Are You Asking The Right Questions?
Why we need to assume the mind of a beginner to ask the questions that lead to solutions to the challenges facing the world today.
“Solutions come through evolution. They come through asking the right questions, because the answers pre-exist. It is the questions that we must define and discover. You don’t invent the answer, you reveal the answer.”
— Jonas Salk —
I’ve been pondering the same question for the duration of my career in climate change: how to mobilize trillions to enable every human on earth to thrive in the midst of the impacts of climate change?
No big deal right?
It feels like my colleagues and I are stuck. We keep recycling the same set of potential solutions which don’t fully address the problem.
But they’re all we’ve got so far. So we keep going back to them over and over again. Which if I’m not wrong is the definition of insanity (though evidently not one proposed by Einstein).
There is one fundamental problem with our approach.
We’re not engaging with folks from other fields enough. Folks who could help us see the problem through different lenses and, in doing so, come up with solutions we’re not seeing.
Matthew Syed writes about this in his book Rebel Ideas, which I draw on frequently in my work. He argues that not only is “group think” not equipped to address complex challenges, but that it can have disastrous consequences. He gives many such examples in his book.
It’s clear that we need more cognitive diversity to address global challenges like climate change.
One of the things that different types of minds bring is different ways of seeing the world. And that brings different questions which unlock different answers and that leads to better solutions.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to ask better questions lately.
I recently took Naveen Jain’s quest on Mindvalley which is called The Power of Boldness. The quest is about developing and taking moonshots, translating bold ideas into action, which ultimately change the world.
Moonshots address the root causes, rather than the symptoms of problems. In doing so, they make the world a better place to live for millions, if not billions, of people.
Jain argues that in order to address root causes we need to think like a novice and ask the “dumb” questions. He maintains that what he calls “moonshot thinkers” think about the “why” rather than the “how”.
In the quest Jain provides examples of some of the most fundamental questions plaguing our societies today. One such question is:
Is the education system broken?
If we want to understand that, we don’t need to understand why it’s broken but rather:
Why do we educate children?
If the purpose is for children to eventually become functioning adults with skills that allow them to get jobs, then we need to teach children the skill of learning to learn. Jain argues that:
Given that most problems are multi-disciplinary, children will need to learn to learn about multiple things at the same time and to tie them together.
In my view we should also be teaching children skills like meditation, mindfulness and how to develop a growth mindset, among other topics that will help them live a better life. But that’s another story.
Another global challenge is energy. At present, most of our energy comes from fossil fuels which is highly problematic. Yet, Jain notes that every 90 minutes more solar energy falls on planet Earth than we use in the whole year.
The problem is not that we don’t have enough energy. It’s that we don’t have sufficient tools to convert solar energy into energy that we can use at the scale needed.
Better understanding the root causes helps us solve the actual problem rather than addressing the symptom of it.
Beginner’s mind is key to doing that and cognitive diversity brings beginner’s mind to every situation.
However, we need to cultivate cognitive diversity. We need to build bridges across communities of practice, have broader conversations and develops ways of fostering more collaboration if we are going to address global challenges.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how a beginner’s mind might look at Loss and Damage. If the goal is creating a world in which every human has the tools and resources they need to thrive, do we really need to mobilize trillions of dollars? Or do we need to better distribute what already exists? Or do we need to re-think the whole system? Or all of the above?
That’s a start but it’s still not getting at the root cause. Clearly we’ve still got a lot of work to do. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how we might apply a beginner’s mind to ask the right questions to solve the climate challenge.
Find my work on global climate policy here.
