Quotes from Warren Berger

So perhaps the first rule of asking why is that there must be a pause, a space, an interruption in the meeting, a halt of "progress," a quiet moment looking out the window on the bus. Often, these are the only times when there is time to question.

Roko Belic, who believes that "gratitude is a shortcut to happiness.

This Why–What If–How progression—which can be identified in many stories of innovative breakthroughs—is

What do you want to say? Why does it need to be said

I position myself relentlessly as an idiot at IDEO," Bennett observes. "And that's not a negative, it's a positive. Because being comfortable with not knowing—that's the first part of being able to question.

Part of the value in asking naïve questions, Bennett says, is that it forces people to explain things simply, which can help bring clarity to an otherwise complex issue. "If I just keep saying, 'I don't get it, can you tell me why once more?,' it forces people to synthesize and simplify—to strip away the irrelevances and get to the core idea.

Habitat for Humanity founder Millard Fuller, who said, "It's easier to act your way33 into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.

Noonan observes that if you never actually do anything about a problem yourself, then you're not really questioning—you're complaining

or flashlights that, in the words of Dan Rothstein of the Right Question Institute (RQI), "shine a light on where you need6 to go.

A question can reside in the mind for a long time—maybe forever—without being spoken to anyone.

embrace ignorance

A beautiful question is an ambitious yet actionable question that can begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something—and that might serve as a catalyst to bring about change.

One good question can give rise to several layers of answers, can inspire decades-long searches for solutions, can generate whole new fields of inquiry, and can prompt changes in entrenched thinking," Firestein writes. "Answers, on the other hand, often end the process.

What Dan Meyer did in showing the video and then holding back as he waited for that question to form in students' heads was to transfer ownership: Instead of asking the question himself, he allowed students to think of it on their own—at which point it became their question.

Rothstein maintains. "Just asking or hearing a question phrased a certain way produces an almost palpable feeling of discovery and new understanding. Questions produce the lightbulb effect.

In Hal Gregersen's study of business leaders who question, he found that they exhibited an unusual "blend of humility and confidence"15—they were humble enough to acknowledge a lack of knowledge, and confident enough to admit this in front of others.

we all live in the world our questions create.

Fear is the enemy of curiosity

That's because with each new advance, Thrun said, one must pause to ask, Now that we know what we now know, what's possible now?

We've seen that companies sometimes use a hypothetical What If question to temporarily remove constraints that can inhibit ambitious thinking (What if cost weren't an issue—how might we do things differently?), and the same principle applies when people are pursuing new ideas or embarking on change in their lives. Often the biggest constraint is fear of failure.

what the New York Times recently characterized22 as a perfect storm in which no one, whether blue-collar or white-collar and whatever level of expertise, can afford to stand pat. "The need to constantly adapt is the new reality for many workers" was the theme of the piece headlined "The Age of Adaptation." The story had a term for what is now required of many workers—serial mastery.

give yourself a strong incentive to want to risk failure.

As to which question to choose, to some degree the question chooses you. It's the one that resonates with you for some reason only you understand. What will make it a beautiful question for you, and one worth staying with, is the passion you feel for it. Look for a question that is "ambitious yet actionable"—or, as the physicist Edward Witten puts it, a question that's hard enough to be interesting, but realistic enough that you have some hope of answering it.

That, right there, is a beautiful question for the ages: What do you want to say? Why does it need to be said? What if you could say it in a way that has never before been done? How might you do that?