Why Smart Teams Produce Excellent Answers to Bad Questions

Executive Field Note 011

Intelligence does not protect an organization from a bad question.

Sometimes it makes the problem worse.

Give capable people a question and they will find answers.

They will analyze.

Model.

Debate.

Optimize.

But intelligence applied inside an unexamined question can produce extraordinary confidence in an irrelevant answer.

The quality of the answer matters.

The quality of the question comes first.

What question are your smartest people answering that no longer deserves an answer?

Published by Executive Insights. A publication of Axiom Research Press