The following is a listing of all/most of the questions offered by the participants in the February Big Question - What Questions Should we be Asking? Currently there are 102 questions. This list will be added to periodically if and when there are new participating posts in the Big Question.
While I tried to be comprehensive, I did make some editorial decisions. For example, If one question was followed by six detailed and/or repetitive questions, I only included the primary question. Because about half of the participants included an indication of who should be asked the question, I included the "Who to Ask" column. In the case of question that didn't originally include a "Who," I gave my best guess. if I really struggled, I entered "??" the same with the "When."
If you don't think my decisions are correct, please feel free to hit "Edit this Page" at the top or the bottom of the page and make whatever changes you feel are needed to accurately portray your questions. If you are unfamiliar with wiki style for tables, please read pbwiki's Wiki Style Help Page before editing.
| Question | When | Who to Ask | Blogger |
| Why do you think this is a problem? | needs assessment | Stakeholders | Karl Kapp |
| Have you every tried to solve it before? How? What was the result? | needs assessment | Stakeholders | Karl Kapp |
| Why do you think training is the answer? | needs assessment | Stakeholders | Karl Kapp |
| If the problem is solved, describe the ideal state, the results, the outcome, your expectations. | needs assessment | Stakeholders | Karl Kapp |
| If the problem isn’t solved, what are the consequences? | needs assessment | Stakeholders | Karl Kapp |
| Did the employees ever know how to do this in the past? | needs assessment | Stakeholders | Karl Kapp |
| Do you think internal or external forces are causing the change. | needs assessment | Stakeholders | Karl Kapp |
| What do you think is causing the problem? | needs assessment | Employees | Karl Kapp |
| What do you think is the solution to the problem? | needs assessment | Employees | Karl Kapp |
| Are their incentives that drive you away from the desired goal? | needs assessment | Employees | Karl Kapp |
| Is the environment conducive to your obtaining the desired outcome? | needs assessment | Employees | Karl Kapp |
| Would training in XYZ solve this problem for you? | needs assessment | Employees | Karl Kapp |
| Do you feel that you know how to perform the tasks that are required? | needs assessment | Employees | Karl Kapp |
| What would you do to solve this problem? | needs assessment | Employees | Karl Kapp |
| Have you ever seen this problem before? What was the attempt to solve it? | needs assessment | Employees | Karl Kapp |
| How long has this been a problem? | needs assessment | Managers | Karl Kapp |
| Is it as bad or good as indicated by the stakeholders? | needs assessment | Managers | Karl Kapp |
| Why aren’t employees performing (solving the problem?) | needs assessment | Managers | Karl Kapp |
| What is the result on the customers or downstream employees? | needs assessment | Managers | Karl Kapp |
| Is their another way (besides training) to solve this problem? | needs assessment | Managers | Karl Kapp |
| Do you have the right people in place? | needs assessment | Managers | Karl Kapp |
| What external or internal factors are contributing this is problem? | needs assessment | Managers | Karl Kapp |
| What problems do you encounter as a result of the performance upstream? | needs assessment | Downstream Employees | Karl Kapp |
| What outputs would you like to see but are not getting from the upstream employees? | needs assessment | Downstream Employees | Karl Kapp |
| Why do you think you are not getting what you need? | needs assessment | Downstream Employees | Karl Kapp |
| How would you solve the problem? | needs assessment | Downstream Employees | Karl Kapp |
| How often do you meet with employees upstream? (usually never) | needs assessment | Downstream Employees | Karl Kapp |
| How do you have to compensate for the employees upstream? | needs assessment | Downstream Employees | Karl Kapp |
| Please rate the product/service/attention provided by organizations XYZ? | needs assessment | Customers | Karl Kapp |
| What would you like to see improved? | needs assessment | Customers | Karl Kapp |
| What is fantastic and that you don’t want to see change? | needs assessment | Customers | Karl Kapp |
| How has performance changed over time? | needs assessment | Customers | Karl Kapp |
| Is the organization responsive to your needs? | needs assessment | Customers | Karl Kapp |
| What are your needs? | needs assessment | Customers | Karl Kapp |
| How does organization XYZ understand what your needs are? | needs assessment | Customers | Karl Kapp |
| If I retired tomorrow would anyone notice? | macro | Ourselves | Clive Shepherd |
| If e-learning had never been invented/conceived, would our clients/employers be better or worse off? | macro | Ourselves | Clive Shepherd |
| Is my agenda (innovation, expression, technology, creativity, engagement, sharing or whatever it is) in tune with the objectives of my clients/employer or am I just fighting a rather dysfunctional crusade? | macro | Ourselves | Clive Shepherd |
| Are most organisations so chaotic, disorganised, short-sighted, cynical, inefficient, incompetent and basically mad that trying to impose any order on this is just pointless? | macro | Ourselves | Clive Shepherd |
| What will work best for the learner? | | Everyone | Karyn Romeis |
| How do we bridge the divide between he-who-signs-the-cheques and he-who-will-use-the-resource? | | | Karyn Romeis |
| What do you need from us? | needs assessment | Learners | MatthewNehring |
| What does it mean to be a learning professional? | macro | Everyone | Dave Lee |
| How do we earn the respect of our colleagues so that we can be professionals? | strategic planning | Everyone | Dave Lee |
| How do we get out ahead of the practical day-to-day challenges so that we can be more strategic (and I believe more valuable to our organizations)? | strategic planning | Everyone | Dave Lee |
| How do we gain support for exciting informal learning learnscapes in our organizations? | strategic planning | Everyone | Dave Lee |
| How should we evaluate our efforts to assure that we are credited with having impact (assuming we truly do)? | evaluation | Everyone | Dave Lee |
| In the end, if we are successful, what will we have done to change our organizations? | visioning | Everyone | Dave Lee |
| I'd like to learn more about your business, could I spend a day or two shadowing you or some of your key people? | needs assessment | Managers | Dave Lee |
| My goal is to help you achieve your goals, how could i be doing that better than i have been in the past? | evaluation | Managers | Dave Lee |
| What's your biggest concern regarding your team being ready to meet your strategic goals a year from now? two years from now? | needs assessment | Managers | Dave Lee |
| Are you willing to participate in our organization's learning by developing the skills it takes to facilitate your employee's and others' learning both in the classroom and day-to-day in meetings and casual encounters? | strategic planning | Stakeholder/Manager | Dave Lee |
| Are we willing to accept that unless there is a clear business imperative for learning, then no matter how good what we create on paper is, it's a waste of resources for the organization? | visioning | Ourselves | Dave Lee |
| Will you support new methods designed to leverage the latest in technology and human resources to deliver learning to more employees faster at the same cost or cheaper than traditional classroom learning? | project definition | Stakeholders | Dave Lee |
| What makes more of a difference to you? | situational | Clients | Tom Haskns |
| How do you decide whether this is useful to you? | situational | Clients | Tom Haskns |
| Which criteria helps you choose between these options? | situational | Cients | Tom Haskns |
| Where do you draw the line between acceptable and offensive questions? | situational | Critics | Tom Haskns |
| How do you decide that you've heard enough mistaken impressions? | situational | Critics | Tom Haskns |
| What lets you know that we've crossed the line into stupidity? | situational | Critics | Tom Haskns |
| What do you do to handle a situation like this? | situational | Ourselves | Tom Haskns |
| How would you respond to these unintended consequences? | situational | Ourselves | Tom Haskns |
| How do you sort out the conflicting evidence to formulate a viable strategy that gets results? | situational | Ourselves | Tom Haskns |
| What are you seeing in what's been said recently? | situational | Everyone | Tom Haskns |
| How do you interpret the misgivings that have been expressed? | situational | Everyone | Tom Haskns |
| What's your theory to explain how this backlash is getting provoked? | situational | Everyone | Tom Haskns |
| How is that compensating for what I'm doing? | situational | Ourselves | Tom Haskns |
| What's so extreme about my approach that summons that opposition? | situational | Ourselves | Tom Haskns |
| How am I asking for that flak by my own one-sided approach? | situational | Ourselves | Tom Haskns |
| What permission do the other's need to deviate from conformity? | situational | Ourselves | Tom Haskns |
| How can the others be given more choices? | situational | Ourselves | Tom Haskns |
| What will provide the others with more territory to explore or room to maneuver? | situational | Ourselves | Tom Haskns |
| What is not understood about the position you are in? | situational | Ourselves | Tom Haskns |
| How does this threaten, limit or oppose your intentions? | situational | Ourselves | Tom Haskns |
| How can others take your side, lend a hand or back you up on this? | situational | Ourselves | Tom Haskns |
| Does it work - does design fulfill objectives? | pre-implementaton | ?? | Wendy Wickham |
| Does it work - is technology bug-free and easy for the end user? | pre-implementaton | ?? | Wendy Wickham |
| Is this the best we can do? | always | ?? | Wendy Wickham |
| Is what you've developed the best way to teach your objectives given Time, Audience, Resources, and Restrictions? | design | ?? | Wendy Wickham |
| Is there another cool tool / method that would work better? | design | ?? | Wendy Wickham |
| Are we in the training business, or are we in the performance business? | project definition | Ourselves | Ray Sims |
| What are our underlying unspoken assumptions about the problem, learner, client, resources, and success? | project definition | ?? | Ray Sims |
| Strengthen - Where is existing strength? | after action review | Stakeholders | Ray Sims |
| Start - What is missing? | after action review | Stakeholders | Ray Sims |
| Stop - What needs interrupting because it isn’t adding value? | after action review | Stakeholders | Ray Sims |
| Solve - What needs fixing? | after action review | Stakeholders | Ray Sims |
| Share - What have we learned that others would benefit from knowing? | after action review | Stakeholders | Ray Sims |
| Am I using my 24 hours in a way that is aligned with my commitments and priorities? | personal development | Ourselves | Ray Sims |
| Am I adding the right amount of value? | personal development | Ourselves | Ray Sims |
| Why US? | macro | ?? | Brent Schlenker |
| Do we still add value to the new learning equation | macro | ?? | Brent Schlenker |
| Do people really need us (ISDers) any more | macro | ?? | Brent Schlenker |
| Does your company really need you (me, us) any more | macro | ?? | Brent Schlenker |
| What is it that we actually bring to the party | macro | ?? | Brent Schlenker |
| What problem are we trying to solve? | project definition | Stakeholder/Manager | Valerie Bock |
| Is this a problem which lends itself to a training-based solution? | project definition | Stakeholder/Manager | Valerie Bock |
| Is this the right time for this initiative? | project definition | Stakeholder/Manager | Valerie Bock |
| What do you do before asking a question? | macro | Ourselves | TATA Interactive |
| Why are you asking the question? | macro | Ourselves | TATA Interactive |
| Why are you not asking questions? | macro | Ourselves | TATA Interactive |
| Is the environment at your workplace conducive to asking questions? | macro | Ourselves | TATA Interactive |
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