Own the Future: 50 Ways to Win from The Boston Consulting Group

Chapter 47

Probing

Jonathan L. Isaacs

This chapter was first published in 1985 and describes the importance of avoiding a very human bias, a bias as prevalent today as it was then.

The single most important word in strategy formulation is why.

Asking why is the basic act of probing. Searching for root causes takes strategy formulation away from the unconscious repetition of past patterns and mimicry of competitors. Asking why leads to new insights and innovations that sometimes yield important competitive advantages.

Asking why repeatedly is a source of continual self-renewal, but the act of inquiry itself is an art. It can evoke strong reactions from the questioned. It is only rarely welcomed. It is sometimes met with defensiveness and hostility, on one hand, or, on the other, the patronizing patience reserved by the knowledgeable for the uninformed.

To ask why—and why not—about basics is to violate the social convention that expertise is to be respected, not challenged. Functional organizations in mature industries have a particular problem in this regard. One risks a lot to challenge the lord in his fiefdom.

Questioning the basics—the assumptions that “knowledgeable” people don't question—is disruptive. Probing slows things down, but often to good effect. It can yield revolutionary new thoughts in quite unexpected places.

Few new thoughts have been as revolutionary as the so-called ...