 Okay, so the talk, which really is a discussion, so I'm just going to be talking for a few minutes. And hopefully we'll all be talking after this, like the previous session. So the talk is, what is your question? Okay, and I'll cover what that is later. The subtitle is Cargo, Cult, Innovation, and the Indigenous Spark. That's just a hook, really. So if you ask me what that is later on, I'll answer that. So about me, so my name is Thomas Tan. So I've been a software engineer, a product manager, and I've worked in large and small companies, and so I'm trying to say what I'm going to do next as a career move. But that's not related to, that's just about me. So thanks for voting for this talk, and it's really a half-baked talk. So before we get started, that's in the spirit of BLARCAM. So can everyone look at the person next to you and just ask a question, any question about anything in any way you like. Just do that. Come on, come on, this is about asking questions. Any, just one question about anything. Are you chatting or are you asking questions? Okay, how many people ask one question? How many people ask two questions? At least two questions. At least, so some people didn't ask questions. But anyway, the point of this is so that you feel a bit embarrassed, a bit afraid, because it's like you're asking questions, most of the time we make assertions, and we say either this, this, this or that. If I were to listen to you giving a talk, I'd be judging in some way as well. But I'm trying to change that. And the reason is, okay, why am I talking about this? Why am I interested in this? So recently I overheard, I was attending a panel, and the executives were saying a lot of interesting things. But one of the things that they were saying was that Singaporeans are not as good at asking questions. In the offices, during work, they'll be told to do something or so and so forth. There will be no questions. And then you might get issues. I think that's where they're coming from. And I also overheard, actually over read, is the country manager of a major tech company in Singapore recently said that she couldn't find people who could solve problems, think critically, or are being able to communicate. And I think of all this as connected to asking questions. Communication, critical thinking. It's in the pipeline to innovation. So as a problem solver, I'm thinking, I want to solve this problem. Because the first time I heard this was eight years ago. So I've been in the tech community for the last eight years. And I've been attending lots of talks, you know, tech people, investors, mentors from overseas, they come. And I keep hearing this, you know, if you don't ask enough questions, why is that? So I decided to think about how can we change that? Right? What can we do? So the idea that I had is something called a question quotient. It's kind of like IQ, intelligence quotient. Or EQ, empathy, emotional quotient. So what if there was a question quotient? So what is your question quotient? Right? So think about that. So that's one way of looking at it. And then there will be questions. This is where it gets fuzzy. So it's a metric or a score. And once we have that, you can measure it and you can improve it. You can track it, right? And the question is how do you assess it? So that's where I want to find out what are your ideas? How does one assess question quotient? So the end point, where is the end point? The end point could be that in the future, if I were to hire somebody, I can ask the person, what's your question quotient? Instead of, it could even be like in the job ad, I would see something like today, I would see something like 15 years of management required, four years of programming so and so, three years of HR recruiting, 20 years of asking questions. Something like that, yeah? So how do you measure that? That doesn't really make sense. What kind of answers make sense to that question? Or even simplistically, you can have, in the interview, say, today you do a technical test, right? Or you could have a question quotient test. It could be as easy as I'll take today's newspaper, an article like this, I'll give you a few minutes to read. Come up with 10 intelligent questions about that. In any aspect, no matter how deep, look between the lines, what are they saying? Is that an agenda, blah, blah, blah, right? Come up with 10 questions in a span of, say, five minutes. So that could be one way, right? Or it could be like an IQ way, where there's a standard test. You just go through that. Some of them are trick questions. It could be multiple choice. And to take this to its, what I can imagine, given the two days of thinking, so it's perhaps individuals and even organizations have question quotients. So if you want to work for a company that is innovative, today there is no innovative score. And it's a fuzzy concept anyway. Many companies can be innovative, but they won't survive two years, right? And it doesn't tell you what kind of company it is. So a company can have a question quotient. And if the company is scoring 187, it's better than one that's scoring 150. Because you know that when you go there, they encourage you to ask questions, right? They won't slam you down. It's very safe. You know, they encourage questions and innovation. So then it's a better place to work for and work at. It helps to grow. They grow. The bosses all the way down are like that. So maybe Google is like that because their mission statement is about, you know, you bring the questions, we give you the answers or something like that, right? That's what they say. And then, you know, the glass door, LinkedIn and all of that, right? You can rate companies. They interview process. What do they like? How many stars? So maybe you can rate companies question quotient. So anyone, anywhere that you've worked at, when you leave or when you're still there, you can say, you know, this place is really good. You know, I'll give you the X score, right? And then, you know, a lot of people want to work for these companies instead of somewhere where they don't want to. But maybe there are also jobs that you don't want too many questions. So that could be bad, right? In the military, you don't want many questions. Really, you know, you're commanding like a hundred people in a company or whatever. You know, when you say, go, you don't want too many questions, right? So it doesn't work that way. But at a high level, maybe you do, right? In the military. So, and also there are different words of thinking about this. So let's start small. What does the QQ score, the question quotient score, mean at the primary school level? So you have to start somewhere, right? So by primary six, what would you expect a child to be able to ask? You know, because frequently, because I've got a niece and nephew and I, I see that, you know, now they are late teens, 16 years old. They don't ask any questions. They talk. They make assumptions. You know, and I get this pointed because only when you ask questions you're actually absorbing, right? And you can't, you can tell them something or give them advice when they don't ask for it. They just won't listen to it, right? But if they start asking, then they might absorb something. So the key is to get them to ask questions again to that habit. So what does it mean for a QQ score at the primary school level, the secondary school level, or even higher? Let's start with a number of questions asked. I mean, that's the easiest. Quantity. Yes. Although I've seen that breakdown in very, very bad ways in the higher learning environment. Can you give an example of a very bad way? What does that mean? I will not name names, but I have heard of a class that was that kind of like based part of your class participation score on how you ask questions. And it turned out that people were asking unintelligent questions to put it very mildly. Could it be that because they haven't asked 10,000 questions before they reached that point, right? No, not true. But rather they were asking questions for the sake of asking questions which I believe was against the spirit of why such a rule or... Was it a negative? Overall, from what I heard from, because this is a second-hand story, from the person I heard it, who I've heard it from, he didn't say that it didn't quite work out very well. It was slightly disrupted for the class. Yeah, I would say, let me get back to... So questions and innovation is connected. In many countries, they talk about innovation as the idea stage, and then you produce, right? But I think before that, there are actually three stages. You have the critical thinking stage, the questioning stage, and the communication stage. So you have to be able to talk a lot. Even rubbish. Then you start asking a lot of questions. Rubbish questions, right? Eventually you get good, right? It's like one of the Nobel Prize winners said, he was asked, how do you get good ideas? I get good ideas by having lots of ideas. So how do you get good questions? There's only one way to get good questions. He asks a lot of questions, right? And... I think it's more than just asking questions. There's also a lot of answers and questions here. So if you're a kid, and you ask a whole bunch of questions, but you'll say whatever your categories are, are unable to ask you questions, or you just dismiss the questions, then it's also discouraging to ask questions. Yes, it is. But you shouldn't stop, I think. Because why should you stop? So you can only get better. In my mind, given anyone who is at least average intelligence, not everyone in this room, right? A task to repeat over and over again, they will get good. They will. This notion of having 10,000 hours of practice and all that, it's a bit of a... What people often miss out is the part where it has to be deliberate practice with feedback and all that. So I think going back to this point, if the question is just without any thought or effort to improve them, it may not work out even though there will be lots of practice. I agree. I agree, yes. You have to... But I think once it becomes... Once there's a question epidemic, then maybe there will be some solution. Because right now there isn't a question epidemic. In fact, there's a desert in Singapore, I would say, a desert of questions. So right now that's... Not asking questions at all is probably worse than a type of question. Yeah, you're right. I think right now we're at the other end of the spectrum. We need to be... Maybe we should take extreme measures so that we can get somewhere on the average in the long term. I feel like at the QQ score, I guess wherever you have a metric, then you have to focus on it and look at, like, the measure and so on. One thing I struggle with is that I think Singapore and our local, so we've seen it just come back this year, like this year. So I can't see it quite the same way. I think Singapore is very, like, indigenous in nature. So you have to take something that's very complex, like human being, kind of like, use it to a bunch of scores. And the moment you use it to a bunch of scores, like a PSLE score or whatever score, an IQ score, you kind of create this space of good performance. But then you also must create a space of that performance. And so, you know, we kind of start optimizing for this. We have no coalition histories coming into game in the system. I'm not, like, massively keen on yet another score for people to acknowledge. But sometimes I think we are looking at an engineering process kind of throat. Should solve a people-culture kind of problem. And I think it's not so much an answer for questions, but an answer for being able to willing to, like, look stupid and farming friends. You know, the best questions, like, that I see, you know, I get marked in, like, the school. It's like, you know, nice, a technical, well-formed question that you can all point to. Yeah, yeah, that's a real profession. But sometimes just, like, you know, I don't understand what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah, I agree when I thought about this score. It's like, you know, you can gain the system and all of that. But what would be the, I think for this QQ score, the effect and the result is different from the other sort of assessments because it builds something that is inside you. If I were to give you a newspaper article and within five minutes I'll see the comment with 10 intelligent questions and I have assessed 50 people, I will know, you know, whether you can't gain the system because if you can answer correctly given a real-time test, like, it means that you are able to ask questions in good questions. You can't gain it. This is like asking you to do math. If you ask me to do math, I can't gain it. I can memorize the questions and if the right questions come out, I will do it and I can get perfect score, right? But if problem-solving was, I can't do it, you know, so... But then again, right, let's say you have the newspaper article and then you ask people to ask questions but then you need to come out with like a rubrics of what exactly is intelligent questions. But intelligent questions to everyone is subjective. Yes. Like, whatever I ask might be intelligent to myself, but I may not be intelligent to you. That is the beauty of it. You see? You can't gain it. Exactly. See, if we think like that, we will end up in a situation you describe. But I don't think you can gain this system. When it comes to questions, there's something about it that you just can't gain. And it's like success, when they say about success, you don't know what it is but when you see someone that's successful, you know that person is successful. You can't fake it, right? So a person who can ask intelligent questions, but you can't fake it for a long time with everybody, I think. Or maybe you can, yeah? You might be successful maybe materially or you have to be successful materially but you might be seriously in debt. No, the kind of success that I'm talking about is that you can't gain it. You know, you would, I don't think you can. You know, you're talking about like real, authentic successful people and fake ones. You're talking about fake ones. Success can be fate. Can I just pick up what argument that we made? So I think what, again, may not be so helpful is to go around the definition that's open for what the definition of a good question is. Maybe it's more a case of us just being able to live with the reality that there are many equally valid notions of a good question and equally valid notions of success and just allowing a better amount of choice that's a good question that's also a good question that is successful that's also successful and you know, not go around that's all I think that's a great idea to start because I know eventually it will evolve into standards and that is where we want to be. Eventually everything evolve into kind of standards. You have different companies asking for different skills and they have different hiring criteria. Eventually you have a different hiring criteria. So it is, it is a way of measuring. It shouldn't be the only way of measuring. Right? So that's what I'm thinking and just like you made something a very important point which is it's not about asking questions it's about being able to look stupid. Yeah. Okay. Let me cover that because, okay, how do you make someone able to look stupid? How do you, you can't. You have to track them. You can't ask them to okay, how many times do you look stupid today or this year? Yeah. That's one way but let's say you have this score, right? By having a higher score or a good score it means that you have looked stupid enough times. You know what I mean? So it's kind of like let me see communication question critical thinking ideas So this is this is what I think of the innovation pipeline. There are business innovation pipelines but they all talk about this the funnel. You have a kind of ideas you screen them and you process them eventually you get one winning innovation. Right? But they start here so my my vision is that there are actually three cultural things that Silicon Valley has you know some places in the world have Israel has we don't have this is what I call the cargo cult innovation culture Yeah? You don't have this you're not going to have this now then you can say why China can make it work a billion people you throw a rock someone has an idea enough ideas enough innovations right? So to have ideas and develop last questions you need to do critical thinking to have that you need to be able last questions right? You need to be able not accept the status quo or accept just whatever I say you question me right? Then you get 10 more ideas out of that and then once to have that you need to be able to communicate right? And all of this if you succeeded doing that that means you succeeded at being stupid enough times right? That's just something here you're guaranteeing that that guy has done enough of this and maybe be generally enough of this and then you get to that point so that's that's kind of what I mean so the indigenous spark is what Singaporeans need to have to have this right? So that's kind of like this is not really the focus of the questions but that's that's where I my thinking went as well and I had to cut it out so that's not to make it too confusing Oh I just have something to share One of the way to to increase the No no no it's okay We need to film you It's purposely I don't want to put myself that's the thing Okay Sorry for everyone else One of the ways to increase the quality of questions and increase the quality of answers just so they know sometimes for our century for lifetimes we may ask good questions but we may not able to get good answers all the answers in our lifetime but the good questions we can increase one of the way that ancient Chinese do especially the emperors and the prince right? They study history so what happens is that they take the history context of that one it's not like the Singapore study history when they ask so at certain incidents they will ask the teachers will ask the prince or the future king close the book ask at this point of time what will you do then after that then open up the book and the teacher will ask decisions making and discuss the students point of view and what actually happens in the pros and cons and over that period of time when the kings when the prince or the students they become decision makers they apply that and they ask questions and then they pass it on for them so these are the so called the top secrets of the Chinese ways of learning from history to ask good questions So is the history book like a model answer in a way or is that a scenario or a loose scenario it's like an MBA that kind of scenario that they say but because history you cannot apply directly you are being forced to adapt and then to change see this is being done at the MBA level like you say or higher education level but by the time we get there we have lost you know by the time we get there and you ask someone have you asked 20 years a group of questions they say no right so you can't really you have to ask 20 years more questions but the guys who have done that when they walk in the room you know when they walk in the room you know that they have been asking questions all their lives communicating all their lives you can see the spark right and that's what I think it's an opinion it may not be true but that's my observation I like the idea where you come out with a communication then you link it to the questions because sometimes I feel that it's not about the quality of the question but the quality of the communication that raise the questions that's what we call the quality questions yes and I feel that it might not be just because you ask a good question then you are a certain smuggler somewhere but all the communication that makes no sense see that's the point you see you can't say well I haven't come up with a communication quotient maybe you can right but once you start measuring this you're in a way measuring that right because it's a funnel you know 3000 to 1 maybe 3 million to 1 innovation maybe that's how it works how it has worked in Silicon Valley so what else is there any other questions to say something about good questions and stupid or dumb questions I think there's some talk about it one thing I observe is sometimes that some really really good questions appear to be dumb at first when people start laughing about what stupid question is but then when you think about it a bit more you realize that might be something good but then you know the five why you keep asking why why why why do you say that why do you eventually get to the root and it becomes really good and another point is if we only ask questions where we know the answers to we can't create anything to be innovative and creative is you have to ask questions that you don't know the answers to sometimes you don't even know that there's a question like Tim Brown from EDEO the creative agency said before all of this the question to ask is right when you ask the right question everything falls into place it becomes easy to solve when you ask the wrong question you have to keep going back to the right questions and it's iterative you know it has to be just want to add on to our good question a lot of it stems from being in an environment or even a room where people are very diagnosed I'm not sure how diagnosed we are here but I guess what I observe is my observation is you know people form different backgrounds different educational training different ways of life very different families different ethnicities religions all these things if you're able to get that kind of view together the quality that is harder to manage but the quality of questions are much better and I think one thing that hurts us as a country is that we are too quick to stratify and cluster people who are similar together so systematically we are in this environment where we are strong and much people who have this like us and therefore it goes on to say it makes sense that questions all come out in a certain flavour because that's all we are exposed to yes I agree and it's hard you talk about cultural and it has to be a safe place a safe place to ask questions right such that you know which is where if an organisation has a QQ score and it's a high one you know that it's a safe place maybe companies and eventually countries countries can have a QQ score you know for instance I know that in the UK I could talk about anything and I did I talked about anything and I did and it was really good it can ask a lot of questions and maybe Singapore has to can improve in that area and having something like this it could be a small first step start thinking about it start to push the you know the boundary so in terms of society and how to change it that's kind of too big I don't think I can fix that or anyone can it's like the discussion just now in the previous session about global warming there are only so many things that you can do because it's so high level you know you can't really help it so I'm trying to start something small and maybe a score when the score gets pervasive who knows you know so there are pros and cons but I think we can swing with the other way so just a point to add so we're talking about communication and what you can talk about if you look at the education system this is from someone who is talking who is doing a lot of talks in Singapore and before he went to speak at a school he was told by the teachers that there are certain topics he can't speak about he was like you can't talk about politics you can't talk about money you can't talk about religion and you can't talk about sex and this kept saying so what are the other interesting topics like this is in school or this is this like university or like I don't know exactly but it was like an education institute in Singapore which this guy just brought in and he wanted to like to talk about something interesting but he can't talk about it so there are times when the constraints I mean it kind of gets complicated because these are the kind of things which are almost interesting to talk about you know they're emotional topics they're something which I would say act straight or kind of bring out the arguments and you're a different point of view like like what this this person say here diversity right yeah safe place to ask questions and the more diverse the more dangerous but you get better ideas better results coming out of that that's my experience personally as well but the you're right but I have a personal opinion on that which is you know once you make someone think in the box they will always think in the box the rest of their lives the first thing they will think about is the box and that is the worst thing you can have but being where we are is the way it is right so so I don't know what to do about that so but this is just one small step you know having the score and then the score I think you know pushes both ways as far as I can see so that's what is any other questions the more the merrier what is your journey like to kind of comment this like was there a certain thing which sparked you into the journey oh yeah like I said in the beginning I was attending a panel and you know the executives were saying Singaporeans Singaporeans don't ask enough questions and that could be a problem and this was last month and there were other articles and over the last eight years this has been you know happening I've observed over heard things like that so it's a problem I want to solve the problem problem solvers so I just that was covered yeah but with this score you know it guarantees that you have look stupid enough times to get a high score so that's you know I mean I was like half prepared for this talk if I look stupid fine right so but if I didn't find as well so you know so okay thanks very much for the discussion