Nursery school did me dirty.

Sometimes you really should question the grown-up.

I learned early to shut up and not ask questions.

It happened in nursery school, when my teacher told me to get off the slide immediately. I stayed put and asked why.

That’s when the kid behind me threw up on me.

Message received - in the most traumatic way possible.

That’s how a lot of us were raised, though - listen to your parents, your teachers, and that neighbor down the street who always yells if you get too close to her wiener dog.

Do what they say and don’t ask questions. That was the rule.

Rules are, for the most part, good. They keep society functioning. Some are designed to keep you safe (learn how to use a crosswalk, people); others exist to keep things fair or prevent chaos.

But some rules make no sense. They’re hangovers from an earlier time, the result of a narrow worldview, or some blowhard leader’s folly.

When I joined corporate America, I just naturally followed the same internal compass that got me through school. When leadership spoke, I listened. When things were done a certain way, that’s how I did them.

But I couldn’t help noticing flaws.

When I noticed flaws, I couldn’t un-notice them. I wanted to fix them. Or at least understand what caused them, what they were costing us, and what could prevent them from happening again.

For a while, I kept all that to myself. At times, my internal monologue was in direct opposition to what I was doing, but I did it anyway.

Until the day I couldn’t “just do it” anymore.

Our executive director wanted us to create what I can only describe as a massive dog-and-pony show to highlight what our department was doing, how awesome we were, and what an utterly magnificent leader he was for making it all happen.

And since I am particularly good at herding dogs and ponies, the planning fell to me.

I run a tight ship when I plan things. Everything has an overarching goal and a strategy to get there, with smaller workstreams and contingency plans out the wazoo.

This works beautifully when the goal is clear and everyone gets it.

It does not work at all when the goal keeps changing.

Which it did. Every week in our team meeting, the executive director’s vision changed based on something he’d heard, an article he’d read, or whatever weirdness happened in his head during his 5 a.m. run.

The original goal: highlight the many and varied capabilities of our department.

Got it. Cool. We started planning a lunchtime expo, where each team would talk up their biggest projects.

After we’d hammered it out and started working with Facilities to make it happen, he decided the expo was too much. It made us look too scattered. Maybe we should focus on one big thing that each team was contributing to.

The new goal: Show how our whole team works together to make big things happen.

OK. We got creative and designed an experiential thing. It would be expensive and tough to pull off in our timeframe, but it would be memorable.

We’d signed the contract with the vendor and were elbow-deep in planning when he decided that no - this made us look too narrow.

We needed to rethink this whole thing.

I’d never fully appreciated what triggered Bruce Banner to turn into The Hulk until that moment. I felt my entire body go hot, my jaw clench, and my heart race. I didn’t turn green, but I was told later I was an alarming shade of red.

As I looked around the room at the team who had spent hours on this thing, who now looked like they’d collectively swallowed a bug, I couldn’t hold back.

“What are we really trying to accomplish here? Why are we even doing this?”

I’d done it. I’d asked the questions that needed to be asked.

Weeks too late, but hey - true learning moments tend to happen in times of extreme emotion. Mine was fury.

After a tense and necessarily productive meeting, we finally landed the objective. We agreed on a plan and made it happen: an exclusive workshop with our key stakeholders.

It worked.

But I knew I never wanted to repeat that experience.

I never wanted to leave a discussion confused, dissatisfied, or vaguely uneasy.

It was one thing when agreeing to something absurd affected only me. I could suck it up and deal with it. But when it hit a whole team of hard-working and well-intentioned people - nah. I couldn’t stomach that.

In the years since, I’ve sought clarity in everything I do.

Why are we doing this? What are we trying to accomplish? What will true success look like? Who else do we need to involve?

I ask questions. Sometimes lots of them.

Some people appreciate it. They view me as a thought partner, and sometimes even thank me for teasing out things they hadn’t considered.

Other people think I am a giant pain in the ass.

Not everyone would be comfortable with that. I get it. There was a time in my life when I would rather have removed my own liver with a cocktail fork than cause a kerfuffle.

But these days - a good kerfuffle can blast through a whole lot of nonsense and save a lot of time.

It’s worth it.

And, so far, no one has vomited on me as a result.

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