What would have to be true ...

Sometimes the way you frame a question can make all the difference.

In a brilliant podcast interview by Nathan Barry with Will Guidara and Brian Canlis, one of the quotes that stood out for me was around the question “What would have to be true …?”

Using the example of a software project, a developer may be asked “is it possible to deliver something by a given deadline?”

This leads to an exercise in thinking about what might be a problem, what might cause it to be delayed, what might not be possible, etc. It sets up a mindset where the person being asked is looking for reasons why it can’t be delivered before they can answer yes or no.

Using the question “what would have to be true to deliver this by the deadline?” it flips it on it’s head. It starts with the assumption that it can be delivered and then you identify what needs to happen to achieve it.

It is no longer a yes/no question, it becomes a brainstorming discussion.

It could still involve identifying the problems that could occur but it comes from the viewpoint of how do we avoid or solve them, rather than how does it risk or delay delivery.

The use of this question moves it from identifying excuses to possibility-based problem solving. You frame the desired experiences first (decide the story), then figure out the logistics for delivering it instead of killing ideas with early hows.

They talk about how they have worked with magicians who have come up with ideas for ways to surprise people. The magicians would suggest something and when asked how they would do it, they would respond with “we don’t know but, if you like it, we will work it out”.

Putting this into practice, I have just joined a project where it has a bunch of issues but we need to get it to a point where it can be deployed to a production environment.

If my manager comes to me with the question “can we get this into production in 3 months time?” that is a completely different question to “what needs to be true to get this into production in 3 months time?”.

It starts a completely different conversation and may lead to completely different outcomes.

I have produced a list of all the things I think need to be done to achieve this. I can now work through these with my manager and identify what I might have missed, what really needs to be done and what only might need to be done. The result of this will be much more likely to succeed, to set agreed expectations and deliver something than a simple yes / no answer.

So, where could you use the question:

What would have to be true … ?