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

is ill-advised and may even get the company in trouble. You have a
meeting to discuss it. What do you say?

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These questions help establish quality of character and how candidates can
imagine their way through adversity. They ask the candidate to connect
aspirations and thought process to illuminate how he or she would draw on
experience, logic, integrity, and understanding of the issues to make a decision.
Finding Innovation
Interviews for management and creative jobs ask how you will imagine, lead, or
innovate. It seems that every company trumpets innovation these days, so how
does an interviewer bring out innovation in an applicant? How does the
successful applicant answer such questions?
I thought Jean Case would be a good person to consult. She and her husband,
Steve Case, helped ignite the technology revolution back in the 1990s when
Steve cofounded America Online. Back then, we ponderously referred to the
internet as the World Wide Web. AOL brought it into just about everyone’s
home. The company became synonymous with the emerging new world of
digital communication and connection. Jean was a senior executive and helped
make AOL one of the world’s most recognized and transformational companies.
In the late 1990s, as AOL approached its zenith, Steve and Jean Case created
the Case Foundation. I first met them when AOL bought Time Warner, which
owned CNN. The merger proved to be a disaster, but the Case Foundation, run
by Jean, lives on, bringing people and technology together with philanthropy and
business to push for social change. The Case Foundation sees itself as a
convener of innovators. I wanted to know how the Cases found the people to do
the work and inspire the change they sought. What did they ask in order to
assemble a creative, original, technologically dexterous team?
I met Jean for lunch at a cramped but trendy seafood place in Washington.
She arrived practically at a run, with a big, broad smile and a whoosh of energy,
one hand clutching her smartphone, the other outstretched in greeting. She dove
into conversation.
I expected her to be data-and metrics-driven, with a predetermined list of
questions that probed the applicants’ experience, asked about what they had
invented, and tested their technological competence. I was wrong. Jean wants to
learn as much about how people think as what they think and know.
Jean is impatient. You see that instantly. She speaks fast and about big ideas.
She is active in many causes—from planetary health to brain health. She’s
served on school boards and presidential commissions. She doesn’t have time to

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waste. So when she asks questions of a job candidate, she expects precision and
speed. She wants to know if the candidate has done his homework and has
something original to say. She asks:
What have we gotten right?
What haven’t we gotten right?
What’s missing?
If you were sitting in my chair, what would you have done?
She asks about decisions the candidate has made or actions he has taken that
are out of the ordinary. She is listening for answers that indicate the candidate
can think fast and pivot when an opportunity or a setback changes the equation.
She’s looking for risk takers.
How comfortable are you with unplanned surprises that come along?
Are you bold enough to put on the table an idea that’s fearless when
you don’t have the data to know it will work?
Can you make a compelling case as to why you should try it?
These are Jean’s fastball questions. They test the candidate’s thought process
and ask for logic and imagination about an unfamiliar situation or scenario.
Jean’s fastballs reflect real-world concerns and dilemmas—a business decision,
a personnel issue, an investment opportunity, a technology play—that relate
directly to the candidate’s experiences and aspirations.