Quotes from Warren Berger

questions challenge authority and disrupt established structures, processes, and systems, forcing people to have to at least think about doing something differently.

What if our schools could train students to be better lifelong learners and better adapters to change, by enabling them to be better questioners?

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." Beginner's

Picasso was onto this truth fifty years ago when he commented, "Computers are useless—they only give31 you answers.

most creative, successful business leaders have tended to be expert questioners. They're known to question the conventional wisdom of their industry, the fundamental practices of their company, even the validity of their own assumptions.

What's required is a willingness to go out into the world with a curious and open mind, to observe closely, and—perhaps most important, according to a number of the questioners I've interviewed—to listen.

I've always been very concerned with democracy. If you can't imagine you could be wrong, what's the point of democracy? And if you can't imagine how or why others think differently, then how could you tolerate democracy?

when he came home from school, "while other mothers asked their kids 'Did you learn anything today?' [my mother ] would say, 'Izzy, did you ask a good question today?

It's easier to act your way33 into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.

you can't help but feel uncomfortable," because it becomes clear that fear of failure "keeps us from attempting great things . . . and life gets dull. Amazing things stop happening." But if you can get past that fear, Dugan said, "Impossible things suddenly become possible.

Death to Core Competency," suggests that whatever a company's specialty product or service might be—whatever got you to where you are today—might not be the thing that gets you to the next level.

As you make those daily choices about what to spend your time on and which possibilities to pursue, the author and consultant John Hagel suggests you ask yourself13 this question: When I look back in five years, which of these options will make the better story? As Hagel points out, "No one ever regrets taking the path that leads to a better story.

The mind, if preoccupied with a problem or question long enough, will tend to come up with possibilities that might eventually lead to answers, but at this stage are still speculations, untested hypotheses, and early epiphanies. (Epiphanies often are characterized as "Aha! moments," but that suggests the problem has been solved in a flash. More often, insights arrive as What if moments—bright possibilities that are untested and open to question.)

This works well under most circumstances, but when we wish to move beyond that default setting—to consider new ideas and possibilities, to break from habitual thinking and expand upon our existing knowledge—it helps if we can let go of what we know, just temporarily.

The most important thing business leaders must do today is to be the 'chief question-asker' for their organization," says the consultant Dev Patnaik of Jump Associates. However, Patnaik adds a cautionary note: "The first thing most leaders need to realize is, they're really bad at asking questions.

The elegant simplicity of Square (and that of Dorsey's earlier creation, Twitter) is a product of rigorous inquiry: Dorsey maintains that good design is about removing unnecessary features by continually asking, Do we really need this? and What can we take away?

remote associations—"like when we think of 'table' and the idea of 'under the table'"—require more of a neural reach. The brain's right hemisphere, made up of cells with longer branches, is better suited for this task.

We arrive at originality because the dendrites have reached out and made contact with the branches of faraway "trees," thereby enabling us to combine thoughts, bits of knowledge, and influences that normally do not mix.

We have an education and business culture that tends to reward quick factual answers over imaginative inquiry. Questioning isn't encouraged - it is barely tolerated.