Amazing how much intelligence can be gleaned by asking stupid questions

"The more stupid the question, the more valuable the answer" is an old saying I heard somewhere, back in the day, and it's still as relevant as ever. It's kind of a variant on the one that says there are no stupid questions, just stupid answers. The results of this week's mid-term elections stand as testimony to the national repudiation of policies, almost all Iraq-related, that were conceived and implemented in vacuum devoid of of stupid questions. Of course, since so few people in positions of significance want to look stupid asking stupid questions, you get stupid policy. Well, maybe not stupid policy, per se, but certainly a stupidity inherent in the unwavering and steadfast implementation of a strategy going absolutely nowhere. So what, you ask, does this have to do with the commercial world of marketing and branding? Everything. Failure to be smarter tomorrow about what you're doing today all but guarantees failure in the long-run in whatever it is you're doing. One of the best ways to fail at being smarter is to avoid asking, and answering, the stupid questions you must ask on a regular basis: 1. Who's buying our product and how are they using it? 2. How do they describe the problem it solves? 3. How did they hear about it? 4. What do we actually do that nobody else does? 5. What's on the competitive horizon and what's our plan to deal with it? There's nothing as stupid as the unwillingness to raise and ask stupid quesions. Then, when they're answered, being unwilling or unable to come up with more of them.