{"id":27,"date":"2010-04-16T11:28:08","date_gmt":"2010-04-16T18:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irabryck.com\/out-out-damned-garbage"},"modified":"2026-05-13T08:05:41","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T15:05:41","slug":"out-out-damned-garbage","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/irabryck.com\/?page_id=27","title":{"rendered":"Out Out Damned Garbage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Out, Out Damned Garbage<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Ira Bryck<\/strong><\/p>\n

Having been raised on a steady diet of superheroes with powers both standard (leaping tall buildings) and exotic (attracting metal objects to one\u2019s eyes- why is that desirable?) I have often wondered which one power I\u2019d choose? Super strength or invulnerability? Heat vision or super speed? No single ability seems ample- so frustrating!<\/p>\n

And if I had to choose, on behalf of my business, between the super power of Tradition (We Did It Before, And We\u2019ll Do It Again!) and Innovation (Blazing New Trails Every Day!), I\u2019d be equally annoyed- the mix of the two are required, it seems.<\/p>\n

Tradition gives you a single-mindedness, which is great, as you don\u2019t want to be distracted when you\u2019re making the sale. When 2 brothers bought bananas for $1.79 per pound, and sold them for $1.79, and pondered the lack of profit, they decided to innovate: \u201cTomorrow, we use a bigger truck.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dumb, but we could all find stuff we do, just as dumb. Yet we think that we are already \u201cout of the box\u201d and challenging our assumptions. We are more likely loyal soldiers to our worn out conclusions, making, at best, errors in slightly different flavors and sizes than we did yesterday.<\/p>\n

Over the last few years of moderating roundtables for members of the UMass Family Business Center, we\u2019ve slowly improved at not giving advice in response to someone\u2019s telling of a challenge they\u2019re facing. Instead, we ask Strategic Questions, to help our hard-pressed colleague think more deeply about what new perspectives they might consider, and what else the evidence might suggest. It is our opinion that good questions are more useful than so-so answers. As you sow (garbage in) you shall reap (garbage out), so all I\u2019m suggesting is to take a minute to improve the quality of your seed.<\/p>\n

And if the usual way we might give advice (\u201cLet me explain something that you don\u2019t understand.\u201d) makes us defensive and uncreative, the support of others helping us to think different makes us see potential where there were once limitations. Even if we decide, as result, to do exactly as originally planned, it might just be for better reasons, and have more traction. It may improve the way we explain ourselves to our banker, or even our sister.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if strategic questioning is more art or science, but I do think the best way to learn or improve at asking them is to hear some good ones. What they have in common is their positive feeling (\u201cHow will you?\u201d instead of \u201cWhy did you?\u201d), their stress on learning (\u201cHow have you succeeded before?\u201d), and their ability to reveal options and opportunities (\u201cWhat would it look like to start over?\u201d). In our roundtables, even if the person with the issue, considering many strategic questions offered by the group, decides to NOT do what they first considered, it doesn\u2019t feel like they got talked out of something- it\u2019s more that they reconsidered, that their first \u201cobvious\u201d answer may now look like a knee-jerk reaction, maybe more based on ineffective traditional thinking than innovative thinking. But blind innovation can also be a knee jerk, maybe not in keeping with your company\u2019s traditionally inspired problem solving capabilities.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve collected (and genericized) some of my favorite strategic questions formulated through the years by the FBC roundtable known as CEO Circle. They are no panacea, but I do think about them as somewhat like Zen Koans, to force myself to think more deliberately about, for instance, the UMass Family Business Center. I invite you to apply them to your own situation:<\/p>\n