A Call for Imagination

By Dale Dauten September 12, 2008

One of the bosses skilled in the art of asking is Pete Rahn. He’s now the head of the Missouri Department Of Transportation, which goes by the charming name of MoDOT. But before Mo, he was head of New Mexico’s highway department, and before that he ran an insurance agency. An insurance agency? It was the jump from insurance to highways that made Rahn into a great asker of questions. After all, as he put it, “When I took over in New Mexico, my only experience with highways came from inside the car.” In other words, the new Director of New Mexico’s highway programs couldn’t provide answers to his employees’ question; rather, he had to learn the art of leading via asking. Rahn’s in good company – as the late Peter Drucker once said, “My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.”

For instance, during Rahn’s tenure in New Mexico, his department was called upon to rebuild what’s known as the “Big I,” where Interstates 40 and 25 meet in the middle of Albuquerque. A similar project in Virginia had taken eight years, another in Texas had taken five. By studying “best practices,” the staff in New Mexico set an ambitious goal of completing the “Big I” in four years. Then Pete Rahn asked this little Zippo of a question: “What would it take to do it in two years?”

Someone who knew highways would have never asked that question, knowing all of the reasons why it was impossible and thus, that it was a dumb question. However, when Rahn asked, because he was the Director, the staff had to pretend it wasn’t a dumb question and rethought the entire scheduling of the project. The result? It was completed in two years -- or, as Rahn puts it, triumph in his voice, “23 months.”

So if Rahn was using Peter Drucker’s formula of ignorance being a strength, what would happen when he moved to Missouri and started as an experienced Director? I recently asked him if it was a disadvantage, his being knowledgeable. He replied, “What I learned in New Mexico is this: Anything is possible if you set the bar high enough.”

For instance, Rahn’s department was faced with rebuilding 10 miles of I-64 that runs through the middle of St. Louis. This time his staff had estimated the construction time at 6-8 years if they got all of the funding they needed. Given the epidemic of budget problems, it’s not surprising that the project ended up being $200 million short. Recalling his success in New Mexico, Rahn decided to take the lowest estimate of construction time and cut it in half: three years. But this time, instead of asking his staff to come up with a plan, he had them ask contractors what amounted to this question: “What would it take to do the project in half the time and do it with a budget that happens to be a couple of hundred million short?”

The answer was a radical one – to shut down the interstate. The reaction to that idea was extreme; Rahn remembers one commentator turning Biblical, predicting “Car-mageddon.” However, MoDOT included specifications that the contractor “maintain regional mobility.” They sold the plan, started last January, and is on schedule. However, the schedule is not for finishing in three years, but two.

There’s magic in the question, “What would it take?” If you asked instead, “Can we do it in half the time?” the answer will naturally be “no.” After all, the experts have already studied and applied “best practices.” OK, sure, maybe they built in a little pad, but that is itself a “best practice” and they aren’t about to give that time away easily. On the other hand, the what-would-it-take question short-circuits the usual objections because it assumes that the old methods aren’t enough. It isn’t the nagging question of the ordinary boss, “Is that the best you can do?” but the uplifting question of the great boss, “How could it be even better?” It isn’t a call upon knowledge, it’s a call for imagination.

©2008 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

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