Asking Smarter Questions: How To Be an Agent of Insight is the new book written by master data storyteller Sam Knowles, published by Routledge in August 2022. Asking Smarter Questions is the third in Sam’s ‘Using Data Better’ trilogy and follows 2018’s best-seller Narrative by Numbers and its critically-acclaimed sequel, How To Be Insightful from 2020, both also published by Routledge.
For too long, the simple act of asking questions has been overlooked as almost too trivial to contemplate. Asking Smarter Questions champions the art of curiosity, setting out this six universal principles that make every question count.
The building blocks of insight are data and information, often joined together in novel, unpredictable ways. We surface new information to make meaningful connections between data points by asking smarter questions. By taking this approach, we can make our organisations less confrontational, more collaborative, and more productive – especially in the more distributed, remote settings that characterise the 2020s.
CURIOSITY… according to the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, humans are driven by a thirst for knowledge, a desire to find things out. Klein called this the “epistemophilic instinct”. Children ask the question “Why?” more than 40,000 times by the time they’re five, seeking to establish the if-and-then contingencies that explain relationships between people, things, and concepts. Curiosity is the first and most important universal principle of asking smarter questions.
OPEN-MINDEDNESS… prejudices, assumptions, and prior knowledge routinely get in the way of asking smarter questions. The Greek philosopher Socrates was famous for saying: “All I know is that I know nothing”. This statement – known as the Socratic paradox – is the key to parking your assumptions, biases, and prejudices at the door of any enquiry, welcoming in the experience and expertise of others. Open-mindedness is critical if you are to make the most of all of your questions.
PREPARATION… before you ask anyone anything, be sure to prepare. Prepare the structure of the questions that you want to ask and the flow you want to pursue with your line of questioning. Of course you should remain open-minded and not seek to impose a narrative, always prepared to follow where the answers take you. Prepare individual questions, too, and prepare the environment, real or virtual. Questions without preparation are often wasted.
OPENNESS… the quality of smarter questions identified most often by expert questioners is openness. Questions that yield better answers are open (not closed) by nature. By giving the person being questioned the permission and space to answer more than just yes/no or respond with a bald statement of fact, open questions invite them to open up and tell a story. Open questions bring with them fewer assumptions, are more democratic, human, and empathetic. What’s not to like?
SIMPLICITY… Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, and Oscar Wilde are all said to have said: “I would have written you a shorter letter, I just didn’t have the time”. For questions, simple doesn’t mean simplistic or simpleminded, it means more straightforward to answer, no ‘side’ or prejudice, clear, transparent, and well-prepared. Like shorter letters, simpler questions may take longer to craft. But what you lose on the swings in terms of preparation, you’ll more than make up on the roundabouts of better answers from more relaxed, less confused interviewees.
LISTENING… in order to hear the answers to the questions you’ve worked so hard to craft and structure, you need to allow time and space for the other person to answer. If you’re constantly chipping or butting in – with your own thoughts, the next question, or new questions prompted by half an answer – you’ll cause tension and discord with the other party and pretty soon they’ll clam up. The sixth and final universal principle of asking smarter questions is to learn to love the sound of silence. To assess the relevance, significance, and veracity of an answer to your question, you must pay attention to the words used in the answers you receive.
Sam Knowles is a well-established and sought-after trainer, delivering courses in the art of asking smarter questions, in insightful thinking and innovation, and in data storytelling. He offers these courses directly – to companies, universities and research institutions, and not-for-profit organisations. Sam is particularly experienced running training in the following sectors: in media, marketing, market research, consumer goods, pharma, and financial services.
Asking Smarter Questions is a dynamic and interactive workshop in which delegates learn how to ask questions in a way that truly satisfies their curiosity. It includes Sam’s compelling framework designed to make every question count, based on the six universal principles from the book. You’ll quickly appreciate that, when you ask questions in the right way, your organisation becomes more collaborative, more productive, and less confrontational. This is especially important for remote and hybrid teams, where tone and meaning can easily get lost. The workshop includes top tips from some of the world’s best questioners and the 15 smartest questions in the world.
As well as working directly with organisations, Sam also runs training and development courses through and on behalf of numerous professional associations, including: the APG, ICAEW, IPA, MCA, MRS, MRG, PRCA, PSA – the Account Planning Group, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales, the Institute for Practitioners in Advertising, the Management Consultancies Association, the Market Research Society, the Media Research Group, the Public Relations & Communications Association, and the Professional Speaking Association.
For anyone who’s attended Sam’s smarter questions training courses in the past – and those who are booked on courses in the immediate future – we’re happy to provide materials for download, including the new “Asking Smarter Questions” workbook. All we ask is that you give us a little bit of information about yourself. Please complete the training enquiry form.
There are a number of resources available to help you and your teams learn how to ask smarter questions, and the number of different resources is growing all the time. Currently, these include: the workbook from Sam’s core “Asking Smarter Questions” training course; a detailed summary of the six universal principles of asking smarter questions; top tips for asking smarter questions from some of the world’s best questioners, interviewed for Asking Smarter Questions; the world’s best briefing template; and, the fifteen smartest questions in the world.
If you’d like to receive copies of these, please complete the resource enquiry form and tell us which resource you want and why you’d like to receive it. If you’ve taken part in one of Sam’s smarter questioning training courses in the past or are due to attend one in the near future, we’ll be happy to help. If not, tell us why you’d like them and then tell us your three smartest questions. The smartest responses will not only get the resource you request. We’ll also be sending out a copy of Sam’s book to the person who shares what we believe to be the smartest question every quarter.
For too long, the simple act of asking questions has been overlooked as almost too trivial to contemplate. Asking Smarter Questions champions the art of curiosity, setting out a framework to make every question count. The building blocks of insight are data and information, often joined together in novel, unpredictable ways. How we surface new information to make meaningful connections between data points is by asking smarter questions. By taking this approach, you can make your organisation less confrontational, more collaborative, and more productive – especially in the more distributed, remote settings that characterise the 2020s.
Managers, directors, and leaders will find the universal principles, expert interviews, and data-driven recommendations a source of inspiration. Asking Smarter Questions is for professionals in businesses and organisations across all sectors, with particular relevance for those in: market research, intelligence, insight, analytics, strategy, marketing, communications, planning, new product development, and innovation.
Routledge publishes Asking Smarter Questions: How To Be an Agent of Insight in August 2022. To buy the book, click on either button to visit Amazon or Routledge. And if you want a code for a 20% discount with Routledge, please send us an email.
“Sam is a true innovator in the field of insight. His works take you on a voyage of discovery and never leave you feeling lost or overwhelmed. You’ll leave invigorated, challenging ideas in ways you never thought possible. But don’t just take my word for it, take a read of this book, you won’t regret it.”
How do we advance? As individuals, families, and businesses? As societies, nations, and as a species? In a world where there is nothing new under the sun, we humans are remarkably resourceful at creating new things – for good and for ill. From the iPhone to Brexit, from Repeal the Eighth to smart toilets, from Skolstrejk för klimatet to the veggie burgers that ‘bleed’ beetroot juice. Innovation truly is a universal human superpower.
If we stop and think about how we think for just a little time – and then apply a simple and structured framework – we make it much more likely we will solve challenging insight problems. How To Be Insightful tells the story of insight, from the earliest attempts to define it in Greek philosophy and on to psychology and most recently neuroscience. And it provides a simple, practical model that makes solving insight problems very much more likely.
Routledge published How to Be Insightful: Unlocking the Superpower that Drives Innovation in May 2020. The book was named Book of the Year by PR Academy. To buy the book, click on either button to visit Amazon or Routledge.
“This is a wise, brilliant, often funny (read the chapter endnotes; or try this criticism of clients who had no hinterland in the arts and popular culture that ‘they didn’t know their Arsenal from their Elbow’) and, yes, profoundly useful book.”
As jobs in the knowledge economy become increasingly similar, there are two skills that everyone needs if they’re going to thrive. These are the ability to interrogate and make sense of data, and the ability to use insights extracted from data to persuade others to act. There’s a new equation in business:
Analytics + Storytelling = Influence
There are some simple and effective rules of data-driven storytelling that help everyone to tell more compelling, evidence-based stories, whoever they need to convince. Narrative by Numbers by Sam Knowles shows you how.
Routledge published Narrative by Numbers: How to Tell Powerful & Purposeful Stories with Data in April 2018. The book was shortlisted for the Business Book of the Year 2019. To buy your copy, click on either button to visit Amazon or Routledge.
“We need this book! Evidence and numbers help us to make sense of the world, to transcend how things appear, and find out how they really are. But this is not a technical journey – it’s a human one of meanings and relationships, and Sam Knowles shows why we need to grasp that first. With an armful of words, a poem crafts meaning or passion or action. But what do we do with an armful of statistics? Sam Knowles has the answers.”
For gluttons for punishment and those in search of both a bargain and a collectors’ item, all three books are available as a limited edition, individually-numbered, personally-signed box set at a bargain price. For more information on availability and pricing, please send us an email.
Sam Knowles is the Founder & MD of data storytelling consultancy Insight Agents. He’s also the company’s self-styled Chief Data Storyteller. He has spent more than 30 years helping businesses, charities, and third-sector bodies to use data smarter – in the questions they ask, in the insights they surface and articulate, and in the stories they tell using these insights. His purpose is to help all sorts of organisations sound like people and talk that rarest of dialects: ‘Human’. He divides his time between consultancy and writing, training and speaking.
Originally a classicist, Sam holds a doctorate in psychology, the source of his understanding of human motivation and behaviour, as well as his passion for telling data-driven, insight-rich stories. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts and the Professional Speaking Association, and a member of the Market Research Society and Public Relations & Communications Association. A sought-after speaker, coach, and podcaster, Sam is the co-founder and co-host of the Small Data Forum. The podcast takes a sideways and light-hearted look at the uses and abuses of data big and small in business, politics, and public life. He – and his fellow podcasters – are no fans of Facebook.
Asking Smarter Questions is Sam’s third – and possibly final? – business book, rounding out his ‘Using Data Better’ trilogy. It follows the critically-acclaimed How To Be Insightful (2020) and best-selling Narrative by Numbers (2018), both of which were also published by Routledge. He is currently planning Misunderstood, a biography-cum-novelisation of his father’s truly extraordinary life.
“Too many consultants think they are doing their best work for their clients when they are in problem-solving mode, whereas they can help their clients even more when they go into the problem-framing space first. Asking incisive, revelatory questions is a critical skill to ensure that the right problem frame is built. Sam Knowles continues his pragmatic pilgrimage with this third book, giving away the usually ‘secret’ knowledge on how to ask good questions to all who care to read his work. I predict it’ll be a well-thumbed book.”
“As a business leader who spends every day encouraging people to be more curious about data, I cannot recommend Asking Smarter Questions highly enough. Yet again, Sam Knowles has created a warm, engaging, and accessible toolkit for any professional navigating the 21st century.”
“A fascinating, insightful, and practical read for anyone needing to unleash the superpower of curiosity, to have better conversations, and to drive progress in whatever form – especially innovation. Read it to reawaken your natural curiosity and put it to work.”
“Sam Knowles has written a must-read primer for all of us who are looking to drive change for the better, in the world of work in general and in the healthcare industry in particular. It’s not only a good read; it’s also a tool that enables you to turn your curiosity into action that matters.”
“We live in a post-truth world where falsehoods and misinformation appear to carry as much weight as facts and observable truths. The solution is to let the truth shine through using critical analysis, and the key to this is asking the right questions of the right people and being able to evaluate their responses. Sam’s book is an excellent guide on how to use smart questioning to establish the truth and evaluate it.”
“Asking the right questions is a crucial part of building understanding and key to achieving insight. Sam’s ability to make you think intelligently about these questions, and then how to narrate what is found, is brilliant.”
“The world is being redefined by two major forces: infinitely abundant data and a blurring of truth and fiction. Critical thinking is essential for navigating this new order, and mastering this starts with asking the right questions.”
“In an age of information overload and data misinterpretation, Sam has the ability to cut through the noise and get to the gist of the matter to enable people to make rational and better decisions.”
“Sam is an expert and thought leader in the world of insight and innovation. In an age when we all need to ‘be more human’, Sam helps the reader to ask smarter questions and become more impactful in their work.”
“The power of a brilliant question has been lost in our search engine world. Overwhelmed by data, too often we accept the paid ad version and over time we lose perspective as well as truth. This book reminds you of the power of curiosity, truth, silence, and insight. It might just change the world.”
“Sam Knowles is a true innovator in the field of insight. His works take you on a voyage of discovery and never leave you feeling lost or overwhelmed. You’ll leave invigorated, challenging ideas in ways you never thought possible. But don’t just take my word for it, take a read of this book, you won’t regret it.”
“As we continue to move from too little information to much too much, Sam Knowles is an excellent guide for those seeking to increase the clarity, depth, and ultimately the insights within their data.”
“Few people master the art of the question, yet how can you get to the answers you need when the question isn’t right? Erudite, vital, and engaging, Sam Knowles is the expert with the answers to the questions you should be asking.”
“As a qualitative researcher, I love that Sam’s book focuses on two underrated, but highly valuable skills: the ability to listen and the ability to ask better questions. Improving skills in these areas will help anyone unlock deeper insight.”
