# Questions and Answers By:: [[Ross Jackson]] 2022-10-30 There is a joke that goes something like this. There are three types of people in this world: those who can count and those who can’t. Often in categorizing people two groupings are used. Whatever labels are used, this approach basically can be reduced to _us_ and _them_. Almost always there is at least an omitted third category, those who don’t care about whatever is being discussed. One should attempt to include this group as frequently it is the one containing the most individuals. In the case of inquiry, there are at least three groupings. There are question people, answer people, and those who don’t care about the inquiry at all. Comparing question people and answer people provides some useful insight. In the United States, education (at least kindergarten through high school) and socialization processes tend to produce answer people. Religious fundamentalists are also answer people. A fulcrum concept for answer people is the notion of something being _right_. For answer people, there are right answers, and the work of humans is to know the right answer and to share the right answer with others. The right answer is often found in books. In school, it is found in textbooks. In religion, it is found in scripture. For any question, one simply needs to find the right book, based on some form of authority, and within that book, one will be able to prove, at least to oneself, that a given answer is the right one. In its positive manifestation, answer people are content with the peace that comes from having the right answers. In its negative manifestation, answer people are self-satisfied know-it-alls. The way of being in the world is different for question people. Answers are truly of secondary concern. Sure, one might execute a calculation and come to an answer. One might look in a book and find _an_ answer. Perhaps one will obtain several books and see that there is a multitude of answers. Interrogating these answers further one might discover that while the specifics are different from answer to answer, there is an underlying similarity to the answers provided. For question people, the intent isn’t to determine an answer, that after all is for the answer people. Question people think there is a benefit and potential enjoyment from allowing questions to remain in abeyance. In its positive manifestation, question people help society move beyond convention. In its negative manifestation, question people are gadflies. Organizations are comprised of all three groups. Each type of person can become an analyst as well. When discussing abstract concepts like organizations or analysts there is a reductionist tendency to treat heterogeneous entities as if they are monolithic. There is frequently as much variation within as there is without. One definition of an organization might be _a group of individuals unified in the pursuit of a meaningful outcome_. Another definition might be _a group of fragmented individuals in the pursuit of divergent personal outcomes who are managed and paid for by the same company_. An answer person would spend time determining which definition is right. A question person would focus on a further interrogation as to what it means to organize. Those in the third group would likely say “stop wasting company time and get back to work.” #### Related Items [[Thinking]] [[Analytics]] [[Business]] [[Society]] [[People]] [[Questions]] [[Answers]]