Constantly Question Everything

Recently I have seen several articles on the use of questions. Some people have advocated using questions in sales letters, or in any document where you are trying to get someone to act favorably for you. For example, if you are trying to induce someone to buy your new doodad that is supposed to turn ordinary USD pennies into gold bullion, you might say, “Do you have too many useless pennies lying around in your home? Wouldn’t you like to miraculously turn them all into gold bullion using my doodad?” You would expect the answer to the first question to be “Yes, and the answer to the second question to be “Yes, Yes, Yes. How do I get a doodad?” Questions are good ways to keep someone off guard in a contentious conversation, or to change the subject to a more positive area. I have also seen where some political writers suggest using one question after another to confuse someone with different political views. Questions will certainly work in all these situations, but they continue to be useful when you are simply trying to learn about something. But there is another use of questions that home based entrepreneurs and investors can use.

BUSINESS QUESTIONS
A blog from Fast Company suggests asking questions about your business every day. The author believes you can lead yourself or your group to be more successful by considering a number of things you are doing:

• What made you mad today? The answer can be useful for anger management, for avoiding conflict among customers, suppliers, or employees.
  
  
• What took too long? Answers to this may improve productivity, thus lowering costs, improving customer relations with prompt delivery, or timely completion of orders.
  
  
• What caused complaints today? This question could reveal shoddy workmanship, late deliveries, poor customer relations, or misunderstandings between workers and managers.
  
  
• What was misunderstood today? Did employees or customers voice concerns that were misinterpreted?
  
  
• What cost too much? The answers could lead to more questions like, “Did productivity fall causing costs to rise?” Was there waste in the production process? Was there an unexpected increase in the cost of raw materials?
  
  
• What was wasted? This could mean wasted time at the water fountain, using company computers for personal business, smoking, eating in the workplace, and other wasted time.
  
  
• What was too complicated? Were instructions understood at the production level? Were there problems with the order?
  
  
• What was just plain silly? Any general kidding and joking among employees while working could reduce effectiveness on the production line. When you are supposed to be working, that’s what you should be doing.
  
  
• What job involved too many people? This speaks to someone on the production line who allows additional personnel where none are required.
  
  
• What job involved too many actions? Too many actions means a misunderstanding of production instructions.

There is a problem with these questions�perhaps you have noticed, they are all negative. They address what went wrong, nothing about any positive actions. Dwelling entirely on negatives ultimately accomplishes nothing. It is fine to include problems in your daily questions, but the good things that happen in your business should be addressed as well; perhaps someone in your organization, or just yourself, if you are the only employee, deserves some praise or credit for things done well. Some comments following this article address these issues, suggesting some positive questions:

• What have I accomplished today? If your answer is “nothing,” then you need to examine your reason for being in business at all.
  
  
• What new talents have I discovered in someone today?If there are any, these people need to be complimented and encouraged to continue their fine work.
  
  
• As a leader, how much farther along the road of progress and growth have I and my team gone today? It is hoped that you will advance in some way every day, so you get better at what you do every day, or. at least continue your high level of accomplishment.
  
  
• What did we do right?Most businesses, even one-man operations, tend to be critical of themselves; here is a way to offer congratulations for greatness.
  
  
• Who should be rewarded? Pat yourself on the back, or be certain to complement others who have helped you.
  
  
• Which customers did you make happy today? Make notes about all of these to use as future references, or, more importantly, use this list as a way to ensure future satisfied customers.
  
  
• Why did we do this at all? This could be considered as a negative question, but you should ask it, especially if things are not going well. Perhaps you will need to rethink your whole business plan.

QUESTIONING THE VALUE OF EDUCATION
Here are some thoughts expressed by a college graduate who did everything correctly while getting his education. The author questions the nature of success in terms of education and its ability to get what you want from life.
Some of his questions are (the answers are partly his and some of my thoughts):

• Does pushing for perfect grades create a valuable transcript for getting a job? Parents want children to succeed, so they push for excellent grades from the time of birth; the thought is that good grades will ensure a good job; it doesn’t always work like that because employers often require other skills.
  
  
• Do perfect grades define success? Only in the eyes of the grade holder. Others may not view top grades as success without accompanying skills of a different kind.
  
  
• Will high grades make us happy?Only if that is the only thing you want from life. What is there about grades to make one happy, except for a brief sense of accomplishment?
  
  
• What positions require excellence in academics? The author mentions going into research at a prestigious university, or working at the all-perfect Google. Some teaching positions may require a high grade level. Good grades will certainly not hurt when applying for a job, but they will not guarantee hiring in most cases, unless there are other qualities like communication, leadership, and people skills.
  
  
• Are the smartest people those with the best grades? The author says the smartest people are those with slightly less than the highest grades. He says they have taken some time off from the books to acquire skills in human interaction. In his words, “They tend to have a deadly combination of technical smarts with excellent communication and social savvy.”
  
  
• Can top grades help you get the job of your dreams? The author says he is still looking for the kind of job he expected after having achieved nearly perfect grades all the way through college. In spite of networking and getting many kinds of recognition, he still can’t find what he is looking for. He may need to rethink what he wants; perhaps he has set the bar higher than the available market.
  
  
• Does the poor job market cause a change in your definition of success? It could be that many job seekers will have to lower their expectations. Some will have to take anything available just to survive. It would be better to try for a job below what you want, but one that will position you to advance to your desired work in the future.

QUESTIONING FAILURE OR SUCCESS

This interesting article questions why failure is so attractive. This is obvious from everyday life, if you look at news reports at all. How many successes do you see in the headlines? The failures are what sells and headlines are crafted to show some kind of failure, even if the article is about something positive. That is what this article addresses through the use of several different questions and how they are really heard by those questioned. Here is a series of questions asked of a group of people at a seminar. The alternate questions are considered by the leaders to clear up any confusion about what was actually asked. When reading these, it is hoped you will get the idea of how to phrase questions so they will be accurately understood:

Question asked: 'What did you learn?'
Question heard: 'What did you learn not to do?'
Alternative question: 'What did you achieve?' 'How?'
Question asked: 'What would you do differently next time?'
Question heard: 'What went wrong this time?'
Alternative question: 'What would you do the same next time?'
Question asked: 'How can you improve?'
Question heard: 'What weak points are holding you back?'
Alternative question: 'What strengths can you use more and build on?'
Question asked: 'What do you want to achieve?'
Question heard: 'What can you not do now?'
Alternative question: 'What is your recipe for success?' 'What will you now apply that to?'

You can see how the seminar participants heard these questions in a much different way than intended by the questioner. The twisted heard questions reflect the tendency to see everything in a negative way signifying failure, the most popular way of looking at the world.

PERSONAL INVESTING QUESTIONS

Here is an article where the author believes every investor should thoroughly question any investment opportunity that is not completely understood. This amounts to deeply questioning everything in your portfolio, as well as your intended purchases, to see if they are really as successful as they appear. What he says is similar to the old saying, “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.”
While this kind of questioning may not get you very many friends, it could save your investments from losing significant value. Many of the major business catastrophes could have been less destructive to investors if they had only asked a few questions about unexpected success. Most unexpected rises in the value of a company’s stock result from assuming excessive risk. Those in charge become so excited with the rising value of their stock, they begin to think all will be well, even in the face of an impending crash. An example of this is the great Enron collapse. The greatest investment advisors in the world could not figure what made Enron grow as it did. Many of them had their suspicions, but they were unable to see what was happening; this was known to only a very few Enron executives. Even some of them were not quite sure why the stock continued to rise. In a case like this, experienced investors should have realized, when their questions revealed no satisfactory answers as to the reasons for the stock’s rapid rise, that anything which cannot be answered is a warning to not buy the stock. These cases are always the result of poor assessment of risk.
Another investment problem that resulted in an even more significant business disruption is discussed here. This involves the Merrill Lynch debacle which resulted in its fire sale to Bank of America. Merrill’s major problem was a huge portfolio of assets related to sub-prime mortgages. I’m very familiar with these because, until 1995, I was in the real estate business. The thing I hated most was telling prospective buyers to apply for a mortgage which, at that time, were almost impossible to get. All the paperwork and questioning people were required to endure made loan applications a very demeaning and humiliating process. I got out of real estate in 1995 and soon thereafter nobody could be turned down for a loan. It was so easy that all the investment firms got into packaging them saying there was “no risk” in the packages. They were easily sold all over the world and the whole thing crashed in 2008. You know the rest of the story�worldwide depression similar to the 1930s. Merrill’s board failed to question its chairman about the unprecedented earnings growth. It was too good to be true, and ended up in a real bust, with the chairman finally losing his job, although after the damage was done.

There are many examples of large collapses when investors failed to question unreasonable gains. Another recent example is Michael Milken and the junk bond collapse in 1989. Here, again, unprecedented value was associated with very high risk. What makes risk assessment difficult for investors is the agreement of academics and other economists; this makes it even more important for an investor to continuously question why profits are so high; if there is no satisfactory answer, stay away, no matter how attract the investment may be. The lesson of history is there are never high returns without accompanying very high risk; it’s like playing the lottery. If you are willing to risk everything with a low probability of winning, go ahead. Otherwise avoid the investment. Constant questions will protect you.


QUESTIONING EVERYTHING

Jiddu Krishnamurti, who died in 1986, wrote and spoke all over the world about psychological and philosophical matters, the mind, and human relationships. His ideas covered a lot of ground. He believed in theneed for every individual to change their way of thinking about cultural and social issues on their own, without help from any external religious or counseling authority. He believed it was all up to each individual.
Another source shows that Jiddu’s ideas are very close to those of the great questioner, Socrates. Jiddu questions the whole realm of education. He says, “Truth is a pathless land. You cannot approach it by any religion, any sect.” He further questionswhat present day education is about. He wonders if education is merely preparing us for a job. Is that all there is to life? He realizes everyone needs some kind of job to continue living, but, if that’s all there is, there is no meaning to our lives. Jiddu questions all those who continually strive for power and tell you what is best for you; he says religious leaders, parents, and politicians have laid a preconditioned framework in which everyone is expected to conform. Rather, he says, education should help us find what it is we really love to do and have a passion for. When we do what we love, life begins to have meaning.

The need for questioning is clear when we consider an experiment in Obedience to Authority conducted from 1960 to 1963. In this experiment, ordinary citizens are asked to come to a laboratory to aid in an experiment. Once there they become a “teacher” with an actor as their “learner.” When the learner makes a mistake, the teacher is supposed to shock him with voltage amounts up to 450 volts. The actors fake extreme pain, but the teachers continue the shocks because the experimenters (authority in this case) tell them to go on. What is unbelievable is two-thirds of the experimenters (teachers) went all the way to 450 volts. This is disturbing because ordinary citizens were so compelled to obey authorit , they were willing to torture people. We certainly need to question authority whenever it appears out of order. The problem is, our worldview tries to prohibit questioning authority. You should certainly ask questions if authority seems to be out of order.

Most people ignore the importance of questions during their entire lives. This means most people become the puppets of others who say they know the truth and what people should do. You can only become free of the influence of those who would make us puppets of their ideas by questioning all authority and becoming independent people ourselves, rather than expecting help fro outside sources. We can only save ourselves by becoming independent within ourselves. Constant questioning is a way for us to save ourselves from within.

CONCLUSION
You have seen how questions can help avoid many problems faced by home based entrepreneurs. There are positive questions you can ask which may help to improve your business. We have discussed how education can help people get the job the have always wanted. Then, we have talked about which is better, failure or success? Questions about personal investments have also been shown to be indispensible when maintaining a profitable portfolio for a small entrepreneur. Jiddu Krishnamurti has shown that people need to cause changes within themselves without outside help from religious authority or any other outside source. We also talked about people who unquestioningly obey some authority with no thought about the consequences.
To maintain the independence required to operate a successful home based business, we entrepreneurs need to continuously question everything. Just think of all the new regulations the government is trying to impose on us, including the new 1099 requirement in the Obamacare law. Some of these laws and regulations may possibly be overturned if enough of us entrepreneurs contact our Congressional representatives.
To succeed, question everything.