The great fires of Rome in 64 A.D., London in 1666 and Chicago in 1871 all engulfed vast areas of these cities. However, each of these conflagrations started in a single location, which then spread rapidly.

A fire needs three things to burn: fuel, oxygen and heat. If only two of these three exist, then the fire won’t start — you need all three for combustion to occur. A similar situation exists in learning and development (L&D) around creative thinking. If you have a burning desire for your organization to become more innovative in its thinking, then you need to have these same three elements present.

The Fuel: Your Killer Question

Organizations today have a problem with questions because employees can be wary of how their questions are perceived. They may worry their question makes them appear unknowledgeable while providing someone else the chance to jump in and shine with their own expertise.

Questions also aren’t getting things done — in fact, they may be seen as slowing progress down. In today’s results-driven environment, we’re overly keen to start delivery, as this shows progress and commitment. While we may all know that there’s no value in finding a perfect solution to the wrong question, we still spend too little time defining a correct — and powerful — question.

We also tend to ask questions we already know the answers to, as it makes us look good. Conversely, we avoid the questions we don’t know how to answer — often out of fear that a co-worker already knows how to answer it, which may make the asker look weak.

A “Killer Question” is bold and powerful in scope and, when answered well, will deliver significant value for your organization. It’s a question that you—or the organization—haven’t yet been able to answer satisfactorily, but it’s one you intuitively feel is possible to answer. Generally, your killer questions are enduring in nature such that, even if you answer it well today, you may still look for even better solutions in the future.

This type of question may be self-initiated by an individual or team, or it may be one that is cascaded down from higher up the management chain. Whether it’s an individual, team or department wanting to answer the question, it is likely to have some relevance to them, which by default drives interest and purpose in finding a brilliant answer.

If the killer question was cascaded down the organization, then there’s clearly management interest in having it answered. However, if it’s started by an individual or team, they should validate it with their line manager (or relevant stakeholders) to ensure it’s worthwhile committing time and energy to.

Killer questions act as the fuel in starting your fire, for they are questions on issues that light a fire within the individual that makes it worth the effort of solving.

The Oxygen: Management’s Desire To Find Answers

The killer question needs to be openly voiced by management, either when they pose it or by their support of it. This signals interest in the potential value of the question and stimulates engagement with employees in finding answers to it.

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman explores the concept of System 1 and System 2 thinking in his book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” System 1 is responsible for automatic, quick thinking, while System 2 controls more involved, complex thinking that requires more concentration. The scale of the issue embodied in your Killer Question needs to encourage deeper, more reflective System 2 thinking rather than a simple reaction or guess gained through System 1 thinking. The leader (or manager) who poses the Killer Question may even give guidance to employees regarding the zones where solutions may lie — and conversely, which broad zones to avoid.

Different departments or functional areas of the organization can reinterpret the question to make it relevant to their particular area or skill set. While their answers may not address the whole of the question, they will provide input from a specific expert perspective. The leader posing the question could offer to host an ask-me-anything session where individuals could seek guidance on their thinking to help align it into areas that are of interest and value to the organization.

Employees do their best thinking in their own personal time and place — which isn’t usually in the work environment. Recognize this and acknowledge that great thinking takes time. Set appropriate time frames of several weeks for employees to respond with their answers.

Management must also show willingness to implement useful suggestions at the start of the process to illustrate this isn’t just an exercise in thinking. This will stimulate greater participation initially, and will act as a powerful signal for the next time this fire-starter process is run, when employees see that action is taken to implement or test one or more of the final solutions.

The Heat: The Curiosity of the Individual

Harness the innate curiosity of your employees. Research by Aviva showed that adults in the U.K. spend an estimated three hours each week doing puzzles — with crosswords, word-searches, Sudoku and jigsaws being the most popular. The more-common reasons people stated for doing puzzles were enjoyment (54%), to keep their mind active (54%), to challenge themselves (47%) and relaxation (43%).

The research also showed that when faced with a challenging puzzle they can’t crack, 45% of people will take a break and come back to it later while 35% will keep going determinedly until they solve it. How often are your employees challenged and encouraged to engage their full mental capacity? The chances are rarely — however, your Killer Questions will change this.

Giving organizational challenges to employees can ignite a passion within them. Especially when it’s addressing an issue that currently affects them or has the potential to benefit their area. This passion may often manifest itself as a self-driven curiosity and curiosity is a powerful emotion, for, once it’s fired up, it can become an all-consuming interest — in a positive way!

And within your organization, wider curiosity can be ignited by just a few bright sparks — people who feel their thinking isn’t being stretched enough. And curiosity can spread rapidly within a team.

Become Your Organization’s Pyromaniac

Here’s what you should do to become an L&D fire starter in your organization:

1. Encourage leaders and managers to pose Killer Questions to the organization that, when answered well, will deliver significant value and benefit.
2. Engage each area manager to sponsor the question with their wider team, and let them explain why it’s of value to them and how they want to encourage involvement from their team. Celebrate the success of the exercise by rapidly implementing some elements of the answers received.
3. Engage with employees’ interest in being mentally stimulated by creating some meaty, but meaningful, challenges at work for them to address.

These steps will bring the three elements of combustion together to burn down the barriers to innovative thinking within your organization. Guiding your leaders and managers to pose and cascade killer questions — and helping employees answer them well are central elements of “Freaky Thinking.” Become an organizational pyromaniac and fire up your people to answer the questions they previously thought impossible to answer with an innovative thinking approach.