Sumantra Ghoshal

Most companies have created internal contexts in which any form of doubt is seen as ignorance or weakness and all forms of questioning are seen as either a exercise of authority or an affront. It is this delegitimisation of questioning and doubt that kills the spirit of enquiry and reduces conversations to ritualised, dehydrated talk. The first task in creating good conversations is to institutionalise questioning and doubt as a normal way in which the company operates.

While systems such as scenario planning can help people in companies overcome the constant need to project an aura of certainty, the most important lever for legitimising questioning and doubt lies in the personal role modeling influence of top-level leaders. Disciplined debate needs a Socrates, a person embodiment of rigour and rationality. To create such conversations, top-level leaders have to learn the art of Socratic questioning, like Lord John Browne, the CEO of BP. "Rigour implies that you understand the assumptions you have made," said Lord Browne. "Assumptions about the state of the world, of what you can do, and how your competitor will interact with it, and how the policies of the world will or will not allow you to do something." With this belief, he regularly takes his top team through intellectually challenging inquiries.

Could the price of oil drop below $10 a barrel in the medium term? Unlikely, but what happens if it does? How will technical substitution work in the short-term?

"The main point is that all these things we keep interrogating and asking questions, and that ensures that others in the organisation do too." The skill of incisive questioning, however, requires careful cultivation. Spotting potential weaknesses or fallacies in arguments is a bit like luck; both need prepared minds. To role model as Socrates, top-level leaders need to constantly expose themselves to a variety of information and stimuli inside the company and outside, so as to be able to generate independent and insightful thought.