Question craft · not chat
Most bad answers
start life as a
bad question.
Bring the question you were about to send — to a candidate, a customer, a team, or yourself. Get back the version worth sending, the follow-ups you’d have missed, and the objection you’d rather not hear.
What you typed
“How do we grow faster?”
Three nouns doing no work. Nobody can answer it, so everyone answers a different question and the meeting runs long.
What came back
“Which of our three acquisition channels has the shortest payback right now, and what is stopping us from putting more into it this quarter?”
- — “Faster” was never defined; payback period is measurable.
- — Assumed growth means acquisition, not retention. Say so if not.
- — A good answer names a channel and a blocker, not a slogan.
Sharpen · 1 Ask
Five tools
01 Sharpen
1 AskTakes the fuzzy version and hands back one that can actually be answered.
02 Probe
2 AsksFive follow-ups, each one a layer under the last.
03 Interview
3 AsksA full set — warm-ups, the real ones, closers, and what a rehearsed non-answer sounds like.
04 Challenge
2 AsksThe three objections a well-informed critic would actually raise. Steelmanned.
05 Answer
2 AsksSometimes you just want the answer. Uncertainty marked, not buried.