How do you stay competitive in a rapidly changing world? How do you win new customers and keep the old ones when your products and services begin to look like all the others? How do you keep your organization alive and dynamic? These are questions on the mind of many business people. Some respond by increasing their focus and “going deep.” An alternative is to broaden your focus and start exploring. There are plenty answers available out there. They are just waiting for us to ask enough questions.

At a very young age we are constantly told to “stop asking all those questions!” Most corporate cultures value and reward answers, not questions. Yet without the right questions, we lose the opportunity to find the right answers. There are three things you can do to increase the questions you ask and therefore, the potential pool of answers from which you can draw.

Developing a passion for understanding: This isn’t just asking a lot of questions. It is a relentless pursuit of understanding, even (especially) if there is not always a direct use for what you are trying to understand. Often we don’t have time to sit back and try to understand. We drive for the deliverable, or flesh out the answer, based on whatever information we have. We say we are working to understand. We ask questions about the task at hand, the expectations set forth for us, the due date, or the budget. That’s one type of understanding. Another type is to understand the nature of the problem, the context around the problem, or even how our solution is going to fit into a bigger picture. We allow ourselves to take a lot of things for granted rather than diving in and trying to make sense of them.

I had the opportunity to study under a great professor named Roger Schank. Roger was once asked if, as a professor, he feared that he would one day run out of answers. His response was, “my bigger fear is that I’ll run out of questions.”

My greatest accomplishments have never been in areas where I started with the greatest expertise. They have always been in areas where I’ve had the most questions. Interestingly, those questions have stimulated thought among others, have caused them to engage me more in their discussion and have ultimately, built my expertise. But, it always came from a question or a desire to understand something new.

Take chances: Discovering new things requires that you enter into new situations or ask “stupid” questions. Challenging your assumptions or what you take for granted requires that you move from your comfort zone and experience things in a different way. These are things that our culture typically tries to minimize. Why “rock the boat” or “put a wrench” into the works” when things are operating smoothly, right? However, as with anything, higher risk generally equates to higher reward.

Do you put yourself into new, unusual situations to try to better understand things? Do you invite people to meetings who may disagree with you or even strongly oppose your views? Do you put yourself into the center of things to get the best view or do you try to stay on the fringe where you “can’t get into trouble”? In Michael Gelb’s book, “How to Think Like Leonardo daVinci”, Gelb points out that daVinci invented his own parachute and submarine in order to get closer to the action. Think about how dangerous that must have been. Leonardo knew that unless he took the risk, he could never really immerse himself and satisfy his passion for understanding.

Engage life: You can’t sit on the side or wait for someone else to provide you with the answers or experiences you need. Engaging life means putting yourself in the center of the action. It means viewing the world from multiple perspectives. Leonardo would sketch a flower or part of the body from three different angles to ensure that he was “seeing” the whole picture. How many perspectives do you use when solving a problem? In our search for the “answer” we often latch on to the first perspective that makes sense and then “drill down” to get to the details.

Curiosity is more than just asking questions. It is about embracing life and developing a passion for understanding how things work.