The first question we ask plants the seeds of the future.
"What's your heartburn issue in this community--the one thing that could keep you awake at night?" a Jacksonville, Florida, consultant asked community leaders during interviews for a social services agency.
At the same time, her colleague, Kathy Wells, was conducting similar interviews for an organization devoted to elders. Kathy chose a different question: "What has been a high point for you in the life of this community--a time when joining with others on behalf of the greater good had been especially satisfying?"
Both projects were successful. The initiative Kathy designed was extraordinarily successful. It laid the groundwork for an inquiry designed to change forever what it means to grow older in society, to which we'll return in the next chapter.
For now, I'd like to underscore the vital difference between the questions asked by these two consultants.
As we've seen, in every human system, there is a tacit social agreement about what makes people tick, what's important, and how the world works. Naturally, those understandings shape the questions that are asked.
Kathy's question about a high point assumed that people would have uplifting memories of working with others in the community. It also assumed that something useful could be learned by studying the best of those experiences.
Her colleague stood in a very different place. She chose a question that assumed people had big problems on their minds and that it would be important to focus attention on those.
"I thought hard about what I was going to ask, because I knew the question would set the stage," Kathy told me. "I really wanted my question to enliven people, to locate and develop their energy."
(Someone once asked me, "Jim, you travel so much; how is it that you have so much energy?" The question reinforced the kind of energy she was talking about. I would have felt less of that energy had she asked, "Doesn't so much travel tire you?")
Kathy worked from the insight that all questions are filled with unspoken assumptions. They're "loaded." More than that: The questions we choose to ask largely determine the kinds of stories people will tell in response. As we've already seen, the very act of telling those stories will shape their (and our) realities.
This has been named the simultaneity principle. And it's a far cry from the way most consultants study and work with human systems. More often, questions are thought of as neutral tools for fact-finding. Researchers strive to ask unbiased questions that they believe will give them an objective picture of what's going on. When they're done with this detached analysis, they proceed to create plans for action or change, blissfully unaware that their very questions have already affected the way people see things, including the energy they have for whatever plan might ensue.
When we understand the simultaneity principle, we can intentionally ask questions that create more of what we want. We can build in a bias for action, right from the start.
We can ask questions that carry assumptions of competence and capability, and the seeds of confidence and courage.