企業保持活力的祕訣 員工多問爲什麼

Recently I had a conversation with a chief executive who expressed concern about several of her senior managers. They were smart, experienced, competent. So what was the problem? “They’re not asking enough questions,” she said.

最近，我和一家企業的首席執行官進行了一次交談，她對公司的好幾名高級經理感到擔憂。他們聰明，有經驗，也有能力。那麼問題是什麼呢？“他們提出的問題不夠多，”她說。

This wouldn’t have been a bad thing in the business world of a few years ago, where the rules for success were: Know your job, do your work, and if a problem arises, solve it and don’t bother us with a lot of questions.

幾年前，這在商業界不會被當作一件壞事，那時的成功法則是：瞭解你的崗位，做好你的工作，如果出現問題，就解決它，不要問太多問題，麻煩我們。

But increasingly I’m finding that business leaders want the people working around them to be more curious, more cognizant of what they don’t know, and more inquisitive — about everything, including “Why am I doing my job the way I do it?” and “How might our company find new opportunities?”

但我日漸發現商業領袖希望在他們身邊工作的人能對自己不懂的東西更好奇，能更清楚地認識到自己有什麼不懂，並對所有的一切更具探究精神，包括“我爲什麼要用自己現在這種方式做我的工作”以及“我們公司怎樣才能發現新的商機”。

I may be hyper-aware of this trend because I think of myself as a “questionologist,” having studied the art of questioning and written a book about it. But I also think there are real forces in business today that are causing people to value curiosity and inquiry more than in the past.

我可能對這種趨勢極爲敏感，因爲我覺得自己就是一個“提問學家”(questionologist)，我曾經研究過提問這門藝術，還就此寫了本書。不過，也覺得在當今的商業社會裏，的確存在一些力量，它們導致人們比過去更看重好奇心和提問能力。

Companies in many industries today must contend with rapid change and rising uncertainty. In such conditions, even a well-established company cannot rest on its expertise; there is pressure to keep learning what’s new and anticipating what’s next. It’s hard to do any of that without asking questions.

在很多行業裏，企業都必須與快速的變化和越來越大的不確定性作鬥爭。在這種情況下，就連一個地位穩固的企業也不能過分依賴其專長；也會有壓力促使他們不斷學習新東西，預測接下來會發生什麼。而在不問問題的情況下是很難做到這些的。

Steve Quatrano, a member of the Right Question Institute, a nonprofit research group, explains that the act of formulating questions enables us “to organize our thinking around what we don’t know.” This makes questioning a good skill to hone in dynamic times.

非營利研究組織正確問題研究所(Right Question Institute)的成員史蒂夫·夸特拉諾(Steve Quatrano)解釋說，提出問題的行爲促使我們“圍繞自己不懂的東西組織思維”。在快速變化的時代裏，這讓提問成了一種值得磨練的優秀技能。

Asking questions can help spark the innovative ideas that many companies hunger for these days. In the research for my book, I studied business breakthroughs — including the invention of the Polaroid instant camera and the Nest thermostat and the genesis of start-ups like Netflix, Square and Airbnb — and found that in each case, some curious soul looked at a current problem and asked insightful questions about why that problem existed and how it might be tackled.

提問可以激發有創意的想法，而後者正是許多企業如今渴望擁有的東西。在爲著作做調查的過程中，我研究了一些商業上的突破——包括寶麗來拍立得相機和Nest溫度自動調節器的發明，以及Netflix、Square和Airbnb等初創公司的起源——發現每一種情況裏，都是一個好奇的靈魂看看眼前的難題，就爲何會存在這個難題和可能如何解決它提出了富有洞察力的問題。

The Polaroid story is my favorite: The inspiration for the instant camera sprang from a question asked in the mid-1940s by the 3-year-old daughter of its inventor, Edwin H. Land. She was impatient to see a photo her father had just snapped, and when he tried to explain that the film had to be processed first, she wondered aloud, “Why do we have to wait for the picture?”

我最喜歡講述的是寶麗來的例子：拍立得相機的靈感產生於發明者埃德溫·H·蘭德(Edwin H. Land)3歲的女兒在上世紀40年代中期提出的一個問題。她着急看到父親剛剛拍下的一張照片，當他努力解釋爲何膠捲要先進行處理才能看到時，她疑惑地大聲問，“爲什麼必須花時間等照片出來？”

One might assume that people can easily ask such questions, given that children do it so well. But research shows that question-asking peaks at age 4 or 5 and then steadily drops off, as children pass through school (where answers are often more valued than questions) and mature into adults. By the time we’re in the workplace, many of us have gotten out of the habit of asking fundamental questions about what’s going on around us. And some people worry that asking questions at work reveals ignorance or may be seen as slowing things down.

考慮到小孩都能做得這麼好，有人可能會覺得人們可以很容易地提出這樣的問題。但研究結果顯示，提問的行爲在一個人四五歲的時候達到高峯，之後隨着孩子們上學（相比於提出問題，學校更看重給出答案）和長大成人，就逐漸減少。到了工作的時期，我們中的很多人已經失去了就周邊的事物提出根本性問題的能力。一些人擔心在工作中提問會暴露自己的無知，或者被看作拖慢進度。

So how can companies encourage people to ask more questions? There are simple ways to train people to become more comfortable and proficient at it. For example, question formulation exercises can be used as a substitute for conventional brainstorming sessions. The idea is to put a problem or challenge in front of a group of people and instead of asking for ideas, instruct participants to generate as many relevant questions as they can. Kristi Schaffner, an executive at Microsoft, regularly conducts such exercises there and says they sharpen analytical skills.

那麼企業如何才能鼓勵人們問更多的問題呢？有一些比較簡單的訓練辦法，可以讓人們在提問時更自在，也更嫺熟。比如，可以用構思問題的訓練替代傳統的頭腦風暴會議。方法就是在一羣人面前拋出一個問題，或向他們發出挑戰，讓參與者儘可能多地提出相關問題，而不是要求他們就問題談想法。微軟的高管克里斯蒂·沙夫納(Kristi Schaffner)就經常在公司進行這種訓練，稱它們可以增強分析技能。

Getting employees to ask more questions is the easy part; getting management to respond well to those questions can be harder. When leaders claim they want “everyone to ask more questions,” I sometimes (in my bolder moments) ask: “Do you really want that? And what will you do with those questions once people start asking them?”

讓僱員問更多的問題相對容易；讓管理層對這些問題做出良好的反應則更加困難。當領導人稱他們希望“每個人問更多問題”時，我有時（比較大膽的時刻）會問：“你真的這麼想嗎？一旦人們開始發問，你準備如何應對這些問題？”

For questioning to thrive in a company, management must find ways to reward the behavior — if only by acknowledging the good questions that have been asked. For example, I visited one company that asked all employees to think of “what if” and “how might we” questions about the company’s goals and plans. Management and employees together decided which of these mission questions were best, then displayed them on banners on the walls.

爲了讓提問的風氣在公司傳播開來，管理層必須找到獎賞此類行爲的辦法，哪怕只是去認可被提出來的一些好問題。比如，我曾拜訪過這樣一家公司，它會要求所有員工就公司的目標和計劃提出“如果……怎麼辦？”和“我們如何才能”之類的問題。管理層和員工一起決定這些任務問題中哪些是最好的，然後將它們放在橫幅和牆面上。

Leaders can also encourage companywide questioning by being more curious and inquisitive themselves. This is not necessarily easy for senior executives, who are used to being the ones with the answers. I’ve noticed during questioning exercises at some companies that top executives sit in the back of the room, laptops open, attending to other business; they seem to think their employees are the only ones who need to learn. As they do this, these leaders are modeling precisely the kind of incurious behavior they’re trying to change in others.

領導者也可以通過讓自身變得更好奇和更好問，來鼓勵全公司的人提問。對於高管層來說，這未必容易做到，他們習慣於做知道答案的人。在一些企業進行的提問練習中，我注意到公司高層坐在房間後面，打開手提電腦，在忙其他的事；他們似乎覺得只有員工需要學習這些。這麼做的時候，他們恰恰在示範自己試圖改變的其他人身上存在的不愛究根問底的行爲。

They could set a better example by asking “why” and “what if” — while asking others to do likewise. And as the questions proliferate, some good answers are likely to follow.

他們可以通過問“爲什麼”和“如果……怎麼辦”來樹立更好的榜樣，同時要求其他人也這麼做。隨着這些問題激增，一些好的答案可能就會冒出來。