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Home » How to Ask Better Questions: Mike Vaughan at TEDxMileHigh (Full Transcript)

How to Ask Better Questions: Mike Vaughan at TEDxMileHigh (Full Transcript)

Mike Vaughan at TEDxMileHigh

Mike Vaughan – TRANSCRIPT

So, I’ve been thinking about thinking for well over 20 years, and I think I have more questions than I do answers. Now, I’d like to share some of those questions with you today.

On my journey, I’ve been doing a lot of research and in 2009, I ran across this report that just really caught my attention. In this report – it’s from the company called the Millennium Project – and this organization consists of well over 500 scientists, researchers, academics, and business people from over 50 different countries. This report is called the State of the Future Report, and they outlined the 15 global challenges facing humanity. So the things you would expect to see: clean water, population growth, energy were all on the list. It was number 9 that caught my attention.

Number 9: the capacity to decide. In other words, decision-making made it on a list of the global challenges facing humanity. Why is this the case? Why is decision-making becoming more challenging, with all the information, technology, and tools that we have available to us? Why is decision making on this list? Well, about 10 years ago, we created this model. It’s very simple, but I think it does a good job in explaining both the problem as well as the opportunity. What we’re finding is that most training teaches people what to think, that is, it gives them the processes, the procedures, the methodologies, and the information they need to perform a task. This is very important, because we all need a solid foundation.

However, what to think is a lot like fast food: it’s convenient, it’s fast, it’s prepackaged, and oftentimes, it’s overly processed in the form of regurgitated ideas and opinions that do very little to contribute to our deeper understanding of the world.