptive change.

For more on forest schools: https://www.forestschools.com/pages/what-is-forest-school-an-introduction

[To purchase this book]

Leading by Indirection

Adapted from Russ’ new book: Loss and Discovery: What the Torah Can Teach Us about Leading Change.  more info]

I love to sail. As any decent sailor knows, you can’t sail directly into the wind, even if that’s where your ultimate destination lies. But you can usually get there by “tacking” back and forth, learning how to read the currents and breezes, keeping a firm hand on the tiller and paying attention to timing.

Leaders often face the same dilemma. They may have a clear goal in mind, only to learn that they’re flying into the wind. Powerful constituents oppose you. Perhaps your staff doesn’t buy in, or there’s no funding for the idea. And sometimes the stars seem aligned, and then a major event occurs and everything else is put on the back burner. These speed bumps occur even more often during the kind of disruptive times that we’re experiencing today. There are myriad reasons why change requires leaders to be flexible, think creatively, and seek other ways to achieve their goal. In short, they need to learn the art of “leading by indirection.” Here’s an example:

Karen, a social services manager, led a division that dealt with child sexual abuse. This is a terrible and complex issue, often involving other organizations like police, health departments, and prosecutors. She met with leaders of those agencies and they all agreed they should work more closely together, but nothing was changing. The leaders were focused on other demands. Since her direct approach wasn’t working, Karen took a different route.  

She did her homework and learned of a collaboration model that was working in other communities. It involved co-locating professionals from agencies that spend the most time on child sexual abuse. Housing these professionals in the same space helps build relationships, which leads to much more collaboration and information sharing. Now that she had a proven model to offer, could she convince the agency leaders to try it?

Rather than meet with the agency leaders again, she found middle managers in the three key agencies who worked on child sex abuse issues and shared her concern about the need for more collaboration. They liked the co-location model. Then she learned about a co-location training session being offered in another state. The three managers agreed to attend and planned to meet at the session. Karen suggested they drive there together. “Let’s save some gas, the meals will be on me. It’ll be a fun road trip.” Even though two of the three didn’t know each other, they agreed. That road trip became a team-building activity. They had time to learn about each other outside of their work responsibilities. And the trip back from the training gave them several hours to compare notes on what they’d learned and how to move forward.

Long story short: The middle managers sold their agency directors on the co-location idea, they tried it on a pilot basis, and continued it as they saw success. More information sharing meant more kids were being rescued from terrible situations and more perpetrators getting caught. Karen had learned the art of leading by indirection.

 

Those who learn how to lead indirectly are usually good at: 

• Demonstrating situational awareness
• Being firm on the goal, flexible on the approach
• Reading people’s readiness
• Timing, and “ripening”
• Being pragmatic

When Karen’s initial efforts toward collaboration went nowhere, she considered the situation. The agency directors weren’t responding, so she was flexible and looked for a different strategy. Courting the managers made sense; they were already eager for collaboration and just needed someone to offer a way to get started. Urging the managers to drive together allowed their ideas to “ripen,” which was critical. And Karen was very pragmatic. She’d originally hoped to try the model for one year. When two of the agency directors balked, she suggested they first pilot the idea for several months, and they agreed. Karen understood the importance of timing.

            Karen was a middle manager; she didn’t have the authority to direct the other managers to work with her. But even leaders who have that authority often need to lead indirectly. Here’s an example from the Hebrew Bible:

In the book of Exodus, when the Pharaoh finally allows the enslaved Israelites to leave,  God is ready to bring the people to the promised land. But God doesn’t lead them in that direction. Au contraire, God leads the people south, away from the promised land. Why? The direct route is occupied by a powerful tribe. God says, “The people may have a change of heart when they see war and return to Egypt.” God is reading the situation as well as the people’s readiness for battle. The timing is wrong, God is flexible and changes course.

People trying to speak out against wrongdoing often lead by indirection when the direct route hasn’t worked. A classic example has to do with unidentified flying objects. A small, secret Pentagon office has tracked reported sightings of UFOs since 2007. Numerous sightings were deemed credible, meaning there was video evidence showing the objects moving at remarkable speeds and making sudden changes in ways that had never seen before and couldn’t be explained. The office’s director, Luis Elizondo, studied the videos and interviewed several Navy pilots who’d witnessed these phenomena and were concerned that the government wasn’t doing enough to investigate. He urged his superiors to reveal the office’s existence, arguing that UFOs are real, we’re studying them because they have national security implications, the public and Congress should know. Nobody listened to him.

So in the fall of 2017 he resigned and then told the New York Times about the office and its evidence of UFOs. The Times investigated the allegations and then printed the story. It prompted enormous public interest in the country and on Capitol Hill. The government finally acknowledged the office’s existence, and members of Congress began demanding more information about UFOs. (“60 Minutes” ran a segment about this on May 16, 2021, and the Times story is at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html.)

It’s important to note that leading by indirection as I’m describing it isn’t unethical. These leaders weren’t trying to manipulate people, nor were they hiding their true intentions. They had a clear goal and were open about it, the direct path to their goal didn’t work, so like good sailors they tacked.

Let’s take another look at some characteristics of people who lead indirectly. As mentioned above, they are good at: 

• Demonstrating situational awareness
• Being firm on the goal, flexible on the approach
• Reading people’s readiness
• Timing, and “ripening”
• Being pragmatic

What about you? How would you assess yourself on these five characteristics? Which ones would you like to improve?

[To purchase this book]

The Agility That Governments Need for a Disruptive Age

Public-sector organizations aren’t designed for it, but some are finding ways to make it part of their culture.

It’s no secret that the environment affecting public and private organizations is becoming extraordinarily turbulent. Change is not only occurring more quickly, it’s also increasingly unpredictable and disruptive. And most organizations aren’t designed to adapt quickly and intelligently.

When large corporations don’t see disruptive change coming, it can be devastating for their bottom line (consider the Big 3 automakers and the challenges posed by foreign competition). In other cases, it can threaten the very existence of companies with long, proud histories. Kodak’s downfall was precipitated by its difficulty in transitioning to digital technology. (Ironically, It was a Kodak engineer who created the first digital camera in 1975. Management’s reaction was, “That’s cute — but don’t tell anyone about it!” In 2012 Kodak filed for bankruptcy.)

For public agencies that don’t have the agility to adapt to major change, the implications are different. They’re more likely to lose reputation, credibility and relationships with key stakeholders. In the 1980s and ’90s, public schools, social services and public-housing agencies were slow to respond to the public’s frustration with programs perceived as ineffective. One of the results: major changes mandated by elected officials, some of which (such as the federal No Child Left Behind education law) seemed to create more problems than they solved.

It’s no surprise that public agencies are often slow to adapt. That’s what our Constitution’s framers wanted. Their overriding goal was to avoid the tyranny of another king. Checks and balances, and the division of power between the federal and state governments, became primary tools for achieving that goal. In that sense, their system has been a brilliant success. But it came at a great cost. Today, we’re chasing fast-moving 21st-century problems using snail’s-pace 18th-century models.

Here’s the good news: A number of public agencies are finding creative ways to become more agile in the face of disruptive change. Here are four approaches:

1. Dedicated units that identify emerging challenges and develop innovative responses: One example is a “bimodal information-technology organization,” which combines two IT units with very different objectives and cultures. The Mode 1 unit is focused on efficiency and stability; it manages ongoing IT operations. The (much smaller) Mode 2 unit deals with innovation and change; it develops creative approaches to emerging problems and helps the Mode 1 staff learn how to implement those approaches. Boston’s celebrated and widely replicated Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics has been a pathbreaking Mode 2 unit. And the spread of dedicated innovation units and data-analysis teams in recent years has brought new agility to city governments.

2. The use of crowdsourcing to quickly find creative solutions to emerging issues: In 2011, the city of Mesa, Ariz., created “iMesa,” a crowdsourcing platform to engage its residents in their local government and its services. In the five years after iMesa’s launch, more than 400 ideas were submitted and 46 were selected and implemented, including two urban community gardens, a downtown “hacker space,” a collaborative workspace called “Thinkspot” and a new 140-acre park. (The iMesa platform is currently offline, with “iMesa 2.0” in the works.) At the federal level, Challenge.gov leverages crowdsourcing by enabling agencies to describe technical, scientific and other problems and allowing anyone (in government or out) to propose solutions. Agencies give cash prizes to competition winners.

3. Collaborative networks and task forces that join organizations with similar missions: These efforts create their own identity and often can respond creatively and quickly to sudden opportunities — or threats. Joint terrorism task forces, for example, pool the skills and knowledge of law-enforcement and intelligence personnel from all three levels of government. They develop the trust needed to share information and work as one team, responding quickly to break up terrorist cells and prevent attacks.

4. An agile culture across an entire organization: When Bill Leighty took over the Virginia Retirement System in 1995, it was badly in need of a transformation. It had silos within silos. The mantra was, “This is how we do things, we can’t change.” Leighty’s initiatives included a “dumb rules” contest (to identify and eliminate those that made no sense); cross-functional teams empowered to implement major process changes; employee road trips to learn what key stakeholders needed; and a leadership team that employed “managing by wandering around.” These steps created a vibrant and agile culture in the agency, one that continues to adapt to change today.

The first three of these approaches are much easier to implement; they don’t disrupt an organization’s culture. The fourth — making the entire organization more agile — is far harder. It requires changes in how people are hired, trained and evaluated; new skillsets and attitudes; the ability to sense emerging changes; and a special kind of leadership. What approach will you and your colleagues take to develop the agility needed for these disruptive times?