Getting Better Data

Mintzberg reports that, “managers of every sort rely primarily on oral forms of communication, on the order of 80% of the time.” Yes 80%. It seems surprising at first, but after you think about it, it sounds about right—the majority of us probably evaluate facts by asking questions and exploring issues through conversations with our colleagues and stakeholders.

So, if you have an important decision to be made and hard data are incomplete or unavailable, how can you improve your techniques of gathering soft data? Ask effective questions of your important information sources. In our Strategic Thinking course, we do active exercises to teach three types of questions as part of our “Gather Data” section on decision making:

• Closed Questions—these are the yes/no or a one-word answer type questions. “Was the sales presentation effective?” “Does it meet our needs?” “Is it a product we should buy?”

• Open Questions—these require a more expansive answer or opinion. “Can you describe how the product could help us?” “What problems do you see if we shift to this product?” “How might the product work in our process?”

• Follow-up Questions—these are the ”why” type of questions. It can take as many as four or five “why” questions on one topic to get to the root of a problem or a real reason for something, so keep asking.

Try using the above types of questions in a pattern. Start by asking closed questions to warm up a respondent, continuing with open questions that delve deeper into their thought process, and then finishing with “why” questions to get even deeper.

Face the reality that soft data is critical to your success as a manager, and build your skills to maximize the quality of this data.

- Michael Oleksak    2005