Improve Your Team’s Performance—and Unlock Fresh Ideas—with Integrative Questions
+ 4 questions that will help any team be more innovative
This week, I’m talking with leaders of an organization about how they can be more strategic. There’s no magic wand for becoming more strategic. But if I were going to write an equation, it might look something like this:
Becoming more strategic =
Time to think + strategic skill development + good questions
One type of question that helps you be more strategic and innovative are integrative questions—questions that deliberately combine two or more concepts, experiences, or domains to spark new insights.
Integrative questions have the best qualities of an open question, but they go further: they force us to think across boundaries and make unexpected connections.
Integrative questions are the secret weapon of breakthrough thinking.
Consider this integrative question: What would customer service look like if it operated more like emergency medicine?
Suddenly you're thinking about triage systems, life-or-death urgency, team coordination under pressure, and the prior rehearsals and calm expertise that saves lives. Maybe your customer service team needs clearer protocols for escalation, or perhaps every interaction should start with assessing the true severity of the customer's situation.
The Innovation Engine
In a previous article on integrative questions, I offered some simple examples: How could your public library be more like Amazon, or Netflix? How could your place of worship be more like a bar?
Either question will lead to unexpected observations and new understanding. The questions might even inspire innovations that will change the way you create community or provide services.
Here are some integrative questions almost any organization could use to spark innovation:
For team dynamics: Our meetings often feel stale. What would they look like if they borrowed elements from both improv theater and scientific research?
For customer experience: What if our onboarding process combined the best aspects of video game tutorials and personal concierge services?
For workplace culture: How could our feedback systems integrate the immediacy of sports coaching with the depth of therapeutic conversations?
For service design: What would our waiting room experience be like if it merged the comfort of a living room with the efficiency of an airport gate?
Your Integration Practice
Integrative questions don't just spark innovation—they accelerate learning. When we're forced to connect disparate concepts, our brains create new pathways and strengthen existing ones. Students who practice answering integrative questions consistently outperform those who stick to single-domain thinking.
The magic happens in the mental bridging. When someone asks, "How is leading a team like conducting an orchestra?" they're not just making a metaphor—they're actively transferring insights about timing, harmony, and the art of bringing out the best in each performer.
Start small. In your next meeting, try one integrative question. Notice how the conversation shifts from predictable to surprising. Watch how people lean forward as they make unexpected connections.
The most innovative leaders aren't necessarily the smartest—they're the ones who see patterns across boundaries that others treat as walls.
What unexpected connections might you discover today?
BONUS QUESTION
I’m borrowing this question from James Clear’s newsletter:
What unfinished task is still hogging your mental real estate and needs to be let go?
Anyone who really knows me won’t be surprised to hear that I keep a long and detailed to do list that encompasses both my personal and professional life. Marking things off that to do list gives me great joy.
When tasks have been lingering on the list for a long time, I sometimes ask myself, Does this really need to be done?
Often the answer is yes. If that’s the case, then I block time to do it.
But sometimes the answer is no. I’ve carried the mental burden of needing to do something, but that item on the list was really an ideal, not a necessity. Deleting it from my list may not give me the same joy as accomplishing something, but it is a relief in its own way.
Clean up your list today. Take care of the small but lingering tasks—anything that takes 5 minutes or less. Schedule the other priorities. Cut the rest.
Photo by Alexander Suhorucov.