Giuseppe Quintarelli, died on Sunday. He was 84 years old at the time
of his death, and he died at home in Negrar, in the Veneto region in
northeastern Italy.

Guiseppe Quintarelli was a winemaker. He
made glorious wines, rich, complex wines
infused with the sense of where they were
made.

Bepi, as he was known, followed his father
and grandfather into the winemaking
business. He started in the family business
in the 1950s and was still making wine in
the early 21^st century. He respected and
adhered to traditional techniques for making
wine and but also experimented with new
techniques to try to improve the quality and
consistency of the wine that came out of his
vineyards.

His interest in quality didn’t stop at the wine
making – he also used high quality corks,
bottles and labels. The labels on his wine
bottles are hand written and have his
signature on each one.

So the point of all this is that here was a man who spent his life focused on making the best wines he could, paying attention to the big things as well as the small things that made a difference. He tried new things but also respected the traditions of his industry. He understood that quality comes from skill and patience, seeing the big picture as well as the details. Good lessons for us all.

For the record, I had a bottle of his wine back in the fall – and it was everything it was promised to be.  Maybe the best bottle of wine I’ve ever had.  So if you come across one on a wine list somewhere, and you don’t mind dropping a couple of hundred bucks on it, order it up and think about Bepi and what quality means.

The theory is that there are no stupid questions. Okay, this is not quite true – but more on this later. First, a story.

I had a client a few years ago who was nervous about an interview I was about to do with a difficult business user in the early stages of a project. He asked for my list of questions for the interview in advance. I gave him my list:

 “How does your department contribute to the success of the organization?”

“What works well and what areas/products/projects could be improved?”

“What do you need this [new computer system] to do to help you achieve your mandate?”

“What are the risks that I need to consider as we plan for and implement this [new computer system]?”

My client seemed unimpressed with my list and unsure that we would actually need the 2 hours we had booked for this conversation.  Of course (because this is my blog entry, not yours), we had a great meeting, garnered the support of the previously difficult business user, and after the meeting, my client told me that he couldn’t believe that we had such a great meeting when I went in with a simple list of 4 questions.

As you can imagine, I actually asked many more questions than just the 4 listed, but all as part of a dialogue.  The four questions keep the focus on key meeting outcomes and serve to get the conversation started.

Whether you are collecting business requirements, learning about a vendor proposal, or managing a staff member, asking open-ended, neutral questions is the key. And there’s nothing wrong with asking really basic questions (“why do you do that?”) that drive the discussion back to the first principles – i.e., what are we trying to accomplish with this project/department/product  - that can get lost in the urgency of day-to-day operations.

And as for the no stupid questions theory, rest assured that there are entirely stupid questions – questions that demonstrate that you haven’t been listening, or don’t care about the answer you just got, or trick questions that get asked because somebody has a hidden agenda.  But those are for a different blog entry.

Christy DeMont

Sheila Hamilton