Ask More: The Power of Questions to Open Doors, Uncover Solutions, and Spark Change pdfdrive com

What was the first call they made?
Who needed to be in the room?
What would they tell the public?
A few minutes into the game, I turned to a governor from a midwestern state.
I asked him what he was doing amid the heightened alert. Watching closely, he
said, but not much more because his state didn’t really have strategic targets and
had never considered itself seriously at risk. I was stunned. Did he really think
anyone was immune from this scourge?
So I added a few more details. I said I was an editor at the Wall Street
Journal and I wanted to see how the terror alert was playing in places that were
off the beaten track and previously had not faced a serious threat. The
assignment: Are they prepared or are they complacent? What are they doing? I’d
dispatched one of my best, toughest reporters to his state to do the story, I told

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the governor. She was waiting outside his office now.
What will you say?
What is your headline?
The governor’s expression changed. It was as if someone had told him his fly
was down as he stepped away from the podium after a big speech. I could see
the wheels turning. Reporters? Publicity? Headlines? Well, he said, he would
explain how he had met with his emergency management and law enforcement
teams. He was coordinating with the Department of Homeland Security. He was
monitoring the situation, urging people to be calm but vigilant. Suddenly we had
one very in-charge governor. By asking him to imagine himself in a different,
fictional place, I prompted him to think hypothetically—creatively.
Afterward, one of the governor’s top emergency management aides took me
aside and thanked me, quietly observing that the role-playing questions were just
what the governor needed to understand what was at stake, and that such a
scenario could actually happen. He needed to imagine reality to appreciate it.
Ask for Subversion
Creative, disruptive thinkers are unafraid to ask questions that push the bounds
of the present and the possible. They see the world differently and challenge it
profoundly. They ask more of themselves and everyone else. Sometimes they are
celebrated, sometimes they are vilified. Which is what drew me to the former
mayor of San Francisco. Gavin Newsom, defined by his contradictions and
known for his willingness to experiment, posed questions that put him on the
front lines of astonishing and controversial social change.
At just thirty-four years old, Newsom was the youngest mayor elected in San
Francisco in more than a century. He brought boundless energy, a conspicuous
determination to innovate, and one of the most interesting pedigrees of anyone
who’d ever occupied the job. He was raised by a single mother who took in
foster kids and worked three jobs to make ends meet. Hampered by dyslexia, a
disability that required special classes and extra effort, and left him
“unbelievably timid and insecure,” Newsom developed a different way of
looking at the world and a deeper appreciation for the underdog and the outcast.
As a kid, Newsom had a rough ride. Students laughed at him when he tried to
read out loud. Teachers wrote him up for a lack of engagement and focus. He

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plowed his way through school, but ended up attending half a dozen different
schools in eight years.
Though the family had little, they were lucky that a fortuitous friendship had
endured. Newsom’s father, Bill, went to school with super-rich Gordon Getty,
and they had remained close. Young Gavin became friends with Getty’s son. He
hung out with the family, flew on their private planes, and joined them on
African safaris. The Gettys liked Newsom’s originality, his sense of adventure
and willingness to take risks. They saw potential. Later, they invested in his
businesses, which propelled Newsom to wealth, fame, influence—and City Hall.
Newsom remains a study in contrasts. He advocates for the little guy but he
cavorts with high rollers. He loves politics but hates what it has become, too
often driven by money, self-interest, and ideology. He knows he must build
coalitions, but he insists he’s still a risk taker. He takes special pride in a plaque
on his desk. It is a question. Everyone who comes into his office sees it.
What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
“I challenge my staff and those around me to ask it,” he told me. And he
challenges himself with it. His first test, and the controversy that was to define
him as a politician, came less than two weeks after he was elected mayor, when
he attended President George W. Bush’s 2004 State of the Union address.
The galvanizing issue was one that reverberated back in San Francisco—
same-sex marriage. The president previously had expressed his fierce opposition
to it. He was a staunch supporter of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined
marriage as a strictly heterosexual institution. But in this speech, Bush went
further. He said he supported a constitutional amendment enshrining marriage as
a union between a man and a woman. The speech disturbed Newsom, but a
comment afterward enraged him. As he lined up to leave the chamber, Newsom
overheard a woman talking about how proud she was of the president for
standing up to “the homosexuals.” Newsom left Capitol Hill fuming, thinking it
was a good thing that few recognized the new, young mayor from gay-friendly
San Francisco.
The first person Newsom called was his chief of staff, Steve Kawa—the first
openly gay man to serve in that position. Newsom told him they had to “do
something about this.” When he got home, Newsom convened his team. He
posed the questions he’d been asking himself over and over again since the
president’s speech.

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What is this really about?
What values are at stake?
What was the point of becoming mayor?
What did we come here to do?
By now, Newsom viewed the issue as a fundamental matter of fairness and
equity. He was leaning in favor of unilaterally instructing City Hall to issue
marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Initially even his gay chief-of-staff was
opposed. “He fought me,” Newsom explained. “He was emotional about it.”
Kawa saw huge political risks; he knew that it would put everyone in the
spotlight and stir up more controversy, even in San Francisco.
“He said it was hard enough to come out to his family,” Newsom recalled.
But the mayor decided gay people had a right to get married if they wished.
When City Hall opened for business on February 12, 2004—just three weeks
after Bush’s State of the Union speech—gay couples could apply for marriage
licenses for the first time ever. Thousands showed up. Sure enough, Newsom’s
act of defiance drew the wrath of Republicans and Democrats alike.
“My party leadership was furious and read me the riot act,” he said.
California senator Dianne Feinstein all but accused the young mayor of sowing
the seeds for the Democrats’ defeat in the fall’s presidential election. Newsom
wasn’t sure he would survive the storm, but he held his ground. Defending
himself on CNN, he said that denying the right to marry “is wrong and
inconsistent with the values this country holds dear.” He added, “And if that
means my political career ends, so be it.”
His career did not end. On the contrary, he won reelection with 72 percent of
the vote in 2007. He is now lieutenant governor of California with aspirations for
higher office. In the decade since San Francisco City Hall issued its first
marriage license to same-sex couples, judges, legislatures, and, in 2015, the
Supreme Court voted to legalize same-sex marriage. Whatever you may think of
Newsom, his role as a change agent on this issue can be traced to those questions
he asked himself after hearing a speech. They forced him to step back from the
noise and the risks and look at the issue differently. They led him to think
differently and defiantly about a once-unimaginable future. Simple questions.
What is this about?
What are our values?
What was I elected to do?

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Creative questions ask you to close your eyes and imagine. They are
aspirational, often inspiring, and sometimes subversive. They embrace risk and
challenge our brains to look through a different lens. While they can be
adventurous, even exhilarating, they can also be lonely and controversial.
You can ask these questions of your inventive colleagues or your reluctant
stakeholders. You can pose them as a game or as a challenge. You can frame
them around the future as you ask for new ways of thinking and doing that will
get you there. Creativity questions are daring, liberating queries that invite you
to stick your head in the clouds, ask more of everyone, and imagine just how far
you can go.
What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

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