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

participate in a local charity, asking people to commit time, energy, or money to
a cause is a big deal. They have to care about your endeavor and want to be a
part of it. They have to believe in you and in your objectives. So, ask about
values and priorities. Find out what resonates and where your common interests
lie. The answers may lead to collaboration and commitment.
Listening for Common Goals
Ed Scott and I met in New York in 2012, when I was speaking about the sorry
state of American politics. Pretty bad, I said. Polarized, paralyzed, nasty. And
the media? They’re not helping. Happy to swarm a controversy or scandal, slow
to cover solutions or compromise, the media bring a 24/7 microscope to the
bacteria of politics. The public bears responsibility, too, I said. Voters should do
their homework so they can separate what’s real from what’s noise. They need to
hold politicians, the media, and themselves to account.
After my talk, Ed said he had some ideas he wanted to discuss. We
scheduled a meeting a few weeks later in my office. As I prepared for our
meeting, I learned that Ed cared about a lot of things—public health, HIV/AIDS,
autism, education, civic engagement. I learned that he’d made a bunch of money
in technology and since getting out, he’d quietly invested in causes as well as
businesses. He helped start the Center for Global Development; Friends of the
Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; the Scott Center for
Autism Treatment at the Florida Institute of Technology; and the Scott Family
Liberia Fellows Program.
We met on campus in the modest conference room down the hall from my
office. Ed talked about his exasperation with the political process, his frustration

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with the media, his concern that the public was ill-informed, and his
determination to do something about it. I wanted to understand what he was
thinking.
What worries you the most?
Politicians getting off with vacuous ideas and ridiculous sound bites that
drown out serious debate about real problems.
Where does the problem lie?
In endless campaigns, fueled by bottomless bank accounts, blind ideology,
and scattershot media.
What are the consequences?
People have more opinions than facts. We need to get better information out
there—verifiable, impeccable, nonpartisan information. Facts, not opinions
about where and how America spends money on foreign aid, education,
infrastructure, jobs, climate change, and more. People should have information
about jobs and the global economy and trade. That way, Ed felt, maybe we’d
have a country where politics and big decisions would more closely correlate to
reality.
What could we do about it?
After hours of brainstorming, we came up with an idea. Ed would provide
financing and build a board of advisers for “Face the Facts USA.” It brought
together undergraduate and graduate students and professional journalists to
produce a website, videos, infographics, TV specials, and live events built on
original, deeply researched facts—100 facts in the 100 days leading up to the
2012 election. It was an ambitious idea with a preposterously short runway.
We developed and launched our fact-a-day project in just three months. We
gave away our daily facts to news organizations, talk shows, and civic groups.
We used social media to build audience. While our project did not change the
world or transform politics, we showed that it was possible to drive conversation
built on undisputed and straightforward facts.
Ed and I had discovered our common goals by asking one another about the

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challenges the country faced and listening closely to each other as we kicked
around ideas about what should be done and what each of us could contribute.
Ed is a man of conscience and clear vision. Collaborating with him was richly
rewarding.
“I try to fix things I care about,” Ed said, “driven by values and mission.”
The Value Proposition
Asking about goals and interests—and listening closely for the answers—drives
Karen Osborne. Karen started the Osborne Group to provide advice and
instruction on fundraising for schools and nonprofits that depend on
philanthropy and has raised money for hospitals, schools, research organizations,
civic groups, and cities. She draws from pages of questions she has composed to
create a customized discussion. Like a menu at a restaurant, she offers starter
questions to get you going, then main courses to chew on and desserts to end on
a high note. I met her through a colleague who had heard Osborne speak and was
impressed with her insight on the power of questions to establish shared mission
and meaningful associations.
Osborne grew up in the South Bronx. Her family had emigrated from the
West Indies. Her father, a manager with the Social Security Administration, was
about the only person she knew with a white-collar job. The neighbors in the
duplexes around them—African Americans, Italians, and Jews—were mostly
firemen, cops, transit workers, and teachers. Surrounded by diversity long before
it was celebrated, Osborne was captivated by the people around her, each a
compelling character, each in search of some form of the American Dream. A
voracious reader, young Karen devoured five or six books a week. She loved
getting lost in her reading, getting to know the characters and their adventures,
imagining the places the books took her.
In college, Osborne majored in English literature, hoping to be a writer. But
she didn’t have the luxury of spending years in the attic hoping to hit on the
great American novel. So, after college, she got a job in Tarrytown, New York,
helping to figure out how to access state and federal funding. She got good at it.
She started working with universities, hospitals, and other nonprofits that needed
to raise money.
When she set up her own consulting company, Osborne developed a set of
questions to help her identify what people care about and where and why they
give. She asked about their work, life passions, goals, and objectives. If they had

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a track record of giving philanthropically, she wanted to know where that came
from, what it connected to.