The Three Powerful Questions You Can Ask and How They Can Get You Unstuck

By Glenda Eoyang and Royce Holladay

Joe has always been a successful association executive. But recently he's found that the strategic planning system that once served his organization well is no longer working. He used to be able to plan on a five-year cycle. Now, even one-year cycles are too long. Regardless of his best-laid plans, other forces in the association keep overriding his strategies. What's more, the tricks that have always helped him see what needs to be done and motivate his staff are failing him. Joe is deeply frustrated. It seems so unfair; how can it be that here, at the point in his career when he thought he knew everything he needed to know about his job, each day is such a struggle?

Joe is hardly alone. Uncertainty and chaos are the new normal, and leaders everywhere are forced to rethink the most basic aspects of their work.

Forget five-year planning cycles. Even five-month planning cycles don't work. Forget fixing the root cause of your challenges in a world where diverse and multiple forces from innumerable sources influence decisions you make and actions you take. Today's outcomes depend on yesterday's actions and bring unexpected consequences tomorrow. The world is changing at the speed of thought, and it is beyond complex. We have to find new perspectives and tools that help us meet those challenges.

In the past, the world was stable enough to imagine planning for a three-to-five-year horizon. Then, strategic planning often brought people together to explore current realities and future possibilities in shared work. It allowed them to identify measures and activities that gave them a sense of control. But as yesterday's dreams become tomorrow's old hat, it's impossible to create strategies you can count on; measures that will hold their meaning; or a stable, unchanging picture of the future.

So, you try working harder. You try reading new leadership books. You try the newest versions of old strategies. But nothing works. You've hit the wall, and you see no options for action. You're stuck…and that's a terrible feeling. So how can you focus your work and move forward in coherent and productive ways?

Click the image to enlarge

Adaptive action allows associations and nonprofits to see and understand the patterns in the challenges they face, design creative responses that move beyond just treating the symptoms of those challenges, and, finally, act with courage, knowing their actions are supported by insights about what is really going on. At the heart of this process are three deceptively simple questions: What? So what? Now what?

Question 1: What?
In the What? stage, those engaged in problem-solving simply describe current reality. What's happening in the system? What's happening in the larger world? What is being seen, felt, experienced? In this stage, people name and describe, as thoroughly as they can, the current status, focusing on the challenge they need to address.

The difference here lies in the need to go beyond what has always been seen and described. See beyond the surface descriptions and begin to explore the underlying patterns that creates your world. Here's an example:

Joe recently asked for help with communication. In his What? stage, he started by describing ways people did not have information they needed and lots of disconnection across the association. Describing the What? in this way—through his traditional lens—left him still frustrated and confused, without any real options for action beyond what he was already doing. On the other hand, by describing the What? through an adaptive action lens, he was able to address a broader range of issues, knowing that communications challenges were only one symptom of greater, systemic issues he could address.

The following questions helped Joe and his staff use this stage to explore these deeper dynamics of their interactions and communications with their focus on the underlying patterns. The stem of the question (in italics) would work for most situations.

• What do I know for sure about what is communicated and how?
• What patterns do I observe in part, whole, greater whole in the ways people share, gather, and use information at the individual, group, team levels?
• What feelings or reactions do I see among staff as they share information or learn new information?
• What lies on the horizon in terms of need to share information or in terms of the fallout from how communications currently happen?
• What data do I have about information flow, data use, and times, places, and situations where people say they don't have the information they need?
• What stories have I heard and from whom, recounting difficulties gathering info and/or difficulties getting people to hear and respond?
• What has changed over time, relative to this challenge?
• What are the gaps in what I know about this challenge or seemingly related situations?

Question 2: So what?
In the So what? stage, people ask, "So what does all this mean?" They explore the implications of their work, identifying current rationales, new research, and emergent forces that may be shaping their world. They consider risks and benefits that go along with the uncertainty of the situation and explore the underlying dynamics of the challenges, using human systems dynamics (HSD) tools to understand and to identify new options for action.

Joe and his staff collected information about the patterns that took them deeper into the situation than they had looked before. When they began to explore at a deeper level, what they saw were patterns of employees who expected to have information spoon fed to them and used "lack of communication" as a scapegoat anytime people felt they needed to cover their own lack of performance. They saw examples of people not seeking information they needed to save time in development or decision-making. They knew there might be many reasons for this phenomenon—general complacency, lack of accountability, unclear expectations, for example—but they needed more information to be able to make wise decisions about their next actions.

Questions asked at this phase might be:

• So what doesn't fit for me—for us—in terms of how people seek, use, and share information, as opposed to what we expected to see? In terms of what we need to have happening?
• So what is the difference between what I/we want and what I/we have when it comes to sharing and using information?
• So what led us here? Might lead us out? How can we change expectations about seeking and sharing information? How might we change how people step into accountability for knowing what they need to know?
• So what constraints can I observe? What limits/supports effective information flow? What limits/supports information use? What limits/supports accountability for sharing information?
• So what are the most relevant
  • Boundaries? Where information flows well? Where it gets blocked? Where it's received? Where it's well used?
  • Differences? In how people seek and send information? In how they use or ignore information? In what information people want or use?
  • Connections? That bring people together? That make meaning of the information they have? That extend into other parts of the organization? To the greater landscape? That are newer? That are older?
• So what are my options for action to shift how people seek, gather, generate, and use the information that is available to them in the organization?

Question 3: Now what?
In the Now what? stage, people take action and then assess the impact on the challenge at hand. Did the situation change? In what ways? What were the unintended consequences that might have emerged? What's happening now? What am I uncertain about now? If people pay attention, they find themselves back to the next What? stage, describing the patterns as they stand after taking action. That's the iterative nature of this process; people always end up at the start of another cycle.

Based on their new understandings about what was really happening in their association, Joe and his staff began to find ways to reward and recognize effective information flow. They clarified expectations about individual responsibility for gathering and sharing data. They began to model in very public and unambiguous ways what they wanted to see happen among all staff. And at each stage they took time to check the impact of their actions. They looked for ways to adapt their plan and move toward greater effectiveness, based on what they found about the continuously emerging and shifting patterns.

Joe began to use this iterative, feedback-enriched method of planning to move his organization forward. Because they seek external information, they are less likely to be surprised by shifts at the organizational level. They are better able to incorporate new ideas and address emergent challenges. More people are better able to see how their work and innovations contribute to the progress of the association and to its success as a whole.

Here are the kinds of questions to ask at the Now what? phase:

When you are able to understand a challenge from a new perspective, you have a better chance to figure out new ways to respond. You're basically saying, "Okay, all of this uncertainty isn't bad. Nor is it good. It just is…and here are a few simple questions that can help me live with it." There's something so liberating about making that shift—and once you do, you're ready to move forward in ways that lead to sustainable innovation and productivity.

Glenda Eoyang, PhD, and Royce Holladay are the coauthors of Adaptive Action: Leveraging Uncertainty in Your Organization. Eoyang is founding executive director of the Human Systems Dynamics Institute, a network of professionals working at the intersection of complexity and social sciences. Holladay is an associate with the Institute. They can be reached at www.hsdinstitute.org.