Why does a particular situation exist? • Why does it present a problem or create a need or opportunity, and for whom? • Why has no one addressed this need or solved this problem before?

“People may start out asking, ‘How can we do this?’ or ‘How should we do that?’ But as soon as you start using words like can and should, you’re implying judgment: Can we really do it? And should we?” By substituting the word might, he says, “You’re able to defer judgment, which helps people to create options more freely and opens up more

Clearly, technology will have the answers covered—so we will no longer need to fill our heads with those answers as much as we once did, bringing to mind a classic Einstein story. A reporter doing an interview concludes33 by asking Einstein for his phone number, and Einstein reaches for a nearby phone book. While Einstein is looking up his own

You can conduct all business, including the business of everyday life, constantly accompanied by a curious and vocal three- or four-year-old, who will see what you miss. Or you can attempt to adjust the way you look at the world so that your perspective more closely aligns with that of a curious child. That second option is by no means easy—it

Meier felt that instead of just pushing information at kids, schools needed to teach them how to make sense of what they were being told so they would know what to make of it and what to do with it.

Five learning skills, or “habits of mind,” were at the core of her school, and each was matched up with a corresponding question: Evidence: How do we know what’s true or false? What evidence counts? Viewpoint: How might this look if we stepped into other shoes, or looked at it from a different direction? Connection: Is there a pattern? Have we seen

In sharing early versions of an idea with the world at large, one is likely to receive negative feedback—which some people interpret as evidence of a failure. But that’s not necessarily true, says Harvard’s Paul Bottino, who points out that when it comes to feedback, “dissonance can actually be more valuable than resonance.” As people push back on

Author of the book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Suzuki immigrated to the area and taught there until his death in 1971. In his book, Suzuki writes, “The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert.” Such a mind, he added, is “open to all possibilities” and “can see things as they are.” Suzuki also made an important point that

questions challenge authority and disrupt established structures, processes, and systems, forcing people to have to at least think about doing something differently. To encourage or even allow questioning is to cede power—not something that is done lightly in hierarchical companies or in government organizations, or even in classrooms, where a