Book Review: A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger
As a fresh graduate joining the workforce, I find myself having difficulties asking good questions at my job. Throughout my education life, I’ve mostly been trained to give good answers instead. Wondering why this was the case, and how I get can better at asking questions, I decided to pick up this book.
The book begins by explaining the importance of questioning. The author does this by showing that many of the big successes we see on the world stage started with a question. While it is quite interesting, if you’re intentionally looking for a book on questioning like I am, you probably already have an idea of why questions are important to you.
Berger then goes into the topic of why we ask less questions as we grow older. I found this section really eye-opening as he talks about why children tend to ask a lot of questions and how our current society discourages us from asking questions as we grow up.
Expert knowledge — a double-edged sword?
No one would argue that expert knowledge isn’t valuable — but when it’s time to question, it can get in the way.
We’ve always been taught to trust in the experts, which does help to make things progress much faster as you don’t have to validate the knowledge yourself. But this may come in the way of innovation, especially when we take this expert knowledge as given. In the book, Berger explains that at times, its better to start with a blank slate and challenge the existing assumptions.
Why? What if? How?
This is the main tool the author introduces in the book. Cycle through this three questions and break down big questions into smaller ones. I initially thought this was quite obvious advice, but having this framework in mind does help ensure that you cover all bases when tackling an issue. I often find myself jumping straight into solution mode and only asking ‘How’ questions.
Marinate your questions
Often the worst thing you can do with a difficult question is to try to answer it too quickly. When the mind is coming up with What If possibilities, these fresh, new ideas can take time to percolate and form.
One key takeaway I got from this book is to be okay to not have the answer right away. In school or at work, we are often judged on how quickly we can come up with the answer, and we get accustomed to having answers right away and not having to deal with uncertainty. However, allowing your brain some time to ponder on questions may help you see things from a different perspective, ask different guiding questions, and eventually lead to an alternative answer.
Questioning in Business
Berger than goes on to discuss the importance of promoting a culture of asking questions in a company. More often than not, companies that are able to successful adapt to new trends are ones with a strong culture of asking questions.
He also gives quite detailed advice on how to promote such a culture, which I believe is particularly useful for people in management/executive positions.
Questioning for Life
The last section of the book provides insights into how asking better questions can help to improve our well-being / relationships / motivation in life. I found this section a little less inspiring as it seemed like many concepts were brought in, but not detailed enough to provide actionable insights.
The one piece of advice I found quite interesting is to set a question as your goal instead of a statement. Having a compelling question as a goal is harder to set aside and ignore.
A powerful question never sleeps.
Conclusion
This is a rather example-driven book, so there aren’t a lot of concrete answers as to how one can go about asking better questions (but I guess it would go against the main point of the book on focusing on the questions and not the answers).
While there are a couple of other reviews online that say watching Warren Berger’s TED talk or just reading the first 2 sections is enough, I still think it’s better to digest the content at your own pace and read the entire book.
Overall, reading this book has made me more aware of the questions I ask, and spending more time thinking about questions before jumping into solution mode.
