I love asking questions—they engage, probe, and spark new neural networks. My years of data analysis led me down many surprising paths, and the first or second dive almost always leads to a new set of questions. A client of mine once said, “Sometimes to glean anything meaningful from the data, you have to put human eyes on it.”
My partner Palmer and I were in #inventormode yesterday, building out an agentic research workflow, and I described this type of research process poorly—one that goes back to the first step with new questions to run the machine again. I searched for the taxonomy because words matter and shape human understanding and behavior, and this list surfaced:
- Adaptive research design: Loops back on itself, feeding each answer into the next question—demanding the humility to follow where the evidence leads and the tenacity to keep circling until something actionable emerges.
- Recursive process (as defined by FWC): Loops back to earlier stages to refine questions based on new findings.
- Cyclical inquiry: Follows a recurring loop of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting.
- Dynamic research: Tracks how a phenomenon develops over time, using its trajectory to inform grounded predictions about what comes next.
- Feedback loop: Uses output data from the first run to dictate the next input stage.
- Progressive focusing: Narrows and shifts the research scope as data reveals new insights.
- Heuristic inquiry: An internal search process in which the researcher’s lived experience becomes the instrument of discovery, adapting as self-understanding deepens.
Words Matter
What I love about these words is that they underscore how important it is to follow the evidence wherever it leads. By far, my favorite of these words is recursive because it implies humility and tenacity. Humility keeps you open to the evidence without wanting to cherry-pick or skew it for convenience. Tenacity means you work the problem until you find something actionable. Ironically, recursive is a term most closely associated with computer science, but it still fits for me as a humanistic approach to learning, adapting, and design.
Leadership Loops
Beyond science, leadership can be recursive and adaptable, dynamically progressive, and humble enough to exercise stewardship over hegemony. When leadership adapts to reality and loops through the actions dictated by results, leaders build resilience, and as the world accelerates, these pivots become more consequential. Change is natural; stagnation is not.
Questions by Design
Design thinking is also a questioning process. In fact, some might say creativity requires you to never accept your first output; you question it. Presenting design directions to clients should not be framed as pass/fail tests or contests of taste; layouts for design directions are great when they challenge the client on a less superficial level. Questions like: What strategic direction will you take? Or: How bold are you? What is the value of being different in this sector? Posing questions embodied by a group of layouts can make asking the tough questions feel safer.
Embrace the questions; they always lead to something useful.