What would someone in my place be asking themselves?

We often treat learning as a hunt for the right answer.

Someone poses a question. You provide the correct response. And by proving you know, you’re said to have learned.

But what about problems that have no right answer?

As a leadership professor once told me:

“A marketing problem rarely lands on a marketing manager’s desk as a marketing problem.”

In the real world of decisions, the actual leverage is in questions.

Questions work like a candle in the dark. You hold it high. You hold it low. You place it on the table. You move through the room slowly, illuminating things bit by bit.

The questions you ask reveal where you are in your thinking.
If you’re standing in the bedroom, holding your candle, searching for a spoon—you’re not asking the right question in the right place.

So instead of obsessing over the right answer, start looking for the right question. - find out what questions others asked when they were in your shoes.

It spares you the detours: applying advice that doesn't fit, chasing goals that don’t serve, copying playbooks from a different game entirely.

Good questions cut to the chase.

They’re not the shortcut. They’re the compass.

I help entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial decisionmakers to raise the questions they need to be asking. By offering ways to compare the questions they’re asking with those their peers asked when they were in a similar situation.

What should someone in your place be asking themselves?