Influence & Impact for Leaders
Influence & Impact for Leaders
Ep 199: Ask Better Questions with Joe Lalley
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In this episode, I’m joined by Joe Lalley, author of Question to Learn, to explore why questions are one of the most underrated — and misused — leadership tools.

We talk about curiosity, influence, and what really happens when leaders feel they’re supposed to have all the answers.

In this conversation, we explore:

  1. Why most of us stop asking good questions as our careers progress
  2. The subtle ways workplace culture rewards answers and punishes curiosity
  3. The different motives behind questions — and why some shut people down
  4. How questions can build influence without needing certainty
  5. What leaders can learn from children, improv, and discomfort
  6. Why “I don’t know” might be one of the most powerful things a leader can say
  7. The role curiosity plays in a world increasingly shaped by AI
  8. Joe’s favourite question — and why it opens doors most people miss

 

This is Influence & Impact for Leaders, the podcast that helps leaders like you increase your impact and build a happy and high performing team. Each episode delivers focused, actionable insights you can implement immediately, to be better at your job without working harder.

Work with Carla:

  1. 1:1 Leadership Coaching with Carla – get support to help you get your voice heard at work and develop your career. Book a discovery call

 

About Joe Lalley

Joe Lalley is a writer, speaker, and workshop facilitator who has spent much of his career leading innovation workshops for companies of all industries, shapes, and sizes.

Joe has published multiple articles ranging from how to use curiosity to navigate remote work in the pandemic to how to fix the endless cycles of bad, inefficient meetings.

In 2011, Joe completed the Stanford d.school Design Thinking Bootcamp, an intensive program that draws executives from Fortune 500 companies worldwide. As part of a team with peers from Google and Cisco, he worked directly with JetBlue to redesign the passenger ground experience at San Francisco International Airport. Through field research, interviews, and rapid prototyping, Joe and his team presented innovative solutions to JetBlue executives—a transformational experience that helped shape the next chapter of his career.

Joe has held leadership roles at Columbia University, MTV/Viacom, WWE, PwC, and his own consultancy, Joe Lalley Experience Design. His client portfolio spans global brands and organizations such as Meta, Pfizer, Cisco, Chegg, General Assembly, Match Group/Tinder,

Latham & Watkins, and Lam Research, as well as mission-driven groups like the American Physical Society, Optica, Banyan Global, and CAQH.

In October 2025, Lalley released ‘Question to Learn: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Career, Team, and Organization.’

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Carla Miller [00:00:02]:
In this episode, I'm joined by Jo Lally, author of Question, to learn to explore why curiosity is one of the most powerful and most overlooked leadership skills. We talk about what happens when leaders feel they have to have all the answers, how questions shape influence and why learning to ask better questions might be the key to better decisions, stronger teams and less group think. We also have a chat about how AI is impacting our ability to think, and Joe shares some of his favorite questions for leaders to use. Welcome to the Influence and Impact podcast for leaders where you'll learn simple, practical strategies to lead with confidence, influence and impact. I'm your host, Carla Miller, leadership coach, author and trainer. A little bit about my guests before we roll the interview. Jo Lally is a writer, speaker and workshop facilitator who has spent much of his career leading innovation workshops for companies of all industries, shapes and sizes. He's held leadership roles at Columbia University, mtv, Viacom, wwe, pwc, and his own consultancy, Joe Lally Experience Design.

Carla Miller [00:01:10]:
He has a really impressive client portfolio of global brands and organizations such as Meta and Pfizer. In October 2025, he released his book Question to how curiosity can transform your career to team and organization. I really hope that this interview helps inspire you to ask better questions of yourself and of your team. Welcome to the show, Jo. It's great to have you here.

Joe Lalley [00:01:43]:
Thanks Carla. Happy to be here.

Carla Miller [00:01:44]:
So I would love to know what led you to write this book and what are you hoping to achieve with this book?

Joe Lalley [00:01:50]:
I think the main thing that led me to write the book was to get a lot of these things off my chest. I started writing articles about eight years ago. I've always felt like I looked at work a little bit differently. I questioned things that other people didn't really want me to question. You know, why are we doing this? Why have we done this this way? And I started writing about some of those thoughts and I just put articles on LinkedIn and Medium and places like that, mostly just to figure out my thoughts and figure out how to articulate them. And then I started to get some reactions and learn that those ideas resonated with people. So that kind of gave me the courage to keep going. I continued to write, wrote pretty regularly, and eventually said to myself, you know, I have a lot of thoughts here.

Joe Lalley [00:02:38]:
If I could figure out how to cobble this into a book, it might. It might be. It might work. So it took me eight years or so to get the courage to do that. And eventually, in talking with who eventually ended up being my publisher, I Described all the work I do. So I do a lot of corporate workshops, training, speaking. I help teams kind of get unstuck. I help them get curious about their problems again.

Joe Lalley [00:03:04]:
And questions are the key to all of that. And we came to this realization that everything I did was using questions to learn about your challenges, your customers, what potential future plans and roadmaps you could have. So that became the title question to learn. And I made the decision and just started writing. Still had no idea where it would go. Really didn't know until, I don't know, months into the writing process. And there, there was a book. So I'm really excited.

Joe Lalley [00:03:37]:
I'm really proud of it. And, you know, what I hope to achieve from it, I definitely want, which has already started to happen. I want people to connect with different things in the book. It's very story based. So it's a lot of stories from my career or people that I've interviewed. And a lot of people have said that, you know, oh, I felt like I was reading my story, you know, that's something I went through. So that's been really exciting. On the business side, I hope that it will increase the number of speaking engagements that I'm invited to be a part of, as well as workshops where, you know, that's sort of been the most constant part of my business is going in and helping teams, you know, figure out their challenges.

Joe Lalley [00:04:21]:
So I'm really excited about it. It's a. It's an interesting, for me, a lot of uncharted territory, but I'm having fun with it.

Carla Miller [00:04:29]:
Well, well done. First of all, putting your writing out into the world in other forms and then turning it into a book, it's one of those things that sounds easier than it is. It's actually a huge amount of work. I ate a huge amount of chocolate when I was writing mine. I just. That was the only thing that would help me get through it. But now it's out there in the world, your book, and will no doubt be helping people. I'm a big fan of asking questions.

Carla Miller [00:04:51]:
So I work a lot with influence and how to build influence. And I think asking question is a really effective way to influence. As we grow up, do you think our ability to ask questions diminishes because we seem to ask less questions as we get older?

Joe Lalley [00:05:07]:
Yeah.

Carla Miller [00:05:07]:
Yeah.

Joe Lalley [00:05:08]:
And this was one of the most interesting things that I researched and talked with people and reflected on my own life. I have three kids of different ages, and what tends to happen is young children. So even before being able to speak they're using curiosity to figure out the world around them. They tend to prefer new and unfamiliar toys. There have been studies around this. So they're using curiosity and then eventually they develop speaking abilities and they use questions in the purest sense. So they just want to go from not knowing to knowing. There's no ill will in these questions.

Joe Lalley [00:05:45]:
They're not trying to show off or show that someone else doesn't know something because they don't know those motives yet. So it's, it's this really pure phase of questioning. And then teenage years start to creep in. I have two teenagers and things like self consciousness start to creep in. You know, I don't want to draw attention to myself or maybe I don't, I don't want to look stupid because other people might know this answer. So that starts to cause questions to diminish a bit. And then what I wrote a lot about and what I experienced is when you reach the working world. So in the corporate world where I've, I've spent many years, questions start to change.

Joe Lalley [00:06:24]:
The motives behind them start to look a little bit different. There may be environments and cultures where it's not really encouraged to be curious or ask questions. You know, you're encouraged to know the answers. You know, you go in and you're the expert. And as you climb in your career into higher levels of hierarchy, leaders and I interviewed so many who said this to me, they felt compelled to know the answers that they felt like as a leader I should be saying things, not asking things. And that kind of permeates throughout an organization and creates a culture where people, instead of thinking about their own ideas and trying to be curious and inject things, they tend to try to read the boss's mind and wonder, well, what would the boss like? Because there's this idea that the boss is all knowing and we must tap into that. So I think part of it is just sort of normal growing up. And a lot of it is due to cultures that aren't really comfortable with experimentation and asking questions they don't know the answers to.

Carla Miller [00:07:31]:
And then you end up with that group think, don't you? Which doesn't serve anybody. I recently interviewed someone who is an expert on Gen Z and how they show up differently in the workplace. Do we see Gen Z showing up differently in the workplace when it comes to asking questions?

Joe Lalley [00:07:47]:
Yeah, I think I've seen a little bit of a change in that. In that, you know, that phase that, you know, that group of people where they do seem to be a bit More open to asking questions and challenging norms, which is exciting to see. And I know. I know some people will push back against this and say, well, oh, my goodness, you know, why are they kind of, you know, making things difficult and stirring the pot? But I think that's a really encouraging sign that there's, you know, this generation of people who aren't readily willing to accept things. You know, I think skepticism, you know, a bit of skepticism is really healthy. I think, you know, not accepting things at the surface level is good. So, yes, I think that's. That's an encouraging sign.

Carla Miller [00:08:30]:
So your book is about getting curious. For those of us who maybe have stopped being as curious as we used to be, how can we train our minds to get curious rather than just going down that same old train of thought that we might usually follow?

Joe Lalley [00:08:45]:
Yeah, so there's a few things I think. Some are kind of environmental, and some are specific actions and tools you can use. So I think one really big thing, and this was true for me, is finding other curious people. Chances are, if you're wondering about something, you're probably not the only one. For me, that wondering and those questions tended to happen in, you know, in the coffee room or the, you know, the common area in the office when, you know, I was most of the time working in an office where we'd attend a meeting and maybe, you know, I or others would accept everything that was said in that meeting, but then we'd grab a cup of coffee and realize, actually, we both didn't understand something in it or we both just didn't really accept what was said. So I think starting to find your people gives you a bit of courage to ask things in more of a public setting. So in those meetings. So I think finding your people, huge, huge part of it.

Joe Lalley [00:09:43]:
And that happened to me, and I was grateful for the ones that I did find. The other thing. So one thing I talk a lot about in the book is improvised. So I was lucky enough to do three days of improv with my team a few years ago, and it's a really uncomfortable experience, and it requires. Have you ever done any improv?

Carla Miller [00:10:05]:
It would be my personal idea of hell.

Joe Lalley [00:10:08]:
Yes, yes, yes. So we share that in many ways, really uncomfortable, but it also teaches you a lot of lessons. So some of the key principles of improv are to support each other, so you are there to support your teammates. If a teammate maybe is struggling with a line or struggling with how to act out a scene, you jump in and you help them out. So trust is huge. There's also this idea of yes. And that's a big principle in improv where you spend time building upon ideas and allowing them to kind of go in lots of different directions versus evaluating and shutting them down. So improv helps a lot with that.

Joe Lalley [00:10:51]:
You don't have to do three days like I did. You can do one activity. But I think those things help you, number one, be open to different perspectives and put yourself in that mindset. You also have to really actively listen. So there are so many situations, I'm sure many of the listeners can relate, where you might be in a conversation with someone and you can tell the other person is just waiting for you to finish and they already know what they're going to say next and maybe you're doing the same thing. So you know that listening to respond versus listening to learn, those are two different things. So improv forces you to really actively listen. You can't have a plan, too much of a plan.

Joe Lalley [00:11:32]:
So those are a couple of things that I think wake up your curiosity, you know, learning from kids. I've spent time and I have an 8 year old and her classroom walls are full of just curiosity signs that, that encourage them to question, signs that encourage them to think deep, you know, think deeply. And so I think, you know, we can learn a lot from kids. You know, it's not just the adults.

Carla Miller [00:11:57]:
I also have, well, by the time this comes out, an eight year old and there's a, there's a whole lot of questions.

Joe Lalley [00:12:03]:
Oh yeah, they don't start.

Carla Miller [00:12:06]:
They, they don't. And I don't know the answers to half of them. So it gets me curious because I'm like, okay, well let's go and look that up. Let's go find globe. Let's see how many zeros there are in one zillion. An unspecified amount, by the way, is the answer to that. That was yesterday's question.

Joe Lalley [00:12:21]:
Yeah, I'll give you a quick, just a quick story about that. You just reminded me. So my 8 year old, she recently asked me if there was anyone in the world who could speak every language. She was just wondering about it. It came out of nowhere. There was nothing related going on. She just asked me and I had this moment where my initial instinct was that's impossible. How could that be? But then I had the next instinct of wait a minute, could it be? And do I not know about it? So I decided to just kind of be curious with her and I said, well, I don't know, how do you think we could find that out? So we started to think about, well, first maybe you start with just learning how many languages there are.

Joe Lalley [00:13:02]:
What is that number? How many countries are there in the world? We thought about, could the United States, where I live, beyond a sampling, a good sampling size because there's so many people who speak so many languages. So as I had this interaction with her, I thought, would an adult ever ask that question? I know I wouldn't have. So I think it's a great example of this kind of total lack of self consciousness, just curiosity.

Carla Miller [00:13:31]:
We should write those things down, shouldn't we? Because somewhere in there there will be a genius question that no one in the world has asked before and really should be asking now. In the book, you talk about the motives behind questions. What do you think we need to know about the motives behind questions?

Joe Lalley [00:13:48]:
Yeah, this came out along the way as I was writing and researching. I started to kind of zero in on a few different motives that I think are pretty negative. These happen mostly in the working world and I named them because it's easier to name things or more memorable to name things. So I talk about something I call the hero question. So the hero question is the type of question where let's say you're in a meeting and you're talking about a project. It's maybe the early stages and somebody might throw in a question like, well, how will this scale? It's a question that is something that should be asked at some stage. But if you're still in the figuring it out phase, it's a really self serving question because it's sort of showing the rest of the group, I am a big thinker, you know, I am visionary. I'm already way steps ahead.

Joe Lalley [00:14:39]:
And it can turn the group's focus from figuring out what is the need and what might meet that need to well, I guess we figured that out and let's just figure out how to get it out to the world. So a hero question draws attention to the asker and you know, really kind of derails momentum. I talk about the time machine, which is really similar. The time machine is it. It's less about kind of intentionally drawing attention to oneself and more about just mistiming a question. So similar to the how might this scale question, again, if you haven't aligned on the problem and you haven't aligned on a potential solution, then that question, it blocks those things. I talk about the selfie question. This was something that I perfected in sort of the early to mid stage of my career where I would come prepared, I would come to a meeting prepared with a series of questions that I already knew the answers to because I didn't want to look like I didn't know.

Joe Lalley [00:15:38]:
So I'd find a moment in the meeting where I could toss out that question. And if I was lucky enough to be in a situation where people didn't know that answer, I could swoop in and share that answer and, you know, look like I saved the day, look like the genius. So that's kind of a negative one. And then one that I heard so many instances of this and I've experienced it, I called it the power move question. And this is the type of question that generally is asked by someone in a position of power, of authority in a group. It's asked in a public forum and it's asked to show that another person doesn't know something. So it's a really. That person probably isn't in a good position to respond or think about it and just has negative motives.

Joe Lalley [00:16:26]:
And I think shuts down questions, shuts down curiosity, even just participation. So, you know, some of those things, you know, most of those things I think really develop in the working world. And if you can peel back all the way to what we did as five year olds and just use questions to go from not knowing to knowing, it really fixes all those things.

Carla Miller [00:16:47]:
So are there positive motives behind questions as well?

Joe Lalley [00:16:50]:
Yeah, so I think the most positive motive is that purely curious motive. Just, I don't know, I'm wondering and I'd like to know. There's another one that people started to point out to me, which is to lift others up so very the complete opposite of the power move question that's designed to show somebody doesn't know something that somebody can't respond to. There might be a situation where you might ask a colleague about something, oh, I know you were working on this. Could you tell us what you found knowing that that person does know and maybe knowing that they wouldn't bring that up on their own. So, you know, I start, I gave a name to that. I called that the uplift question, where you're really trying to lift someone else up in the room. I think that's a really good positive use of questions.

Carla Miller [00:17:40]:
And do you see a gender difference between men and women? Like asking one, asking more questions than the other?

Joe Lalley [00:17:48]:
Yeah, I have seen a bit of this and it's unfortunate. I've worked with some amazing women in my career who I think have been able to kind of, I don't know, push back against that fear, hesitation that I have Seen, you know, I don't have great explanations for it. I know you interview so many great women leaders. This may or may not have come up along the way, but I have seen a little bit of this, and I think it gets reinforced with some of those negative motives that maybe are employed by men leaders or male leaders. And I think part of it is finding your people pushing through that, men or women, and finding those people who give you the courage to break out of that. But I have seen a little bit of that. Has this come up in some of your episodes?

Carla Miller [00:18:38]:
I've heard about it in two different ways. So when it comes to. If you're at a conference, it's always the men that are asking questions. And I heard some terrible example where a man speaker basically offered to give women questions beforehand to ask, so they had something to say. And I was like, I'm pretty sure the issue isn't that women don't have anything to say. But then in the workplace, like in meetings, I talk about not using qualifying statements like, I might be wrong, but. And I encourage using questions instead, like I'm wondering, or throwing questions in rather than just facts, because women are more scared to throw in facts because they're more scared they're going to be told they're wrong. They're more likely to be judged.

Carla Miller [00:19:20]:
They're not able to speak unedited safely in the same way as some men can do in the workplace. And so I'm always encouraging them to use questions or phrasing like, oh, I'm curious if. Or I wonder if. Or what if we tried this. So I hope that there are lots of women out there asking questions as a way of bringing in their ideas to a meeting, particularly those more challenging ideas, because I think we really struggle to challenge and still be seen as the likable person we're supposed to be in order to get promoted as well. It's a minefield being a woman in a meeting half the time.

Joe Lalley [00:19:58]:
Yeah. And those qualifying statements, I mean, it's such a good point. These, I know enough to be dangerous, or this is above my pay grade, or, you know, I'm just, you know, I'm giving an example. It's not a real one. You know, just things like that that kind of maybe, you know, lower the. Reduce the curiosity in the question and kind of, you know, pull the. Pull the focus away from, you know, thinking about it. So I think you're.

Joe Lalley [00:20:24]:
You call out a great, great example of, you know, how those can kind of reduce the power of a question.

Carla Miller [00:20:30]:
And how do you think that a mid to senior leader could use curiosity to accelerate their influence within their organization?

Joe Lalley [00:20:38]:
I think one is just true delegation. So not delegation of tasks, but delegation of thoughts and ideas. So I talk a lot about hierarchy and how really strict adherence to hierarchy can limit curiosity, can limit the opportunities for innovation and organization. And when I think about really strict hierarchy, I think about every decision funneling up through the highest ranking person in the organization. That sort of thing just stifles curiosity so much. If leaders can show a little bit of vulnerability and invite new thinking, invite new questions, and also ask questions they don't know the answers to, that really opens things up. But it's hard. It can't be a once in a while thing and it can't be performative.

Joe Lalley [00:21:25]:
I've been in meetings where leaders and I've worked with clients where they said things like all ideas are welcome and we're really here to capitalize on the experiences of the people in this room. Oh, and by the way, by the end of this meeting, here's what I hope you have accomplished. So they immediately negate whatever they've just said and then the team falls into this pattern of trying to read the boss's mind. So that's unfortunate. I'll give you a quick story about that. That to me, it was such a pivotal moment. So I was starting a new job and my first task was to figure out what I thought would be the roadmap for all of the products and services we were offering. I had a few weeks to kind of learn and pull all of that, spoke with all the other leaders in the organization and then I finally sat down with the CEO, which was my, you know, my big meeting.

Joe Lalley [00:22:13]:
I sat down with the CEO to go through my plans and you know, we get to the second idea on the list and he says to me, is this what our customers want? And I had this moment of terror where I realized that I had no idea if they wanted it. I had never really considered that question. I had just accepted it because others told me that it was a good idea. So I had this decision to make. I could make up an answer or I could admit that I didn't know. I went with the latter, expecting to be fired or something. And I wasn't met with that. He said, well, how might we find out? And for me, that was this moment where a CEO, somebody who's incredibly accomplished, was able to admit they didn't know an answer and throw out a question to help to get there and even follow it up.

Joe Lalley [00:23:03]:
With another one. Well, if we don't know, then how could we know? If more CEOs did that, I think organizations would be making huge, huge breakthroughs.

Carla Miller [00:23:12]:
I think if more managers and leaders did that, because it's that taking that coaching approach, isn't it? Rather than going, I have all the answers and if you're lucky, I'm going to tell you them. It's, well, let's see if we can come up with a better answer together. Let's see if we can develop your problem solving skills rather than always coming to me to solve the problem. So I think the more questions we see at all levels throughout an organization, as long as eventually you get to an answer, I think the challenge is, and I hear this sometimes, I'm working with a client at the moment, a coaching client, and they send things upwards that they really genuinely can't answer themselves and just get questions downwards. And they're like, a, we need a decision, B, we need someone at your level to take responsibility for this because that is the appropriate level for this decision. So as long as they're not being used defensively to bat off responsibility, I think they're an incredibly positive thing to have a lot of agreed.

Joe Lalley [00:24:07]:
Yeah, I think decisions get sort of overvalued and turned into these, you know, finite things where we feel compelled to have the right decision. But if, if managers, leaders, anyone at any level can think of a decision more as just a moment in time that will help you learn. If the decision is right, then it changes the gravity of that decision. So it's more about what do you do after that decision, what do you learn, what pivots do you make and less about the decision itself. I think that really changes things in an organization.

Carla Miller [00:24:41]:
I think that's a really nice reframe. And for me, decisions are about moving forward, getting more information. And then things might completely change when you move forward and you've got more information. So I like the idea that, yeah, it's, it's basically at that moment in time. So hopefully they help to unstick things sometimes. So what are some of your favorite questions and why are they your favorites?

Joe Lalley [00:25:05]:
I'll give you my most favorite question. It's how did you come to feel that way? So this is something I've used. I interview a lot of customers on behalf of clients. I also interview my clients because I want to learn what they're doing, their goals are, what their pain points are, and how did you come to feel that way? Does not have judgment in it unless it's Asked with a really judgmental tone. But if you just ask it in a curious way, it opens up a lot of doors. It also leads to stories. So it's not a yes or no. There's no way to really answer yes or no to that question.

Joe Lalley [00:25:41]:
So it helps you learn about what are the steps that led somebody to feel that way. It's a great way to even find common ground with somebody that you, on the surface, feel that you disagree with about anything, really, instead of shouting your point of view and why theirs is wrong. How did you come to feel that way? Can peel back a few layers, get some more information, and you might find that maybe you share a reason for that feeling that led you to a different opinion, but there might be some common ground there. So that's my favorite one. On a more kind of personal level. I've been experimenting with this with my kids and it's actually working pretty well. What was the highlight of your day? And, you know, instead of, how was your day? Fine. It's always going to be fine no matter what.

Joe Lalley [00:26:28]:
But what was the highlight of your day? It kind of stops them in their tracks a little bit and, you know, it forces them to think. And then again, I can learn a little bit about why it was the highlight. So those are a couple I really like.

Carla Miller [00:26:40]:
I use that second one with my son, actually. Not every day, but I do quite often when I'm like, I need to mine for some more information.

Joe Lalley [00:26:48]:
Everything can't be fine.

Carla Miller [00:26:51]:
Luckily he's going through a stage where he comes out and goes, I had a great day, but then cannot recall anything about that day. That made it great. I need to use that first question. How did you come to feel that way? So, yeah, I like that question, that first one as well, because I'm doing some additional coaching training at the moment and they really discourage you from asking why? Because sometimes why can have a judgment. So why do you feel that way? I very much believe that actually tone can make the difference in that. I quite like asking why. But how do you come to feel that way? Is a really good rephrase of something asking the same way, but really you're giving them a chance to share their thinking a bit more, aren't they?

Joe Lalley [00:27:31]:
Yeah. Yeah. Why did you do that? Versus why did you do that? I mean, totally different questions, but still can be interpreted in the same way.

Carla Miller [00:27:39]:
Definitely. And my final question is around AI, actually. So as we use AI much more widely, it's now becoming incredibly commonplace. How do we prevent it from diminishing Our ability and our desire to think critically for ourselves. Because it's just so easy to outsource that sometimes, isn't it? It's so much quicker. I don't know how we coped without it sometimes. So how do we stop ourselves from falling into that trap every time?

Joe Lalley [00:28:08]:
Yeah, I think about this so much and talk about this so much. I think of AI as one of these innovations. If you think of innovations in the past, the plow, controlled fire, cars, spell check, gps, all of those things were innovations that led us to do things differently and just do things in new and efficient ways. AI can do that, but it also has the ability to think for us. Spellcheck isn't really thinking for us. It's just correcting errors. So that, I think, is this new challenge where it is really easy to outsource your curiosity. You can plug anything into your favorite AI tool.

Joe Lalley [00:28:56]:
It will give you an unlimited amount of answers. It can scan unlimited amounts of information that you never could. But what it does not have is any lived experiences. So I think that is the key is, you know, I talk a lot about this idea of expertise and the curse of knowledge. So if somebody knows a lot of things, it's easy for them to forget about learning about another person or learning about a situation that is really, really valuable information that can be combined with that, you know, with that sort of, you know, fact based or historical based information. So I think retaining that curiosity about lived experiences is something that is really valuable. I can ask you what your breakfast was like. I cannot ask ChatGPT what their breakfast was like.

Joe Lalley [00:29:45]:
So it can tell me what breakfasts are like, but it cannot tell me that information. So I think there's this huge opportunity to combine this unlimited amount of information with this curiosity about lived experiences. If we can keep those two things, then I think we make ourselves faster, we can solve problems faster and we can use it in different ways. The other, the other thing and this. I talk to so many organizations. One of the biggest challenges I'm hearing from them is they're having a hard time getting people internally to adopt AI tools that they have provided to them. And I think a part of it is the way they've framed that adoption. Most cases the words they use are find tasks you can eliminate, be more efficient, be more productive.

Joe Lalley [00:30:35]:
So those are solutions really in search of problems. So this could be done faster with AI. But should we, if we reframed our thinking and instead of what can we do faster, what tasks can we eliminate? What people can we eliminate, think about, well, what problems do we have and what problems should we eliminate? And then AI can be in that pool of potential solutions and just that, you know, could versus should. If you change that one thing, I think it changes the way we think about AI. So that's a big one that I think would be a great shift to make.

Carla Miller [00:31:08]:
I really like that.

Joe Lalley [00:31:09]:
That.

Carla Miller [00:31:10]:
So as we come to the end of our interview, what's one thing that you would want people to take away from this episode?

Joe Lalley [00:31:18]:
You are not the only one wondering about something. I think that is probably one of the biggest things that I had to learn in my career. I had so many times in meetings where I thought, oh, I'm the only one who doesn't know this, so I'm just not going to ask. You probably aren't. So take the chance and I bet you'll find out that someone else shares that same same curiosity.

Carla Miller [00:31:39]:
I think that's what I love about hosting a podcast, actually. I get to take all the issues that I felt quite alone in or my clients might feel quite alone in and go out and find answers, ideas, inspiration, bring them out into the open and then lots of people benefit.

Joe Lalley [00:31:55]:
Yeah.

Carla Miller [00:31:56]:
From it. So, yeah, I get not quite paid to be curious, but I really, I really enjoy this part of my role that lets me be curious. Well, it's been really interesting to talk to you and have a read of your book as well. If people want to work with you, find out more. Where should we send them?

Joe Lalley [00:32:13]:
Yeah. So easiest place is my website. So joelally.com l a l l e y.com LinkedIn is another place. I publish a lot of just ideas and articles there and my book is available anywhere that you buy books. Question to learn. I'm really proud of it, so I hope you check it out.

Carla Miller [00:32:34]:
Thank you so much for writing the book and for coming on and sharing your insights with us.

Joe Lalley [00:32:39]:
Thanks for having me.