The Leader's Ultimate Question

The Ultimate Question for Those Who Lead Others

This article is available as a .pdf at http://www.energyleaderforum.com/resources/

How the Right Question Can Change Everything

You are About to Learn How You Can Change the Moment with the
True Ultimate Question

“No problem can be solved from the same level of thinking that created it.”

--Albert Einstein

You have before st rategic informat ion about leader ship--- but

leader ship of a special nature. Anyone who asks a helpful quest ion in a

needful situat ion becomes the momentar y leader .

Tr imTab Solut ions has

simple idea:

one good quest ion can question change everything.

Really, every crisis is only good leadership away from moving to a new place.

This contribution of moving a crisis away from dead-center is basically the essential

contribution of transcendent leadership.

Let me offer a negative example to get your blood boiling. Osama bin Laden was a

transcendent leader, though clearly he was an evil one. He took his cause to a new level

by “transcending” the current rules-of-operation in the world. He began thinking and

asking questions which could provide for transcendence. Somehow, in his thinking

process, he devised a new way as a terrorist, to create destruction. Somehow his

questions led to a conclusion: Hijack commercial jets, fly them into skyscrapers.

Similar to most transcendent effects, there is now a need for transcendent counter

measure. The Minute Men, of American Revolutionary War fame, offered a transcendent

strategy by hiding, rather than fighting “fair” in the British-gentleman fashion. Had the

British had transcendent leadership who might have changed the way they fought to

match the American innovation, who knows how that war might have concluded.

Of course, t rue transcendent leader ship is mar ked by words like

honor , nobility, and bet terment . If you offer t ranscendence to your

situat ion it must be dir ect ion to a bet ter place.

Explaining the need for transcendent leadership is the first thing we must

appreciate before moving on to the great tool of the

True Ultimate Question, but why?

Not to get crazy-philosophical here, but the battle between good and evil is a continual

theme of sweeping proportions. Not only in the military, but also in business, education,

government, and families; we need transcendent leadership everywhere. Someone, we

could argue, needs to step to the forefront and provide leadership to transcend the current,

and often dire, circumstances we face in these difficult times. A transcendent leader in

the military will realize the “rules have changed” since civilians are now happily used as

weapons of destruction. A transcendent military leader could discover even more

strategic and surprising counter-measures to rid the world of the ominous threat of terror

perpetrated by individuals bent on destroying freedom and removing choice from the face

of the earth. Motives are irrelevant, since a good reason to do evil never changes the

nature of any dark act. Business practices are no different in principle.

We could be accused of wasting a few minutes of your time by focusing on the

need for transcendent leadership. Of course, the battle between good and evil rages on;

however, it is not the current situation that calls for transcendent leadership. It is the

nature of leadership itself that calls for transcendence. We need, and have always

needed, leaders. Leaders by their very nature are transcendent, or transcenders, due to the

act of leading itself.

What is a leader? What is transcendence? For transcendence, Webster’s offers

“exceeding usual limits”, which is just right for our purposes. Latin origins breaks the

word into

trans + scendere . Trans means “across” and scendere means “to climb across”

as a literal, if not metaphorical, meaning of transcendence.

Leaders are transcenders by definition. A leader is one who “climbs across” a

limit or a barrier to an entirely new place.

The creator of Structural Dynamics, Robert Fritz (

The Path of Least Resistance

for Managers

) describes a leader as one who is going to a new place and invites others to

go along. The invitation itself largely separates the leader from the dictator or manager.

When people are invited to go along there is a natural and necessary camaraderie among

the entire group. Force, manipulate, cajole–none of these belong to the transcendent

leader. He has a clear sense, or picture, of where he is headed, and invites others to join

him. Perhaps we could simply say that

a leader invites us to visit the future with him.

Can you begin to see how far a great deal of pop-thinking on leadership has

drifted from the truth? One glaring problem in today’s environment is the notion of 'buyin'.

Buy-in is a management notion that employees and supporters have grown to expect

from leaders; but it can unravel the very meaning of leadership. Essentially, decisions

and overall direction are dependent on everyone in an organization agreeing or “buying

in” to the plans, strategies, and direction of the group. Sadly, this easily empowers the

followers such that a few can stymie progress because they don’t 'buy-in'. Buy-in or

agreement is not actually a bad thing, since we all appreciate agreement and likemindedness

in our organizations and work environment. The problem with buy-in is what

it does to leadership: Buy in Destroys Leadership.

Think clearly here: How can a leader be a leader when she must follow the

followers? She can’t. Leaders who follow their followers are demagogues, giving an

appearance of leading by taking their cues from the prejudices of the people; rather than

from the compelling principles they follow and the better future they envision. Naturally,

input from followers is both important and helpful; but input is information, not the

decision.

Transcendent leadership builds support by casting the vision and inviting others to

follow. Rather than engaging in constant therapy among the followers in order for all to

feel good, the true leader builds agreement through providing focus on the immediate

goals and objectives necessary to “climb over” to the new place in the group’s future. We

could all learn this lesson from the ancient simple biblical proverb:

In all labor there is profit,

But idle chatter leads only to poverty.

(Proverbs 14

:23, NKJV)

When opinions are elevated broadly, where every voice is not only heard, but

followed; the structure of the organization changes from a transcendence focus to a

harmony focus. Harmony-focused groups are those which use therapy to operate the

organization. Therapy-focused organizations spend time, energy, and money on

attempting to get everyone happy about their work and happy about the company. Sadly,

this diminishes effective efforts for both the organization and its leadership. Idle chatter

does lead to poverty, and much of the idle chatter stems from the influences of poppsychology.

It only stands to reason that a group can become entangled in idle chatter

about feelings, rather than focused labor toward accomplishing together. Feelings,

however, due to their nature, can ebb and flow with the fluctuations in friendships,

© Dr. F.R. Lybrand, Energy Leader Forum, 2011

marriages, circumstances, and hormones. No matter how much therapy or idle chatter,

the whimsical harmony built on such shifting sands will rarely last.

Harmony built on mutually dependent labor toward a transcendent goal does last.

Despite all that confronts us as we circumnavigate the joys and horrors in this life;

pulling together under the vision and invitation of a true leader can generate the most

genuine kind of harmony. Moreover, this harmony is productive and memorable as we

see the group transcend, climb over, to a truly new place; creating further opportunities to

transcend again. Finally here, please make a note that just because you may not be the

'official leader' in a particular situation, it has nothing to do with offering leadership of

the transcendent kind! Next comes one of the greatest tools you can use...

WHY QUESTIONS MAKE THE LEADERSHIP

DIFFERENCE

“Yes, sir! Step right up! This oil taken from the body of the eastern

diamondback rattlesnake can cure what ails ya. Rattlesnakes don’t have cancer.

Rattlesnakes don’t have depression. And rattlesnakes don’t have ADHD! You can see a

sick cow; you can see a sick dog. I’ve seen a lot of sick people in my day, but I ask ya,

have you ever seen a sick rattlesnake? Now bear in mind, rattlesnakes eat rodents and

all kinds of creatures of the forest that are not healthy, but the constitution of the

rattlesnake is such that it takes the vile and the slimy and the deformed and transforms it

into the health of that snake. You just try a shot…oops, I mean…a dose of Dr. Macs

(that’s “scam” backwards) Snake Oil Treatment and I GUARANTEE a total difference in

your life within 10 calendar days!”

Of course, selling snake oil is legendary in the United States during a certain time

in our history. All snake oil salesmanship was built on the CLAIM. The claim is a

proposition concerning the benefits of the thing being sold. Here you are offered the

outlandish claim that questions can make the difference. Indeed questions can make the

difference…the difference between success and failure, the difference between victory

and defeat, the difference between things staying the same and things changing. In fact,

the previous pages make the outlandish claim that questions in the hands of leaders can

turn regular leadership into transformational leadership. Questions are indeed powerful.

Perhaps we can substantiate the claim and move it from the domain of theory to fact.

Consider Athens

Athens, Greece around 500 years before Christ was a city of about 100,000

people. In that 100,000, over a period of a generation or so, Athens produced Socrates

whose disciple was Plato, whose disciple was Aristotle, who tutored Alexander the Great,

who conquered the then-known world. The amazing thing about these gentlemen is that

© Dr. F.R. Lybrand, Energy Leader Forum, 2011

they were not kin. They were not genetically and immediately linked in terms of

intelligence. Rather, they had what Win Wenger has described as “the genius meme”.

For a popular explanation see

The Einstein Factor.1 The genius meme is based

predominantly on the Socratic Method. In recent years, the Socratic Method is seeing a

bit of a rebirth through a number of classical educational institutions, especially at the

high school level. Some schools have been in existence for a long time based on this

Socratic Method. For example, St. John’s College, with campuses in Annapolis,

Maryland, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, has honored this method for over 50 years.

The Socratic Method is fundamentally a method based on questions or

questioning. Loosely speaking, law schools use Socratic dynamics of questioning,

though in the strictest sense we wouldn’t think of a law school as being a Socratic

institution. Nonetheless, law schools do effectively use questions to get results (usually

in the case of getting a client out of legal trouble before a jury or a judge).

The Socratic Method itself was probably not developed by Socrates; however, he

certainly was the popularizer of that approach, especially as immortalized in the writings

of Plato concerning the exploits and final demise of his teacher, Socrates. The curious

thing about the Socratic Method is not that it was a questioning approach to learning, but

rather that it was invented for the benefit for the teacher or tutor and not for the students.

It’s common in our day and age to think of everything being designed to benefit the

student; however, the Socratic Method found a curious relationship between questions

and learning. Questions create a natural feedback loop such that there is an entire leap in

learning that can occur as an individual or individuals continue to wrestle through a series

of questions related to a topic. In other words, a topic might be expressed and a question

is asked. The question itself generates answers to which more questions can be applied

which generate more answers, and that cycle continues until either the topic leads to

something significant or the topic is exhausted as it is examined from every angle through

a questioning process.

The Greeks, in fact, coined the phrase “education” to be something quite different

than what we experience in our day and age. In our day and age, many educators tend to

promote the idea that students are a “tabula rasa”, which means “blank slate”. The idea is

that the student arrives as a blank slate and the teacher must “teach” and write upon that

blank slate the things that the student needs to know. The Greek understanding of

education is found in the word itself which breaks down into “e” and “ducere”. Roughly

translated, this means “to draw or lead out of”. In other words, this questioning process

was so effective that it appeared insight and understanding was drawn out of the student

which already existed within the student. Supposedly a student was handed a hereditary

connection to a cosmic understanding that humanity held in common. The leaps and

insight were incredible and dramatic due to the Socratic Method; so, it appeared the

students just somehow already 'knew'.

The way in which the Greeks thought about education assures us that the method

was developed for the teacher and not for the student. The teacher or tutor in Greece was

a learned individual who wanted to learn more, and in the course of time someone

happened to notice that as he offered a topic and questions to his students; their responses

would then help him generate more questions and more insights, such that he himself

Win Wenger and Richard Poe, The Einstein Factor (Roseville, California: Prima Publishing, 1996).

© Dr. F.R. Lybrand, Energy Leader Forum, 2011

could refine his own thinking. Not surprisingly, the students themselves began to benefit

from this interactive loop. You might think of the Socratic Method simply as putting on

the table with others a topic of discussion, which literally could be anything. The tutor,

who is more committed to learning the truth and being right, would then begin with his

students to examine the topic or the claim or the subject for discussion. The tutor was

literally seeking to discover what he thought about what he thought. Often times, as is

the case with most humans, we discover that we don’t really agree with ourselves and as

we investigate something we think we believe, we come to greater clarity, cast it aside,

and embrace a new and normally more pristine understanding regarding the topic. In a

way, the Greeks understood what George Washington Carver understood in his own

education. Carver, the wizard of peanuts who found hundreds of different products

which could be developed from a lowly peanut, said, “Anything will yield its secrets if

you love it enough.” The Socratic Method was organized for individuals who loved truth

and learning. And yet, that love for truth and learning would have been completely

inadequate without the use of the question.

A further surprising thing about Athens, Greece and the power of this questioning

process is that we only have some of the manuscripts that tell us the insights from a very

few of their thinkers. There’s no telling what things in the coffee shops, restaurants,

homes, and street corners were etched in the dirt or written on a crude form of paper, or

simply discussed in day-to-day conversation--- that we have since lost.

As they discovered in Athens, and as they in large measure rebirthed in the Italian

renaissance in Florence, the nature of tutors and mentors and the use of questions for

learning has been borne out--- proved beyond any doubt that questions make the

difference. What indeed might happen in your home or school or business or

organization if you began to introduce the genius meme through the simple tool of

questions?

Of course, Jesus Christ was a master of questions as well and used them to

reshape the understanding of his followers and to defeat his enemies.

WHAT IS A QUESTION?

You may think it’s funny to ask a question about questions; however, as you

follow the logic of this

TrimTab Solutions eBook, you will find that that question

actually helps you discover together the meaning and value of questions.

What is a

question?

A question is certainly a kind of sentence or a kind of statement; however, the

question has the unique feature of inviting anyone who hears the question to look beyond

the words to an answer. In the way we write and read, we have statements and

explanations and quotes most of which simply make a point that we either agree to or do

not agree to. The question, however, has a way of throwing a line and a hook into the

dark. This line and hook thrown into the dark until now has been largely an

unpredictable–though worthwhile–action. As you work your way through the material

in this workbook, you will see that you can make a far more educated guess about where

the line and hook will land, into what new world or new answer it will connect and draw

you through the darkness into the light and the beauty of that new place.

What is a question?

We believe question is a blueprint of a map to an answer.

In short, it is a

predictive map . If you know anything about maps and map-making, you

© Dr. F.R. Lybrand, Energy Leader Forum, 2011

know that the map is designed to represent the territory. So if you’re in a new city or new

area or even the wilderness, you can take out a map and orient yourself to the map, face

yourself north and face the map north--- and roughly begin, or perhaps exactly begin, to

understand what is to your east and your west and to the south. In this way, the map can

be used to direct yourself to wherever you’d like to go. In most countries, the most

common use of the map is simply to go from where you are to where you want to

be...basically we use a map to get from HERE to THERE. All of these things happen,

however, to be points of interest in the physical world. Having a map and having

directions allows you to guide yourself very directly to a specific point in the physical

world. But what of questions? A question is a blueprint of a map to an answer. It is a

predictive map. Blueprints are generally used to serve as a basis for construction. A

blueprint of a house, for example, is a way to outline and organize the materials such that

when they are fastened together with nails and screws and concrete and trusses, what was

first conceived in the imagination then comes to exist in reality. Well, questions serve to

bring these things together. They are a blueprint of a map to an answer. In other words,

a question becomes a blueprint that as you use the pieces together, develops in reality to a

map that represents a place predictively you can go. In other words, it might be just as

easy to think of questions as a way to create. Creation is always about something that

does not exist that is then created, and that then exists. Questions are a way in which to

move from something not existing to something being created.

If you were to become an ardent student of creativity and you began to study the

greatest technological creations of the past 200 years, you would find that questions and

questioning is at the heart or the core of creating. Thomas Edison, for example, invented

or created the incandescent light. In the process and struggle of discovering how to light

the entire world with electricity, Edison had to keep asking certain questions. These

questions led him to attempt to use the hair of a beard and a strip of bamboo to discover

[in a vacuum tube] how to pass electricity through this element without combustion. In

the course of time, with this question and many, many more, Edison followed this path to

a new place. In our own day and age as individuals have asked questions related to

calculation and computing and graphics, the personal computer grew to become

something to increase the productivity of our lives. In the course of time, however,

individuals began to ask questions about how to connect computers and so networks were

developed. Beyond that, questions led the way to the Internet, a way in which to connect

computers, and therefore people, around the world such that information can be relayed

virtually at the speed of light.

A question is a blueprint of a map to an answer.

Think about where you are.

Think about the dark beyond which you can’t imagine and then think about what might

be out there. How can we teach children to learn at twice the speed they currently learn?

How could we begin to have management and labor instantly understand what really

matters in the business? How can we give feed back to subordinate so they weren't upset

but really helped? How could we generate genuine camaraderie between enemies rather

than just a truce? How might we create a sales force out of our customers? [P.S.

TrimTab Solutions @

www.trimtabsolutions.com offers answers to all of these questions

in our various offerings]

The questions you can ask are endless and they are the very thing that can make

the difference in moving you from where you are to where you’d like to be. You have

© Dr. F.R. Lybrand, Energy Leader Forum, 2011

before you information which will offer you the opportunity to develop the skills

necessary to generate questions in any area of endeavor that might…just might…cast that

line and that hook to connect to the next great answer in your field, team, or daily life.

No doubt, you are about to now have a fresh way to provided transcendent leadership.

© Dr. F.R. Lybrand, Energy Leader Forum, 2011

The Question Path: Designing Your Own Questions

Now that you have a grasp on why questions work, why they are genuinely magic

no matter the kind of work or situation you place them in; how do you design the best

question for the moment or need?

Let me (Fred) tell you a story about the value of training. I was an eagle scout,

stemming from the values of my family and our small town of Anniston, Alabama. In

those days becoming an “eagle” meant a lot of swimming. Summer camp at Comer

Scout Reservation always began with the same old test…you had to prove you could

swim. Once your skill level was decided upon you would receive a color-coded tag for

the week. The tag would put you in a beginner, intermediate, or advanced group.

Whenever you went swimming, and always with a buddy, you were required to swim in a

designated area; only “advance” swimmers were allowed into the deep water.

Even to this day the training comes in handy. Every year we make it to the Gulf

Coast of Alabama for about two weeks. All of my children know about the “buddy

system” since from the beginning a loud shout of “buddy check” means to get to your

swimming partner and raise your hands to be counted. The ocean is attractive, but it isn’t

always friendly. A number of years ago, on the very first day at the beach, the undertow

was pretty severe, but I didn’t check it. Tripp and Laura, my two oldest, set out for the

waves as buddies. In a few minutes Laura was yelling and pointing at Tripp who was

beyond the point where the waves were cresting. Laura couldn’t get to Tripp and Tripp

had the panicked look of a helpless swimmer. Tripp also has mild Cerebral Palsy on his

right side, which only added to the situation. He was fighting to get to shore but the

current was dragging him away.

Occasionally old lessons make the difference. I took off my shirt, handed my

wife an assortment of keys, wallet, and all the other sundries from my pockets.

Fortunately, I never entered the ocean. As I walked toward the water I motioned Tripp to

swim along with the current. It probably felt like I was telling him to swim out to sea,

but Tripp trusted me instead of his own feelings. As a result, he came to shore. You see,

I knew that all the waves actually make it to shore, and if he worked with the current

we’d have him safe and dry. In a moment or two he was safely resting on the beach.

Whew!

So what does all of this have to do with designing powerful questions?

Everything! First, when we are asking the wrong question, or even a weaker one, it’s like

swimming against the undertow. Second, you can’t learn to swim unless you actually get

in the water. You can’t really understand the ocean until you’ve been in it. You will not

learn to design questions until you start designing them. Game, set, match. There is no

way to learn without involvement. We can intellectualize and pretend, but working with

questions is the way you’ll learn to handle them. There is, however, a shortcut or two

we’d like to show you.

First let’s review some basics:

Tension Seeks Resolution, Implications Suggest the

Path, and Results Orient the Compass
.

© Dr. F.R. Lybrand, Energy Leader Forum, 2011

Tension Seeks Resolution

One of our mentors, Robert Fritz (see

www.robertfritz.com) has developed the

discipline of structural dynamics, or understanding the underlying structures involved in

human and organizational realities. Robert emphasizes how one of the great structural

principles governing the way our world has been designed is the simple fact that tension

seeks resolution. Take a deep breath and try to hold it…and hold it…and hold it…what

happens? In time the breath must be exhaled and the feeling is one of relief. The

pressure on the chest, the oxygen-to-CO

2 ratio in the lungs, the overall sense of normal

breathing; all these combine to insist the air be exhaled, and new air inhaled. You work

on your finances but a deposit is missing; the house or office is turned upside down until

it’s found. You develop a tension headache (from looking for the deposit) and you take a

pain reliever. The Mona Lisa, is she smiling? Really, what about?

In all of these examples we see the principle that

tension seeks resolution. Well

structured movies utilize this principle from start to finish. The nature of “what’s next”

continues to draw us into the next scene, and the next, until we find out how everything

turns out. When we understand this principle we can understand exactly why questions

work:

questions establish a valuable tension which is resolved only by a matching

answer.

Implications Suggest the Path

As we have learned, an implication is something that is logically suggested or

extended from an event or a cause. Much like dominoes, if you set them up in a proper

array, you can predictably expect how the “domino chain” will fall. Another example is

the way in which evidence implicates someone in a crime. A person’s close association

with the victim, along with a motive, along with a bloody glove; all serve to implicate or

suggest that he killed his ex-wife. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” is yet another

common sense way to say the same thing.

In working with questions it is helpful to understand how implications work

because the answer to one question often suggests a new question. This trail of questions

and answers can be used to design a path of questions, or predictably help us see where a

question might take us. Of course, our goal isn’t to become good guessers, but rather to

have a pretty good idea about the direction a question will take us. Once we look at this

likely direction, we can more easily decide if a particular question is a useful one to ask.

For example, if I ask, “Why is Bill such an incompetent jerk?” then by implication (or

inference, if you prefer) I can safely expect an answer the question suggests: Bill is an

incompetent jerk because of…genetics, upbringing, alliance with the dark side of the

force, his jealousy of me, his ethnic identity and red-headedness, etc. None of these

answers really get us toward what we want from the question. What we want is to know

how to get along with Bill. In this case a question like, “How could I get on good

working terms with Bill?” is far more useful because it looks to solutions rather than a

catalog of problems.

Another lesson from scouting comes from a skill known as Orienteering.

Orienteering involves the use of a map or directions, combined with landmarks and the

use of a compass. Usually you are given a list of directions in terms of degrees and

distance. All this means is that from a starting point you should be able to go a certain

distance in a certain direction, take another reading to “re-orient” yourself with a new

direction, and travel a certain distance again. It doesn’t take long to find out that looking

at a compass the whole time won’t work well on land. Instead, you get a heading to a

marker in the distance such as a tree or rock, walk to the tree or rock, take another look at

the compass, and repeat. This can keep you on course pretty effectively.

What about questions? In designing useful questions we need to practice

principles of Orienteering. Specifically, we need to use our “compass” properly in order

to head in the right direction. To head in the right direction you need two basic

ingredients; you need to know (1) where you are and (2) where you’re headed. A

compass can tell you which direction to head from where you are, but it can’t tell you

where you want to go. You, as a scout, pilot, or ship’s captain must decide where you

want to go.

Where do you want to go?

Said differently, where do you want to wind up? In

both instances the point is that you must supply an end result in order to decide on the

direction to head. If you know land is approximately to the east, then head east. With

questions it is basically the same game. Where do you want to wind up? What is the

result you want from your question? Do you want a list of reasons to do something? Do

you want a new idea that no one has considered? Do you want a different attitude among

your employees, children, or for yourself? Deciding on what you want

before you design

the question “orient the compass”.

Putting It All Together
Tension Seeks Resolution, Implications Suggest the Path, and Results Orient the

Compass

all serve in combination to help us form strategic and effective questions.

Although you can probably began to figure out your own way to make these principles

work for you, we’ve included a few templates. The value of a template is that you can

“paint by numbers” until you begin feeling comfortable with your own process.

Basically, these approaches to designing questions have borne fruit; so we know they

work. Additionally, they have a nice appeal to common sense. Finally, using these

templates does not require faith; instead, it just requires action. Simply walk through the

steps / questions, answering them as fully as possible. Sleeping on your answers and

revisiting the process the next day is also a valuable way to make use of these principles.

Often, time itself is a great ally as we keep a question in mind. Tension seeks resolution,

yes, but usually there is a delay in finding the resolution, the answer. If you are working

with a team, then simply phrase the question in a “we or us” form.

Alpha Template (The Long Version)

1. What is the end result I want from the question?

2. What is the current and real situation or circumstances?

3. What needs to be asked last?
© Dr. F.R. Lybrand, Energy Leader Forum, 2011
4. What needs to be asked before the last question?

5. What needs to be asked before that question (#4)?

6. What needs to be asked before that question (#5)?

7. Repeat as needed until a complete “question path” is created.

Beta Template (The Short Version)

1. What do I want?

2. What could I ask?

3. If the above question (#2) were answered, where would it take me?

Repeat Steps 1-3 until you design The Question that will likely lead to the result

you want if it is answered.
The Strategic Question
If I could only ask one question to get my result, what would it be?

The Strategic Question creates a focus for us to find the most valuable question by

limiting the possibilities. Limits create focus, and limiting your question to one-andonly-

one can produce a wonderful and immediate result. The Strategic Question is a

powerful way to find shortcuts, especially in a crisis.

The True Ultimate Question
2
What is the better question?

The

The True Ultimate Question is, in many respects the surest way to find the

right question. Many people have talked about the ultimate question concerning

everything from what the consumer wants to the meaning of life.

The True Ultimate

Question

offers what Rollo May observed concerning the “elegance” of a solution to a

problem and the resolution of creative tension

3. Elegance offers a bit of beauty and

efficiency toward a creative solution or endeavor.

The True Ultimate Question allows

you to use the incremental value of constant improvement to design a better question. If

there is a better question,

The True Ultimate Question is the best way we know to get

there on your own. And naturally, with a better question comes the best possibility for a

better answer. Here are the steps to use with the Ultimate Question:

1. What is your topic or desired result?

2. Ask a relevant question

3. Answer it (step #2)

Ask The True Ultimate Question

5. Answer it (step #4)

Ask The True Ultimate Question again

Keep repeating The True Ultimate Question until you find a question that will

likely lead to the result you want IF IT IS ANSWERED.

Rollo May, The Courage to Create , W.W. Norton & Company, 1975, p. 68.

We’ve used the phase “Question Path” as a metaphor for your own thinking and

understanding. The analogy of a path is accurate and useful, but technically you are

creating the path BEFORE you ever travel it. The “path” is a set of moves from one

point to another. In this case the path ends with the question you invent and begins with

what you know related to your question. As in the Alpha Template, you may create a

series of questions which lead to your final result or answer, but there’s another way to

go.

Following our metaphor, think about the use of a “path” as a three-step event.

First, you decide on which path to take (or create). Second, you start down the path.

Finally, you stay on the path until you reach your destination. Here’s how it looks when

you create a Question Path.

A) Create the Path
1. Get a useful question

2. Think about what you know related to the question

3. Think about the question
B) Start down the Path

1. Think about what you know related to the question (again)
C) Stay on the Path

1. List a few possible answers

2. Hold the Tension and Wait for a Resolution (answer)

In this last step we invite you to “hold the tension”. In many ways holding the

tension is the most important part of the process. Profound answers often come from

holding the tension when they won’t come any other way. So what is “holding the

tension”? Simply put, it is

not accepting the first possible answer because it is first,

which is often something like, “It’s impossible.” Holding the tension also means you

don’t prematurely quit. It literally means

holding on to the tension. Sleep on it. Let it

brew, percolate, and steep until the mature taste of a full cup of an answer is ready. When

we hold a question in our mind for an extended period of time, our mind tends to work in

a powerful way to profoundly and elegantly resolve the tension between what we are

asking and a final, workable, answer.

An Example:

It might be helpful to play with an example. The situation is as follows: You are

part of a team in charge of designing a marketing strategy for the 3-Dimensional Wonder

Widget, a new product that is going to revolutionize the burgeoning pasta industry.

Unfortunately all of the team members are also professional chefs, so as you can imagine,

Ramou and Jean Pierre are in extreme conflict; which is dragging the team’s morale and

focus down into the quagmire of a spoiled soup stock. You’ve been handed the

chairperson’s whisk and all have agreed to let you try to help the circumstance with your

questioning skills. So y

About This Contributor

Dr. Fred R. Lybrand

The Leader's Ultimate Question

About This Contributor

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