Other articles by Dale Dauten:

Dale Dauten: What end-of-the-world scenario will make us fret next?Dale Dauten: Maybe it's time to look at Google as part of brainDale Dauten: The only thing we have to fear is ... well, FDR knewDale Dauten: If you want true self-esteem, show others your true worthToo often, many HR departments are little or no resource to workers The Corporate Curmudgeon by Dale Dauten : It feels great to be free — free of complimentary soda Dale Dauten: Wisdom, talent matter in a boss, so does sense of being an allyDale Dauten: Time for us old guys to show we're not out of new tricksDale Dauten: With enough desire, it's easy to rationalize lousy decisionsDale Dauten: Guru Peters lays out pithy advice about world we deal with

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"Tradition is the most subtle form of necrophilia."

— Hans Kudszus

What makes great bosses different from ordinary ones? Put them in a lineup and you wouldn't be able to see which is which.

However, put them in a time-up, comparing how they spend their days, and differences show themselves. For one, typical bosses devote a great deal of time to answering questions, whereas the great ones devote an exceptional amount of time to asking them.

One of the bosses who is 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.

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' questions. Rather, he had to learn the art of leading via asking.

Rahn is 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 Rahn asked this little Zippo of a question: "What would it take to do it in two years?"

Someone who knew highways never would have 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 rethink the entire scheduling of the project. The result? It was completed in two years — or, as Rahn puts it, with triumph in his voice, "23 months."

So if Rahn was using 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 Interstate 64 running through the middle of St. Louis. This time, his staff had estimated the construction time at six to eight years if it got all the funding it 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 staffers 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: shutting 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."

MoDOT sold the plan, started last January and is on schedule. However, the schedule is not for finishing in three years, but in two.

There's magic in the question, "What would it take?" If you ask instead, "Can we do it in half the time?" the answer naturally will be "no."

After all, the experts already have 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?" It's 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.