A friend showed me a link to Edward DeBono's write-up on the 'why technique'. In this you simply keep asking a Why question till the person gives up.
Immediately, we decided to try this out out at my friend's start-up. We called couple of engineers one-by-one and raised a question about their work. Thereafter for every answer we asked another why question, taking us in different directions. We stopped after five trials.
To our questioning, we found two kind of responses. Those who had understood the purpose of what they were doing, gave articulated answers in couple of steps. Those who did the work simply because they were asked to, also ended in couple of why questions. But their answers became repetitive and trivial.
I think this is a good method to check the depth of understanding and ability to articulate your knowledge. But there is another use of this technique. It forces a person to think about the purpose of what he/she is doing. Most often we forget why we are doing the hard-work. And subjecting yourself to series of Why questions can bring back that focus.
I am going to try the Why-technique on my class 1. to probe the depth of understanding and 2. to show the purpose behind ones work. Let us see how far it takes us.
Immediately, we decided to try this out out at my friend's start-up. We called couple of engineers one-by-one and raised a question about their work. Thereafter for every answer we asked another why question, taking us in different directions. We stopped after five trials.
To our questioning, we found two kind of responses. Those who had understood the purpose of what they were doing, gave articulated answers in couple of steps. Those who did the work simply because they were asked to, also ended in couple of why questions. But their answers became repetitive and trivial.
I think this is a good method to check the depth of understanding and ability to articulate your knowledge. But there is another use of this technique. It forces a person to think about the purpose of what he/she is doing. Most often we forget why we are doing the hard-work. And subjecting yourself to series of Why questions can bring back that focus.
I am going to try the Why-technique on my class 1. to probe the depth of understanding and 2. to show the purpose behind ones work. Let us see how far it takes us.
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