The 8 Traits Successful People Have In Common: 8 To Be Great by Richard St. John

Author:Richard St. John [St. John, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Train of Thought Arts Inc.
Published: 2012-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

A good way to get ideas is to ASK QUESTIONS. The problem is we’re often afraid to ask questions because we think we’ll look dumb. But if we want to generate good ideas, it’s a lot dumber not to ask questions. Richard Saul Wurman, a very creative designer full of good ideas, says, “Questions drive all of my work.” Scientist Robert H. Dennard says scientists are always questioning. Robert made the personal computer possible when he invented DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory), but he got his big ideas through DRAQ (Dynamic Random Access Questioning). Asking questions is actually one thing humans can do much better than computers. As legendary artist Picasso once said, “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”

Simple questions often spark ideas for great inventions. In the early days of photography it took forever to get pictures developed. Then one day as George Land was walking on a beach, he took a picture with his camera, and his daughter asked a simple question: “Why can’t I see the picture right now?” BOING! George got the idea for instant pictures and invented the Polaroid process.

Gary Hamel, founder and chairman of Strategos, tells about a big idea that happened after another question was asked on a beach: “A guy is down in the Caribbean, and he works for Motorola. He’s there with his wife, on an island so remote you can’t get a cell signal out, and she turns to him and says, ‘Honey, you work for a communications company. Why can’t I make a call?’ and out of that comes the idea for point-to-point satellite communication all over the world.”

Asking questions helped Martha Stewart come up with the ideas that built her home-making empire. Cindy Galbraigh, head of sales for TV Ontario, told me she ran into Martha at a trade show and was peppered with questions: “Martha was amazing. She asked me, ‘What did you buy? Why didn’t you buy this? What made you buy that?’ She kept questioning me, but in a nice way. She wanted to know, and I was very impressed by that.”

Asking questions will lead to ideas in any field. Elinor MacKinnon, chief information officer at Blue Shield, said to me, “I’m best at solving complex problems. In truth, I don’t actually solve the problems. All I do is ask a lot of questions that other people hadn’t thought of asking. Ask lots of questions.” TV host Gayle King once said, “I think one of my biggest assets is that from the time I was a little kid, I asked a lot of questions. They used to call it being nosy. I prefer to call it inquisitive.” And marketing consultant Leslie Westbrook says, “I ask a lot of questions. You listen, and that leads you to the next person, the next question, and you learn along the way. The answer, the path, the direction you need in your life, will appear.”

In school they give gold stars for answering questions, not asking them,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.