Over the week end I had a working session with a couple of entrepreneurs to try and help them discover the really great idea that exists within their great idea.  I believe they are on to something but they haven’t discovered the really interesting parts of their idea.

I pushed them very hard using a technique called Socratic questioning.  I thought they might just tune me out at one point but they hung in there.  Looking back they said it helped them expand and strengthen their thinking.  They felt like they had advanced their idea.

I have seen many good ideas or plans that have not been passed through a lens of critical thinking.  In the process of getting the original idea down on paper and making a set of slides people fall in love with their work and feel like the job is done.  If you ask them critical questions they become defensive and this serves to protect the first pass of the idea.  They miss the opportunity to strengthen their thinking by engaging in some rigorous debate.

This is a sculpture by Rachel Whiteread that depicts the space the object does not inhabit, sometimes called the negative space.  What I was trying to help these entrepreneurs discover was their space beneath the stairs.   I believe they have a very interesting idea but the real discovery is still hidden.  They haven’t completed the critical thinking that will help them build something truly unique.

I first heard of the idea of the space beneath the stairs while listening to a recording of Charles Handy’s speech from it@cork.  In this talk Charles describes how entrepreneurs see the space beneath the stairs and that is what makes their ideas truly different.

I am a firm believer that without rigorous debate you won’t be able to create an environment that will support high performance.   The person doing the Socratic questioning can often be seen to be very threatening, aggressive or just plain negative.  To be able to engage in rigorous debate you have to have a trusting relationship with the other parties. 

My friend Howard and I often engage in these discussions.   During our most creative moments we use this technique to explore all kinds of ideas and improve the quality of our thinking.  Most of these discussions are held in the privacy of our offices.  On occasion we have invited other people to join in on one of these sessions.  As the questioning unfolds you can see a look of concern on their faces.  They are very worried that there is something wrong between Howard and I.  We have to explain to them that everything is ok.  Often we point to the finished product and say look, these are two fantastic ideas that we got out of the session.

I want to be clear that we aren’t yelling at each other.  The approach is more sophisticated than that; what we are doing is asking very intense, focused questions that are designed to probe and uncover our underlying assumptions and mental models.  We feel that to be at our best for our clients our practice sessions must be rigorous. 

The value we bring is helping others to see the space beneath the stairs.  They don’t see these spaces because they are too busy running up and down the stairs.