The Question Determines the Answer

The popular phrase “What’s wrong with this picture?” isn’t really helping us to get things “right.”

Things don’t always go as planned. We run out of gas. Miss our daughter’s play. Miss a connecting flight. Get laid off. Have cold lunchmeat for Thanksgiving because the power went out before the bird cooked.

When something happens that isn’t what we want, our automatic reaction, whether said out loud or not, is usually something like, “This should not have happened. This is wrong. Who’s to blame? Why is this happening to me? Why now?” Yup, we’re upset big time.

When we get upset, our ability to be effective does an Elvis and leaves the building. Stuck in the blame game, we fuss, fume, refuse help, say hurtful things and make never-again-will-I proclamations. The more we say, “This is wrong and shouldn’t be,” the more we limit our ability to see what’s actually happening and to respond appropriately from our commitments. To further nail our foot to the floor, we ask others to agree with us — “See, how stupid that person is?”

I haven’t found a way to prevent myself from getting upset. What I have found is a way to diffuse the upset and behave consistent with my commitment to build trusting relationships (even when the yogurt hits the fan) and to be responsible for my actions (rather than blame circumstances).

How? Ask a different question

Instead of asking What’s wrong? ask What’s missing? This requires us to think in a particular way. When we think something we need is missing, we go looking for it and generate ways to provide it. Asking “What’s missing?” creates an opportunity to identify what’s needed and then provide it.

Big hint: What’s missing will be at least one of the 5 conversations needed to create breakthrough results: Background of Relatedness, Possibility, Opportunity, Action, Results.

Case Study: What blacked out?

Dateline: August 14, 2003. The power outages last week instantaneously deprived 50 million people of electricity for their daily living and business activities. The domino-effect blackouts were not caused by too little generating capacity, but, instead, by transmission system failures.

The electricity blackout [inside the white circle] highlighted the fragility of our electricity system and unleashed a torrent of proposals to upgrade it. … investments of $56 billion, $100 billion, and even as much as $450 billion in total electricity infrastructure investments…Stephen Allen, spokesman for the Northeast Power Coordinating Council, [said]: “We will be looking at hardware, software and people.” … At this point, process and communication failures appear to be major contributors to the size of the blackout and priorities to fix. And there is no evidence that a lack of power plant capacity played a role.

For the above scenario, ask, “What’s missing?” If effective, timely communication was missing, what was missing that caused effective communications to not happen?

Case Study: Enron See movie or read the book: Enron: the smartest men in the room. Enough said.

Instead of laying blame, lay claim to finding what’s missing.

From the small interruptions (an instruction not followed) to global ones (earthquakes, economic downturns), our interpretation tells us what to do. If you are more committed to results than reasons, start by asking the question that will have what’s missing show up, then provide it.