The author Warren Berger identifies as a ‘questionologist’ and to his surprise no one questioned it. As creatives when confronted with a challenging question or situation, he encourages us to stay curious and to simply take the time to ask questions that help guide us to make better decisions.
So a book that help us make better choices through the questions we ask makes sense. His focus is in a number of key interrelated areas: decision-making, creativity, leadership, and relationships through connecting with others.
I’m particularly interested in the way he approached the topic of creativity and was impressed in how I could bring these questions into my own problem solving and creative exploration. He believes as children we’re gradually socialised to stop questioning when we’re rewarded for the right answer instead of staying in a questioning exploratory space and developing our questioning habits.
In the chapter on creativity he moves through a sequence of questioning phases starting with our individual approach to choose to be creative. If creativity is a decision, or a mindset, rather than just a skillset, then we all have the ability to look at a problem, situation, and theme and discover our own ideas and interpretations.
If you agree with this, then the remainder of this chapter provides a valuable approach to the questions that will assist to move from the curious phase all the way through to a focused completion phase, via a series of well formed ‘why, what, how’ problem solving questions.