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Why you need to ask the right questions to get the right results
Why you need to ask the right questions to get the right results

Fast Company

time6 days ago

  • Business
  • Fast Company

Why you need to ask the right questions to get the right results

Many leaders believe in the value of asking questions, but asking the right questions is still an underused and underappreciated leadership tool. The wrong questions can lead to misleading answers and wasted effort. 'The bottom line is: If you're asking the wrong question, the right answer doesn't help,' says Patrick Esposito, president and cofounder of ACME General Corp. 'A lot of people look to the power of analytics or AI, thinking that if they can get a bunch of data, they can make sense of it. But the reality is that asking more questions and gathering more data doesn't necessarily provide you with better results. It doesn't help you make the right decisions for your business, for your team, or for your customers.' Bombarding customers with questions to collect meaningful feedback can also be counterproductive. Surveys range from too generic ('How was your service today on a scale from one to 10?') to excessively detailed ('Please answer these 50 questions to let us know how we're doing'). Neither extreme leads to data with real business value. Working to bridge the gap between public-sector organizations and emerging tech companies, Esposito and his team have developed four strategies to help clients understand how to ask the right questions to advance their goals. Subscribe to the Daily newsletter. Fast Company's trending stories delivered to you every day Privacy Policy | Fast Company Newsletters 1. START WITH WHY Simon Sinek's classic leadership book Start With Why applies to lessons that go beyond organizational mission. It helps uncover the true reasons behind your questions. Ask yourself: Why am I asking this question? What is it I want to achieve? Am I just asking a question because I want to validate that what I'm doing is right? Or do I really want to get an answer that tells me what I could do better? 'One of the pillars in our team's work is assessment,' says Esposito. 'The first step of making any change in an organization to improve is assessing what's working, what's not, and what to change. This requires structured, thoughtful questioning. I always tell our clients: If you start by asking customers to tell you about the problem and get their ideas on how to solve that problem, you're going to end up with better outcomes for you, your customers, and your employees. If you're not solving your customers' problems, you're not going to have customers for very long.' 2. ASK CUSTOMERS AND EMPLOYEES THE RIGHT QUESTIONS Companies frequently rely on customer surveys to shape their decision-making process. This feedback is valuable, but so is input from employees. 'I'm a firm believer that you have to get that ground truth from customers,' says Esposito. 'However, I will also say that surveying your team around what they are seeing, what they are hearing, and what they are feeling is just as important. A customer may or may not take the time to fill out a survey, but your team is more invested in the outcome. Follow Clayton Christensen's advice to focus on the outcome.' Learn to solicit the opinions of both internal and external stakeholders. Simple questions can lead to big process improvements. For customers, avoid feature-based questions, such as 'What do you want?' A better question would be 'What could we do better?' or 'What were you trying to do when this didn't work?' Frontline employees know where the problems are—but they will only speak up if they trust you. Build psychological safety first, then think about incentives to gain insights. A powerful prompt is 'What's one small thing that gets in the way of you doing your job?' advertisement 3. UNDERSTAND THE DANGERS OF POORLY ASKED QUESTIONS Common mistakes around gathering feedback include asking vague or leading questions, only paying attention during a crisis, and ignoring feedback. The stakes are high; when people stop telling the truth, trust erodes. 'Ask questions that align with what you are attempting to do,' says Esposito. 'Tailor questions to the input you're seeking for improving either your internal functioning as a business or your external delivery of products or services. Focus on where you think you need the input, and be specific. That doesn't mean the questions that you ask this quarter have to be the same questions you ask next quarter. They can evolve with your objectives.' 4. BUILD FEEDBACK INTO YOUR STRUCTURE Great companies make feedback routine, not occasional. Employee one-on-ones, customer interviews, project postmortems, and 'stop/start/continue' frameworks should be integrated into organizational systems. Give customers a place where they can provide feedback any time they choose—and collect that data in a way that it can be used across the organization. Let go of the idea that team feedback is only collected in annual employee reviews. Schedule regular conversations with every team member to normalize and optimize continuous improvement and systemic change. 'As Peter Drucker said, 'The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions,'' says Esposito. 'The right questions lead to better decisions, more trust, and faster evolution. Asking strategically—and acting on responses—is core to building a structure for success.'

UK thunderstorm maps show 14 regions to be battered by lightning and heavy rain
UK thunderstorm maps show 14 regions to be battered by lightning and heavy rain

Daily Mirror

time21-07-2025

  • Climate
  • Daily Mirror

UK thunderstorm maps show 14 regions to be battered by lightning and heavy rain

Brits up and down the nation are bracing for potential flooding and travel disruption as the Met Office has blanketed the majority of the country under yellow weather alerts Yellow weather alerts for thunderstorms and heavy rain have been issued across the UK, putting a brutal end to the country's heat spell. Britain's blue skies and scorching temperatures have quickly been replaced with stark warnings for heavy showers and thunderstorms which could result in travel chaos and even flash flooding. ‌ More than a dozen regions have today (Monday, July 21) been included in the Met Office's weather warnings - which include two thunderstorm alerts and two 'rain' alerts. "Rainfall amounts will vary from place to place but 20-30 mm is likely within an hour in a few places, with a small chance of 40-50 mm in one or two locations; this most likely across southern Scotland and northern England," the Met Office states. ‌ ‌ "Lightning strikes are also likely along with the potential for hail and gusty winds." Speaking exclusively with the Mirror, Jim Dale, the founder and Senior Meteorological Consultant at British Weather Services, says it's hard to predict the exact time the storm will batter Brits due to the erroneous nature of the 'random beasts. "This is very likely the last day of major thunderstorm risk for now," he added. "But within that risk anything goes, including lightning strikes, hail, gusty winds, flash floods, and maybe -just maybe - the odd mini tornado. Most of us will inevitably miss them but if you happen to be in one of them expect any of the above and take cover." ‌ Want big news with big heart? Get the top headlines sent straight to your inbox with our Daily Newsletter The first warning (labelled below as 1/2) , which is slated to last from 3am and is in place until 9pm, impacts England's south east, including Greater London, Kent, and Oxfordshire. This warning was updated at 10am and has actually shrunken in size as the Met Office removed parts of southern England from the yellow zone. The second warning (labelled below as 2/2), which started at 11am and is also in place until 9pm, impacts a much larger area of the country. Yellow thunderstorm alert - full list of affected areas (1/2) East of England ‌ Bedford Cambridgeshire Central Bedfordshire Essex Hertfordshire Luton Norfolk Southend-on-Sea Suffolk Thurrock London and South East England Bracknell Forest Brighton and Hove Buckinghamshire East Sussex Greater London Hampshire Kent Medway Milton Keynes Oxfordshire Portsmouth Reading Slough Southampton Surrey West Berkshire West Sussex Windsor and Maidenhead Wokingham ‌ South West England Swindon Wiltshire Yellow Thunderstorm warning - full list of affected areas (2/2) Central, Tayside & Fife ‌ Angus Clackmannanshire Dundee Falkirk Fife Perth and Kinross Stirling East Midlands Derby Derbyshire Leicester Leicestershire Lincolnshire Northamptonshire Nottingham Nottinghamshire Rutland ‌ East of England Bedford Cambridgeshire Norfolk Peterborough Grampian ‌ Aberdeenshire Moray Highlands & Eilean Siar Highland ‌ London & South East England Buckinghamshire Milton Keynes Oxfordshire North East England ‌ Darlington Durham Gateshead Hartlepool Middlesbrough Newcastle upon Tyne North Tyneside Northumberland Redcar and Cleveland South Tyneside Stockton-on-Tees Sunderland North West England Blackburn with Darwen Blackpool Cheshire East Cheshire West and Chester Cumbria Greater Manchester Halton Lancashire Merseyside Warrington ‌ SW Scotland, Lothian Borders Dumfries and Galloway East Lothian Edinburgh Midlothian Council Scottish Borders West Lothian South West England ‌ Gloucestershire Swindon Wiltshire Strathclyde Argyll and Bute East Ayrshire East Dunbartonshire East Renfrewshire Glasgow Inverclyde North Ayrshire North Lanarkshire Renfrewshire South Ayrshire South Lanarkshire West Dunbartonshire ‌ Wales Conwy Denbighshire Flintshire Gwynedd Powys Wrexham West Midlands ‌ Herefordshire Shropshire Staffordshire Stoke-on-Trent Telford and Wrekin Warwickshire West Midlands Conurbation Worcestershire Yorkshire & Humber East Riding of Yorkshire Kingston upon Hull North East Lincolnshire North Lincolnshire North Yorkshire South Yorkshire West Yorkshire York The Highlands have also been placed under a yellow weather alert for heavy rain. The warning will come into place at 3pm and is expected to last until 6am the following morning. Over in Northern Ireland, an existing yellow warning for rain is predicted to end at 6pm this evening.

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