Smart Questions: Learn to Ask the Right Questions for Powerful Results
“Smart Questionsand the concept of the Smart Questions Approach are long overdue, and I only wish they had reached my desk 40 years ago. Getting the right people involved at the onset and defining and then seeking ‘an expanded purpose’ are obvious to me now. I wish they had always been so.”—Paul Torgersen, president emeritus and John W. Hancock Chair of Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University“Smart Questionsis a must for nonprofit business. The Smart Questions Approach definitely jump-started our staff in planning and thinking differently about solving problems. Our staff now gets creative solutions by asking Smart Questions.”—Michael Jackson, president and CEO, Drew Child Development Corporation, Los Angeles“The ideas inSmart Questionsare very intriguing and helpful. It’s the first book I know of to give structure and substance to the cliché that a person faced with a problem (or an opportunity) should first search fo r the right questions, rather than for the right answers. Bravo! The book will surely move the reader a long way toward thinking creatively.”—Steven B. Sample, author of the best-sellerThe Contrarian’s Guide to Leadershipand president, University of Southern California“Distilling from many years of successful consulting to leading innovators in business, the arts, and public and private organizations, the authors have crafted an engaging, practical ‘how to’ primer for learning what it takes to build the personal, interpersonal, and organizational bases in knowledge and understanding that support successful innovation.”—Edward O. Laumann, George Herbert Mead Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology and the College, University of Chicago“Smart Questionspenetrates to the core of what creative managers intuitively do.  It provides major insight into how to attend to and leverage the social, physical, and organizational context of a problem. An excellent blend of modern and postmodern thinking.”—John Seely Brown, coauthor of the best-sellerThe Social Life of Informationand former chief scientist and director of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)