Asking the right question - Empowerment at work

And here is another good article on the HBR webbie:

How to Ask Better Questions by JudithRoss

One of your direct reports walks into your office looking for help: the rollout of the new line of Web-based products she is managing is falling behind schedule. All the prototypes have been created and beta tested, but she is having trouble getting final sign-off from the VP of IT. Deadlines have come and gone, and no amount of reminding or cajoling will get him to focus on her project.

As her manager, what should you do? If your first instinct is to suggest a solution, think again.

Although providing employees with answers to their problems often may be the most efficient way to get things done, the short-term gain is overshadowed by long-term costs. By taking the expedient route, you impede direct reports' development, cheat yourself of access to some potentially fresh and powerful ideas, and place an undue burden on your own shoulders. When faced with an employee's problem, you can respond in a much more value-adding way: by asking the right questions, help her find the best solution herself. We aren't talking about asking just any questions but, rather, employing questions that inspire people to think in new ways, expand their range of vision, and enable them to contribute more to the organization.

Questions packing this kind of punch are usually open-ended — they're not looking for a specific answer. Often beginning with "Why," "How," or "What do you think about...," they are questions that set the stage for subordinates to discover their own solutions, increasing their competence, their confidence, and their ownership of results.

Here is a framework for asking the right questions at the right time to create clarity and agreement around issues and to empower your direct reports.

Ask the right kind of questions
The word "empower" gets bandied about so much that one could be forgiven for overlooking what it actually means: to imbue someone with power, to instill in the individual a sense of his own strength and efficacy. "When the boss asks for a subordinate's ideas, he sends the message that they are good — perhaps better than his. The individual gains confidence and becomes more competent," says Michael J. Marquardt, a professor of human resources and international affairs at George Washington University (Washington, D.C.) and author of Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask (John Wiley & Sons, 2005).

But an empowering question does more than convey respect for the person to whom it's posed. It actually encourages that person's development as a thinker and problem solver, thereby delivering both short-term and long-term value: the short-term value of generating a solution to the issue at hand and the long-term value of giving subordinates the tools to handle similar issues in the future independently.

A disempowering question, on the other hand, undercuts the confidence of the person to whom it's asked and sabotages her performance. Often, these types of questions focus on failure or betray that the questioner has an agenda.

The most effective and empowering questions create value in one or more of the following ways:

1. They create clarity: "Can you explain more about this situation?"
2. They construct better working relations: Instead of "Did you make your sales goal?" ask, "How have sales been going?"
3. They help people think analytically and critically: "What are the consequences of going this route?"
4. They inspire people to reflect and see things in fresh, unpredictable ways: "Why did this work?"
5. They encourage breakthrough thinking: "Can that be done in any other way?"
6. They challenge assumptions: "What do you think you will lose if you start sharing responsibility for the implementation process?"
7. They create ownership of solutions: "Based on your experience, what do you suggest we do here?"

Create a culture that embraces questions
To foster a culture in which questions are widely used to create value, begin by letting direct reports know that you value their queries. "For example, tell them to bring their best questions into their performance appraisal," Marquardt says. These might be questions they posed in the past year that led to new ideas and solutions for the company or questions they would like to ask you during the review to boost their own effectiveness and that of the unit or team.

Just as important, it is up to you as the leader to model the question-asking approach so that your team, in turn, will employ it with their own reports. For example, you can track how well the team is working together by asking questions like:

* We've been working together for three hours today; what did we do best as a team?
* What enabled us to be successful in coming up with an innovative strategy?
* How can we ask better questions?
* How can we apply what we are learning to other parts of our work?
* What leadership skills helped us succeed today?

What you get by asking
While going into your team or one-on-one meetings with a list of questions rather than points to be made takes some thoughtful planning, the payoff can be huge. Marquardt experienced this himself when he was executive director of the former Arlington, Va.–based World Center for Development and Training.

He asked each of his direct reports, "What one idea and/or strategy that we are not currently implementing do you believe would best contribute to the success of our company?" The responses this question generated were amazing, he says. "We came up with a marketing strategy that I had never considered before and added a couple of new services for our customers," including a short-term certificate program and courses that blended classroom and online learning. As a result of his query, the group also examined new markets in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia and developed local partners in those regions. And because these were their ideas, Marquardt's direct reports were committed to putting them into action. "They accepted responsibility in designing, marketing, and implementing the new programs," he says.

By leading your team meetings with questions, you will also help eliminate ambiguity and create alignment around issues. "Most groups are not aligned when they come together," Marquardt says. "When a leader goes into a group and states a problem, everyone assumes that they understand the problem in the same way. In reality, that is false." If, for example, a product isn't selling, you may assume that it's because of a flawed marketing program. But what if others think it's a flawed product? You won't learn that without asking, "What do you think the issue is?" Without consensus on the problem, you can't define a strategy to address it. Asking such questions enables team members to understand one another's perspectives and agree on what they are dealing with.

What not to ask
Marquardt points out that, contrary to the business truism "There are no bad questions," several types of questions can have a negative effect on subordinates.

Questions focused on why a person did not or cannot succeed force subordinates to take a defensive or reactive stance and strip them of their power. Such questions shut down opportunities for success and do not allow people to clarify misunderstandings or achieve goals. These questions include:

* Why are you behind schedule?
* What's the problem with this project?
* Who isn't keeping up?
* Don't you know any better than that?

Leading questions seek a specific answer, one that puts the person being asked the question in a negative light, pushes through the questioner's agenda, or exerts social pressure to force agreement. Among their many downsides, leading questions such as the following inhibit direct reports from answering candidly and stifle honest discussion:

* You wanted to do it by yourself, didn't you?
* Don't you agree that John is the problem here?
* Everyone else on the team thinks John is the problem. What about you?

While closed questions, which require specific answers, can be a good way to open and close a conversation, a whole string of them in a row, such as the following, will make subordinates feel they are being interrogated:

* Is this a good time to talk?
* What time is the meeting?
* How many people are coming?
* Who else will be there?
* When will the report be ready?

Their success is your success
As you strive to lead by asking rather than telling, remember that leaders are only as successful as the people who report to them. By asking your direct reports the right questions, you can help them develop their ability to solve problems, their creativity, and their resourcefulness. Not only will their greater strength in these areas reflect well on you, but it also will enable them to better help you and the whole unit when fresh challenges arise.

"You don't have to have the answer to ask a great question," says Marquardt. "A great question will ultimately get an answer."

Asking the right question - Self Improvement

I have realised that asking the right questions will get you the right answers.

It's also how you ask it.

Brilliant post on this by Steve Pavlina:

Asking the right question

Tony Robbins says that thinking is a process of asking and answering questions. He stresses the importance of asking the right questions to get the right answers and therefore the right results. I agree with him. Most people ask lousy questions that cripple their results. Lousy questions turn your focus away from what you want and towards more of what you don’t want. And since we ask and answer mental questions every day, our questions wield great power over our results.

Here are some examples of weak questions vs. strong questions:

Upon waking up early

Weak: Can I fall back asleep again? Should I go back to bed?

Strong: What would be the best way to start my day? How can I energize myself? Where can I find something inspirational or motivational to read right now?

When contemplating exercise (and feeling unmotivated)

Weak: Is it too hot/cold to exercise? Can I skip it for today? What difference will it make if I just skip a day? Don’t I deserve a day off?

Strong: Won’t it feel great hitting the showers afterwards? What should I listen to while I workout? Won’t it be wonderful to achieve my fitness goals? How can I make this session more fun?

When considering a dietary improvement

Weak: What foods am I going to have to give up? How am I going to deal with the deprivation? Am I going to have to eat like this forever?

Strong: What foods that I like will I get to eat more of? What new foods can I experiment with? Won’t it be great when I reach my goal weight? Won’t it be wonderful to finally master this area of my life once and for all? Once I succeed at this, who else can I help?

Nearing the end of the workday

Weak: Have I done enough that I can justify quitting for the day? Is this a good time to stop? Can I finish this tomorrow?

Strong: What’s next? How can I complete one more task? How much more can I get done today?

When spending time with the kids

Weak: Why do I have to do so much childcare? How can I keep the kids from draining my energy this evening? What’s the bare minimum I can do to keep them out of my hair? How early can I put them to bed?

Strong: What can I do with the kids that will leave me feeling energized? What do I appreciate most about my kids? What would I enjoy doing with them this evening? What would happen if I let my kids direct how we spend our time together?

When facing an unfamiliar social situation

Weak: How can I avoid looking like an idiot? What should I talk about? How can I keep from being too nervous or shy? How did I get myself into this situation? Can I get out of going?

Strong: Won’t it be fun to meet some interesting new people? If I see someone there who’s a bit shy, what can I do to make him/her feel more comfortable? What can I expect others at this event to have in common with me?

When feeling depressed, anxious, or otherwise negative

Weak: Why do I feel so down? Why can’t I be happy? How come I never get any time to myself?

Strong: What can I do to energize myself? Who can I talk to that would help cheer me up? What can I read or listen to that would inspire me? Are these feelings trying to tell me something — should I go journal about them? How long can I hold a fake smile before it forces me to start feeling good again?

What’s the difference?

Weak questions are disempowering. They keep your focused on your own ego, your problems, and your shortcomings. Weak questions keep you focused on what’s wrong… on what isn’t working. That might seem like a good idea, but all it does is further reinforce the situation you’d like to change. Weak questions will lead your brain to come up with answers that are useless, circular, or even destructive.

Yet weak questions are addictive. At first glance they may even seem helpful, and that’s why they’re so insidious. You might think that if you’re depressed, the best thing you can do is to ask, “Why am I so depressed?” Perhaps if you could diagnose the problem, you could cure it. But it doesn’t work that way. When you’re in a negative state or situation, you aren’t thinking clearly to begin with. You’re in no position to accurately diagnose yourself. Effectively you’re blind. So the answers you get back will be worthless. At best you’ll merely come up with a temporary solution, but the underlying condition will remain, and the problem will simply submerge and crop up again later, sometimes in a different form. Asking why you’re depressed merely feeds your depression. In answering the why question, now you’ve added a story on top of your depression. That goes way beyond acknowledging your depression and trying to do something about it.

Strong questions are empowering. They keep you focused on solutions, on what you can control. When you focus on what you can do, you avoid falling into analysis paralysis. Ultimately the way out of any negative situation is right thinking. Wrong thinking leads you in circles. Right thinking leads to action.

Going back to the depression example, the first thing you need to do is to get yourself to a more positive emotional state. And with practice that can be done in a matter of minutes — even seconds if you’ve studied NLP. Strong questions will help you shift your focus away from depression and the thoughts that reinforce it and towards action. When you focus too much thought on what you can’t control and don’t like, depression is a natural consequence. When you ask different questions to focus on what you can control and what you like, depression will lift.

Mediocre results largely come about from asking mediocre questions. Great results come from asking great questions. If you don’t like the results you’re getting, try asking completely different questions from the ones you’re used to asking. Ask questions that turn your focus towards your goals instead of away from them. Ask questions that allow you to enhance the pleasure in your life instead of creating greater pain.

Link: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/02/asking-the-right-questions/

Miami

Two songs I really like --- a dedication to my hometown: Miami

Will Smith - Miami


David Guetta - Miami Beach

Service in Singapore

An interesting article in the Online Citizen on Singapore service, and why it will never be caring or good. This is something I agree with actually. Things here are never to our convenience but instead to their convenience. That is why to any request made to service staff in Singapore, the first answer is always NO or CANNOT. They do not want to go through the trouble, and why should they? The service mindset is just not there and the companies that hire them don't encourage it.

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Taken from the Online Citizen website:

Self before Service

For want of 10 cents, I once nearly made a mess of myself. It could have been worse. I could have made a mess of the place I was at – the Maxwell Road Food Centre.

I am talking about those public toilets operated by turnstiles. You deposit a coin and the turnstile lets you in.

From the toilet operator’s – in this case the National Environment Agency – perspective, this system is fantastic. It gets to collect money automatically, without even having to engage a low wage worker. And the money is no small change. Just five toilet users per minute adds up to $30 per hour, to a couple of hundred dollars per day!

For that sum of money collected, the toilet user or “customer” gets zero “customer service” in return. If you have a very full bladder but don’t happen to have 10 cents, that’s your problem. What if you are on the verge of diarrhoea? It may no longer be only your problem!

This is no a small issue. For it is a symptom of a much bigger one, where services are provided primarily from the perspective of convenience and profit for the service provider, while the welfare of the customer takes a back seat. This is one of the fundamental reasons why service standards in Singapore are generally poor. There is no service culture.

A case in point. Last year, I wrote a number of letters to the press pointing out that the Fairprice X-tra outlet at AMK Hub consistently failed to implement its “Express Lane” service by serving customers with more than 10 items in their shopping baskets.

After my second letter was published, because the situation did not change for several weeks after Fairprice said it would look into the matter, the communications manager and communications director invited me to tea, purportedly to hear my feedback. But even before we met, they had already decided what to do – change the signage from “Express Lane. Not more than 10 items” to “Serving single basket shoppers only”.

I pointed out that a single basket could hold 50 or even 100 small items. They pointed out that, from the operations viewpoint, it is easier to do it this way than for cashiers to face the unpleasant task of re-directing shoppers who abuse the Express Lane. In fact, with the “single basket” system, there is nothing for cashiers to implement, since those lanes are blocked by railings and trolleys cannot get through anyway.

Oh well. People like me who qualify for the Express Lane are only small customers. Better for Fairprice to lose me than to lose those aunties who queue up at the Express Lane with full baskets. I felt so foolish to think that I mattered.

Also at AMK Hub, the DBS Bank near the basement has ATMs that allow only minimum withdrawals of $200. The first time I discovered this was very late one night. I did not have $200 to withdraw. So I had take the bus home and then walk a few hundred metres to use the ATM “near” my house. When I raised this matter with the bank, the customer service officer pointed out that there are other ATMs in the building. True. But at past midnight that night, most of those other ATMs were no longer accessible, except for one outside the building, quite far away. Walking there and back would have meant that I missed my last bus home.

To DBS’ credit, it did not seem to have introduced similar ATMs elsewhere. But whoever thought of that idea in the first place was clearly thinking more about the bank’s – rather than its customers’ – convenience.

I never knew what banking convenience could mean until last year, when I acquired a Citibank credit card and used a non-DBS/POSB ATM for the first time. Whoa! I encountered a cash deposit machine (in Singapore) that has the flexibility to accept not just $10 notes and higher denominations, but also $5 and $2 notes. Previously, I only saw such machines in Malaysia.

And the first time I withdrew money from a Citibank ATM, I was most pleasantly surprised. The $300 that I withdrew did not come as six pieces of $50 notes (as what DBS/POSB would have given me), but included five pieces of $10 notes, just in case I needed small change. “How very thoughtful,” I thought to myself. For once, I felt cared for. I felt served. And I could not help but wonder why this service had to come from a foreign and not a local bank.

Still on the subject of banks, have you noticed that nowadays, most banks have their counter services on the upper level? While the ground floor is reserved for marketing investment products? Never mind if fewer people use the investment services. They have greater value.

Yes, banks now have ATMs, internet banking and other convenient services that make it largely unnecessary for people like me to use their counter services, except when I wish to cash a cheque. But who are the people who now need to walk up and down that flight of stairs? People like my sister who are uneducated (she does not feel comfortable to use an ATM card) and old!

Many years ago, my sister ran a hawker stall and I once accompanied her to renew her hawker licence. As you know, most government departments have long stopped handling cash. And it so happened that day that the NETS payment system was down. But can any government department exercise flexibility? Sorry. No cash. Wait.

Fortunately, the system was up and running again after about half an hour, so it wasn’t too bad. While waiting, I asked the officer what if the system was down for a long time. “Pay by cheque,” he replied matter-of-factly, as if the average hawker carries a cheque book.

Cashless payments remind me of the National Library. Ah! Finally they got the system sorted out and users can now pay their overdue fines using a choice of cards: NETS, Cashcard, Transit Link, etc. But boy did they take a long time. I remember for a good many years, it used to be Cashcard or nothing. I remember once walking a great distance to buy a Cashcard, for $10 or whatever sum, I forgot, just to pay a few cents worth of fines. (I had the option of paying later, but heck, I wanted to get it done with.) And then, as a step improvement, some library branches accepted more types of cards than others. If I am not wrong, it took more than 10 years from the introduction of cashless payment to reach today’s standard of convenience and service.

It may seem that I am harping on the distant past. But I bring this up to show how deeply rooted this attitude is. The government’s insistence on cashless transactions long ago set the precedence of putting the service provider’s convenience ahead of the user’s.

Meanwhile, another unhappy trend crept in – the privatisation of public services. And so we now have public transport, healthcare, telecommunications, electricity and more essential services all run by corporations with profits as top priority and public service somewhere further down. This is another topic for another time.

For now, let me end off with another example. If you ride the MRT around the Northern part of Singapore, you will hear announcements advising that if you wish to go to Johor Baru, you should alight at Woodlands Station and take Bus Service 950.

This sounds like a helpful public service announcement. It is not. Because if you do wish to go to Johor Baru, the far better option would be to alight at Kranji Station, which is closer to the customs checkpoint and which has three bus services – SBS 170 and CW1, plus SBS 160 across the road – heading towards Johor Baru. At Kranji, you just walk out of the station and chances are, there are buses waiting for you. In contrast, at Woodlands, you need to walk a long way to the Service 950 bus stop… and wait. If you are unlucky (as I once was), you might meet an extra long queue and need to wait for the second bus to come before you can board.

Why, then, are commuters being given this piece of poor advice? Ahhhhh! It’s because Service 950 is run by SMRT, the same company that runs the train that they are riding. So what sounds like a public service announcement, for the benefit of the public, is in fact an advertisement, for the benefit of the transport company. Don’t be fooled!

Yeah, you still get served in the end. But only after the service provider has served itself.

Who cooked the planet?

Taken from Today Online:

Who cooked the planet?

The culprits are greed and cowardice - and the world will pay the price

05:55 AM Jul 28, 2010

Never say that the gods lack a sense of humour. I bet they're still chuckling on Olympus over the decision to make the first half of 2010 - the year in which all hope of action to limit climate change died - the hottest such stretch on record.

Of course, you can't infer trends in global temperatures from one year's experience. But ignoring that fact has long been one of the favourite tricks of climate-change deniers: They point to an unusually warm year in the past, and say: "See, the planet has been cooling, not warming, since 1998!"

Actually, 2005, not 1998, was the warmest year to date - but the point is that the record-breaking temperatures we're currently experiencing have made a nonsense argument even more nonsensical; at this point it doesn't work even on its own terms.

But will any of the deniers say "Okay, I guess I was wrong," and support climate action? No. And the planet will continue to cook.

So why didn't climate-change legislation get through the United States Senate? Let's talk first about what didn't cause the failure because there have been many attempts to blame the wrong people.

First of all, we didn't fail to act because of legitimate doubts about the science.

Every piece of valid evidence - long-term temperature averages that smooth out year-to-year fluctuations, Arctic sea ice volume, melting of glaciers, the ratio of record highs to record lows - points to a continuing, and quite possibly accelerating, rise in global temperatures.

Nor is this evidence tainted by scientific misbehaviour. You've probably heard about the accusations levelled against climate researchers - allegations of fabricated data, the supposedly damning email messages of "Climategate," and so on.

What you may not have heard, because it has received much less publicity, is that every one of these supposed scandals was eventually unmasked as a fraud concocted by opponents of climate action, then bought into the news by many in the media.

Did reasonable concerns about the economic impact of climate legislation block action? No. It has always been funny, in a gallows humour sort of way, to watch conservatives who laud the limitless power and flexibility of markets turn around and insist that the economy would collapse if we were to put a price on carbon.

All serious estimates suggest that we could phase in limits on greenhouse gas emissions with at most a small impact on the economy's growth rate.



FOLLOW THE MONEY

So it wasn't the science, the scientists or the economics that killed action on climate change. What was it?

The answer is, the usual suspects: Greed and cowardice.

If you want to understand opposition to climate action, follow the money. The economy as a whole wouldn't be significantly hurt if we put a price on carbon, but certain industries - above all, the coal and oil industries - would. And those industries have mounted a huge disinformation campaign to protect their bottom lines.

Look at the scientists who question the consensus on climate change; look at the organisations pushing fake scandals; look at the think-tanks claiming that any effort to limit emissions would cripple the economy.

Again and again, you'll find that they're on the receiving end of a pipeline of funding that starts with big energy companies, like Exxon Mobil, which has spent tens of millions of dollars promoting climate-change denial, or Koch Industries, which has been sponsoring anti-environment organisations for two decades.

Or look at the politicians who have been most vociferously opposed to climate action. Where do they get much of their campaign money? You already know the answer.

By itself, however, greed wouldn't have triumphed. It needed the aid of cowardice - above all, the cowardice of politicians who know how big a threat global warming poses, who supported action in the past, but who deserted their posts at the crucial moment.

There are a number of such climate cowards but let me single out one in particular: Senator John McCain.

There was a time when Mr McCain was considered a friend of the environment. Back in 2003 he burnished his maverick image by co-sponsoring legislation that would have created a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions.

He reaffirmed support for such a system during his presidential campaign and things might look very different now if he had continued to back climate action once his opponent was in the White House.

But he didn't - and it's hard to see his switch as anything other than the act of a man willing to sacrifice his principles, and humanity's future, for the sake of a few years added to his political career.

Alas, Mr McCain wasn't alone; and there will be no climate Bill. Greed, aided by cowardice, has triumphed. And the whole world will pay the price.



The writer is a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008.

http://www.todayonline.com/Commentary/EDC100728-0000042/Who-cooked-the-planet