When how? is the wrong question

February 1, 2008 ·

Most workplace meetings focus on the practical. We ask roll-up-our-sleeves-and-figure-it-out questions like, How do we get this done? How will we know it’s successful? How do we get that department to change? How do we get them to see it our way?

Sometimes — perhaps more often than not — focus on the tangible is a way of avoiding the harder and much more important questions.

I’ve been re-reading a favorite book, Peter Block’s The Answer to How Is Yes. It’s a gem of a thinking book, one I often recommend to organizational leaders, encouraging them to read it when they actually have time to reflect, not when they’re on the run.

Here’s what Block says about all those “How?” questions:

We often avoid the question of whether something is worth doing by going straight to the question “How do we do it?” In fact, when we believe that something is definitely not worth doing, we are particularly eager to start asking How?

…Too often when a discussion is dominated by questions of How? we risk overvaluing what is practical and doable and postpone the questions of larger purpose and collective well being. With the question How? we risk aspiring to goals that are defined for us by the culture and by our institutions, at the expense of pursuing purposes and intentions that arise from within ourselves.

…If we could agree that for six months we would not ask How?, something in our lives, our institutions, and our culture might shift for the better. It would force us to engage in conversations about why we do what we do, as individuals and institutions. It would create the space for longer discussions about purpose, about what is worth doing. It would refocus our attention on deciding what is the right question, rather than what is the right answer.

I wonder how your most important conversations might be different if, instead of focusing on How?, you chose to create space for the important questions Block suggests are more relevant: