Just Answer the Question!

Ian Whittingham, PMP is director of Calixo Consulting, providing project and program management expertise from initiation through to implementation, covering business transformation, workflow process re-engineering, and enterprise data integration. He is a regular contributor to ProjectManagement.com. You may contact Ian directly at [email protected].

  Communications Management   Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned   Talent Management  

When asked what he thought of the computer, like the picadors he depicted with a few, quick strokes of his paintbrush, he jabbed at its Achilles heel and replied: “Las computadoras son inútiles. Únicamente proporcionan respuestas” (“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers”). In his day, computers were gigantic computational engines, sophisticated number-crunching calculators capable of chewing through complex mathematical problems in a split second and spitting out the answer. Although computers have evolved from monolithic boxes to wafer-thin microchips since the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso so quickly dismissed them, we are still using information technology in pretty much the same way: to seek out information and to find answers to our questions.

But the point Picasso was making was that his art was far superior to any computer precisely because it was capable of asking questions, questions more profound and complex than any a computer could answer--which is a point most people would agree with if you have ever stood in front of one of his paintings, scratching your head, wondering: “What’s that all about?”

Why questions?
Developing the ability to ask questions is an absolutely fundamental cognitive skill. We put it to work almost as soon as we start using the language in which we formulate …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.