Comments on: Q-tools: An approach for discovery and knowledge work

By: how the art of questioning could become more useful « Dante’s Blog

how the art of questioning could become more useful « Dante’s Blog — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:19:32 +0000

[...] http://www.davegrayinfo.com/2008/06/04/q-tools/ [...]

By: Q-tools. Theories in questioning. :Blessing’s Journaling Journal

Q-tools. Theories in questioning. :Blessing’s Journaling Journal — Thu, 21 May 2009 02:00:06 +0000

[...] Dave Gray » Q-tools: An approach for discovery and knowledge work [...]

By: Dave Gray

Dave Gray — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 01:38:56 +0000

Sure Rory, that’s fine with me.

By: A new addition to the planning toolkit: Q-tools « AdStructure

A new addition to the planning toolkit: Q-tools « AdStructure — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 23:34:39 +0000

[...] Probably you do in a very intuitive way, but now thanks to Dave Gray (a sensei in the art of visual thinking), you can have an interesting guide for thinking questions called Q-Tools. [...]

By: roryoconnor

roryoconnor — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:58:28 +0000

Dave,
I’m really appreciating your thoughtful considerations on the matter of asking questions. As a creativity trainer, I include a section called “Asking Effective Questions”. I do this becuase when I consider what it is that makes me creative, I relaised that I alsways ask questions. I consider asking questions as one key indicator as to whether someone is likely to generate creative solutions.

While my focus is on creative problem solving – i.e. the generator, peeler and flanker types questions, I can imagine providing these alongside the other forms of questions (splicer, razor and prism) will help people to think more deeply about the kinds of questions they are asking both themselves and others (i.e. colleagues).

I’ve developed a question reference guide (http://www.thecreativityhub.com/chub_old/files/roc_070830_questions.pdf) and chart (http://www.thecreativityhub.com/chub_old/files/roc_080415_questionsChart.pdf) that you might want to take a look at.

I wonder if you would be okay with me referencing your Q-tools in a future version of these?

By: rhetology » Bifurcation

rhetology » Bifurcation — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:05:31 +0000

[...] Razor (Dave Gray) [...]

By: hyperrhetoric

hyperrhetoric — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:08:04 +0000

Genius! What you are proposing here seems like a pattern language of information management (which would intersect with a number of other fields as well). I prefer the names which you given these in your post. However, I’d rename “essay question” as “storyteller.” Your 3d post also brings to mind the role for an “iterater” to ask how something can be successively improved (however that is defined) over the course of its life/use. Likewise, I’d also add the “reorganizer” tool in which multiple of the other tools could assist in optimization of information for a particular task, much the same way agile programmers refactor code to make it more reusable and easier to maintain. These actually remind me of the heuristic I developed as a “rhetoric” for technical communication in my dissertation http://etd.lib.ttu.edu/theses/available/etd-10292007-130449/

Michael seems to be suggesting looking at Q-tools from the perspective of a heuristic rather than specifying a particular question. A flanker, for example, may ask a question like how this problem would look to a chef, but answering that question requires a particular kind of action in order to make it work…and it seems that action might be implementing a kind of heuristic in order to edit or restructure the paradigm used in viewing the information. To think like a chef requires more than asking, it takes mapping alternative value systems, comparing and contrasting knowledge structures, and ultimately engaging much of what we’ve traditionally termed invention (though from a rhetorical perspective I’d suggest it is more memory, but that’s a different topic).

By: shantarohse.com » Q-Tools: An Approach for Discovery and Knowledge Work

shantarohse.com » Q-Tools: An Approach for Discovery and Knowledge Work — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 05:35:38 +0000

[...] that the internet does not need to organized until you have a question in search of an answer, Dave Gray points out that questions may be the most basic tools for gaining knowledge and working wi…. His standard set of questions offers an interesting way for informations management systems like [...]

By: Dave Gray

Dave Gray — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:13:13 +0000

Even a question about the unknown needs form, or it can’t be asked. Are you talking about questions like

“What is out there?”
“What is the meaning of life?”
“What comes next?”

Or are you talking about the questions we can’t ask yet because there are too many unknowns?

I think the tool in this post called “flanker” comes the closest to your idea of a lock-pick. The flanker is all about getting outside the frame of your question in an attempt to see it from another angle; what Edward De Bono calls lateral thinking.

By: michaeldila

michaeldila — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:38:31 +0000

Dave,

It is not the form of the question, per se, so much as the act of questioning. Heidegger talked about this in terms of raising questions like “what is called thinking”? I guess what I mean is, how do we visualize a disposition to question? One idea is that of the old maps of explorers which identified the area beyond which existing knowledge ran out: this space was literally mapped out as terra incognita (land of the unknown). I am thinking of the type of questions (and questioning) that lead into the unknown, the darkness, the hidden, where we can never have the “right” question before hand. The question does not lead toward a destination or purpose, but away from one…