New Problems, New Rules

Why today’s challenges require a different kind of conversation.

In his new book, Fast Company co-founder Alan Webber writes that, “Change is the order of the day. The old rules don’t seem to apply.” So he’s laid out his own advice for leaders in today’s market, Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths For Winning at Business Without Losing Yourself. Read on for his thoughts about the power of questions, the need for new categories—and why there had never been a better time for reflection and conversation.

Profit Online: How did Rules of Thumb come about?

Webber: About a year ago, I sat down at my home office in Santa Fe, and started reading through a bunch of my collected speeches, articles, and essays, going back literally 20, 25 years. I thought, “You know, there’s a lot of good stuff in here.” I got out my 3-by-5 cards and started taking notes on the one-sentence bumper-sticker pieces of wisdom I had been offering people.

Then I had a second epiphany: since I stopped writing so many speeches and working at Fast Company and working at Harvard Business Review, I’ve had a lot more interesting experiences to add to the list. What if I put a pack of 3-by-5 cards by my laptop and every morning and I simply try to think back across recent experiences and capture some of those “rules.” Every morning the little stack of cards began to grow higher.

I found myself doing something that is rare for most of us, I think, if we’re busy people, and that is reflecting on past experiences. I sent emails to people I haven’t talked to in years, revisited old documents, and reread articles from the Harvard Business Review. It turned into a wonderful relearning experience for me.

Profit Online: Is this kind of reflection especially important right now?

Webber: Absolutely. We’re looking at new techniques to solve very big problems, such as who’s responsibility is global warming? Does capitalism work? One of the rules that I wrote is that our categories for solutions no longer fit our categories for our problems. Also, people we used to look to for the answers aren’t really equipped with the answers, or their answers don’t really work. Or we’ve lost touch with some of the answers and we simply need to be reminded. We all need to write down and share with each other the rules that we think apply to where we are right now and to our companies and organizations. Also, which rules apply to our notion of how to create value and how to have lives that create value.

There’s a rule that I didn’t write down but that is an old rule of mine. If you want to change the future you have to change the conversation. And if we keep talking about things in the old ways and using the old methods we’re not going to adopt mindsets and practices that produce a different kind of future. So one of the things that I hope to do is generate a different kind of conversation. That’s one of my definitions of victory.

Profit Online: You say it’s more important to be a questions company than an answers company—why is that?

Webber: I fully believe the best minds in the worlds are people who are driven by uncertainty rather than certainty. When I was at Fast Company and the Harvard Business School, I’d go out to a couple of businesses to research a story and as soon as I would walk in the front door, I could feel whether there was energy or lethargy, whether people were excited about being there or passive and simply going through the motions. And I think one of the variables is whether people are engaged in the pursuit of interesting questions. Are they really actively engaged in changing their thinking? If you ask the wrong question the wrong way, you’re going to get an answer but it won’t be a very useful answer. It may simply be an answer that confirms your own biases. Whereas if you go out in the world with a genuinely inquisitive mind and you work hard at coming up with the right way to ask the right question, the answers that you’re going to get are going to be surprising and fresh and interesting. Asking good questions is really how you pop that bubble you’re living in. And how you open up your culture and your structure of your organization—and you own mind—to new answers and new experiences that are blocked from your line of site.

To join the conversation, go to: rulesofthumbbook.com