A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger

Attracting top talent to your company

Posted on May 7, 2024May 7, 2024 by Nirmal Thapa

How about sharing your biggest and limitless vision for your idea/company with your team and prospective employees?

One of the single most important reasons for top talented individuals to join a startup, growing company or even a multinational is the vision of the company’s founders or the company’s management/leadership team.

People switch jobs and careers all the time. Besides financial compensation package, benefits, perks etc., the most talented individuals are also looking to work on the biggest challenges, make tangible impact, and leave their own mark along the way. Next time you want to attract the best talent from the job market, share your idea and vision with them. See how that turns out!

Empowering Curiosity

Posted on July 26, 2023July 26, 2023 by Nirmal Thapa

Building a company culture of curiosity in an organization takes small intentional steps.

If a team member asks a question in a group, how is that question handled?

Does the meeting organizer have an agenda and allocated time for questions?

What is the team leader’s first response to a team member’s question? Is it a straightforward answer or a thoughtful follow up question?

Does the team member feel safe and comfortable asking the question in that environment?

Who has been given the default “authority” to ask questions in that environment?

Is the meeting host intentionally seeking out questions from the participants rather than just expecting them?

Who’s the most valuable member of the company?

Posted on May 24, 2022May 24, 2022 by Nirmal Thapa

Since it was the founder/co-founders’ idea that led to the company’s start, is she/he/them the Most Valuable Member (MVM)?

Sales team brings in clients and revenue. Are they more valuable then?

How about the technology team that made the software which the sales team sold?

And the human resource team who found and hired the talent with the right attitude, education, and skillsets?

Let’s acknowledge the Training team who help employees to keep their skills and knowledge up to date as per company’s needs.

Getting the software in front of potential customers at the right place and time, isn’t the Marketing team deserving of applause and attention?

Client services team is communicating with the client and making sure they have an amazing experience. Don’t they receive credit on what they do to make the customers happy?

Your company’s “Chief Question-Asker”

Posted on March 11, 2022March 11, 2022 by Nirmal Thapa

“The most important thing business leaders must do today is to be the “chief question-asker” for their organization” says Dev Patnaik of Jump Associates.

Patnaik says that “the first thing most leaders need to realize is, they’re really bad at asking questions. The business executives rose up through the corporate ranks because “they were good at giving answers. But it means they’ve had little experience at formulating questions.” Without the company leadership setting the tone and culture to the rest of the organization that asking questions are important and critical to the business growth, it’s no surprise that the employees are not asking any or enough questions. If the employees who understand the company’s products/services are not asking any or enough questions to the customers/end users for feedback, or asking questions to explore new products/services in the market, the company will become stagnant and the competition will take over.

Adam Bryant, The New York Times Corner Office Column writer says that “the best leaders understand that asking open, exploratory questions can help them figure out what’s coming and where new opportunities lie, so that they can lead their company in new directions.” Leaders have to show vulnerability and humility to ask questions which is more important than upholding the persona of the leader who must “be all-knowing, decisive, and in possession of infallible gut instincts, all of which leaves little room for questioning.”

Are you the company’s “Chief Question-Asker”?

Quotes are from “A More Beautiful Question” by Warren Berger

What’s your dominant question?

Posted on February 12, 2022February 12, 2022 by Nirmal Thapa

Jim Kwik, author of Limitless says a dominant question is the thing we keep asking ourselves, over and over throughout our day. It’s what drives our decisions in the moment and focuses our obsessions when we’re alone. He says the dominant question feels permanent but it is not.

“The questions you ask yourself will shape your life.” – Jim Kwik

In Entrepreneur magazine (June 2021), Jim shares his experience working with the actor Will Smith. They realized that Will’s dominant question is “How do I make this moment magical?” Jim recalls “One night, he was with Will Smith and his family on a movie set and it was 2am and everyone was freezing. He starts making hot chocolate for everybody, even though there’s a crew there that does that for them. He starts bringing us blankets. He starts cracking jokes. He starts telling stories. And I realized. He’s living his dominant question.”

2 WAYS TO FIND YOUR DOMINANT QUESTION according to Jim Kwik

Review

Listen. Reflect on your thoughts, listen to your inner talk. Sit in silence. Silence isn’t empty, it will be full of your own questions.

Record

Journal every day. Review and record your day, and you’ll start to notice patterns skewing towards the things you find important in your life.

Useful resources on curiosity and questions

Posted on February 5, 2022February 5, 2022 by Nirmal Thapa

Articles/blogs:

The DNA of the World’s Most Innovative Companies

Curiosity is a Must-have Skill

The Business Case for Curiosity

Forget Brainstorming. Try Questionstorming

Why must businesses step back in order to move forward?

Videos:

How to Ask Better Questions | Tim Ferriss

The Truth about Being the “Stupidest” in the Room | Simon Sinek

Podcasts:

Cal Fussman’s Big Questions podcast

The Career Contessa Podcast

The Tim Ferriss Show

Akimbo A Podcast from Seth Godin

Others:

The Right Question Institute

A More Beautiful Question

This list will be continuously updated. Please share any resources that can be added to this list.

Books I read in 2021

Posted on December 31, 2021December 31, 2021 by Nirmal Thapa

I enjoyed reading these books in 2021.

Few books I’ve loved reading

Posted on July 19, 2021January 23, 2022 by Nirmal Thapa

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE by Phil Knight – When I went to college, there was only one company I wanted to work for after graduation and it was Nike. This was one of the reasons why I studied abroad in Amsterdam, The Netherlands which was very close to Hilversum where Nike’s European headquarters was located. At that point, I had planned to either get an internship or a field visit to Nike’s Hilversum office. Neither happened at that point but Nike has always fascinated me with its creative ads, innovative products, and the athletes it endorses. When I heard about this book, I was overjoyed and couldn’t wait to read it. I borrowed this book from a friend and finished reading it in a few days. This book is definitely one of the best memoir’s I’ve read. I loved reading about Phil’s journey of starting Blue Ribbon which later became Nike. There are so many gems inside the book-the high’s/low’s of starting a company, sacrifices made, cross-cultural challenges, among others. I could go on and on about the book but I rather you read it for yourself.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie – In 2007, I had picked up a copy of Business Week and on its last pages was the list of bestsellers. One of them was How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I read the book and it has become one of my favorite books. The book has many stories that explain the simple principles and psychology of human behavior. I would recommend this book to anyone no matter what field or life stage they are in. I believe anyone can read this book, understand the characteristics of human nature, and apply the principles to their daily life.

Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life by Jim Kwik – This was definitely a book I wanted to read soon as it was published. Once I read it, I wished I had found a book like this sooner. The book helped me become aware of our limited mental and cultural beliefs, common learning challenges, and techniques to unlock our limitless mindset. Having attended Jim’s weeklong Limitless Reading Challenge to several of his Instagram live sessions, I’ve always enjoyed hearing his insights, tips and strategies on unlocking our limitless mind.

Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio – A book that is full of management lessons and ideas that Ray followed throughout the course of his life and journey of building his investment firm, Bridgewater Associates. I first learned about Ray Dalio’s book Principles on The Tim Ferriss Show and the title on Tim’s podcast was, Ray Dalio, The Steve Jobs of Investing. I followed up with reading Principles’ reviews on goodreads which made me want to read the book even more. Some readers on goodreads had said that Principles is one of the best books they have ever read. I couldn’t wait to read it myself and see what the book was all about. Once I got this book, I finished reading it in my daily commute to work.

A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas by Warren Berger – In my research on the art and science of questioning, I came across the book “A More Beautiful Question The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas.” I listened to several talks and podcasts that featured the author and became more interested to read the book. The book has a lot of interesting insights and detailed analysis on questioning from our environments at home, school, and in the workplace. It also makes a strong case of why the skill of asking really good questions is important now more than ever.

Any questions?

Posted on July 1, 2021 by Nirmal Thapa

These days I’ve become more fascinated by the power of questions and the journey to unlock really good questions to activities, decisions, and the world around me. In my research on the art and science of questioning, I came across the book “A More Beautiful Question The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas” by Warren Berger. As soon as I got my hands on the “A More Beautiful Question” book, I started reading it and finished it recently.

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. – Warren Berger

I had always been fascinated how as a child we “naturally” ask a lot of questions. However, as we grow up, we don’t ask that many questions or ask enough questions at all. The book has a lot of interesting insights and detailed analysis on questioning.

“Preschool children, on average, ask their parents about 100 questions a day. By middle school, they’re pretty much stopped asking.” – “The Creativity Crisis”, Newsweek.

Warren states in the book that many educators and learning experts contend that our current system of education does not encourage, teach, or in some cases even tolerate questioning. Teachers for the most part are also constrained by the course overload that they have to cover within a certain time frame leaving little to no time for questioning. An interesting revelation was that “schools in many industrialized nations were not, for the most part, designed to produce innovative thinkers or questioners-their primary purpose was to produce workers.”

“Our grandfathers and great grandfathers built schools to train people to have a lifetime of productive labor as part of the Industrialized economy. And it worked.” – Seth Godin

We now live in knowledge based societies and need for people to be more creative and independent thinkers. The ability to ask really good questions thus has become a key skill in the world we all live in today. Growing up, our home and school environments play a huge role in helping/hurting our own questioning skills which carries over to how we work, communicate, and go about our lives. Questions are beautiful and we need them in today’s world more than ever before.

For more insights into Questions, I recommend reading “A More Beautiful Question The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas” by Warren Berger.

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