Find Your Way With Beautiful Questions

Amid his many achievements, Andy’s discomfort with traditional communication paradigms spurred the creation of the Dublin Conversations—a radical initiative aiming to reshape our understanding of communication in an increasingly complex world.

Andy Green’s purpose manifesto

Andy’s influence reaches far, as exemplified by my own story. Through Andy’s guidance and the challenging questions he poses—those ‘beautiful questions’—I found the catalyst for articulating my purpose manifesto. Here it is, in full, a living document born from a partnership that transcends the ordinary.

Sia Papageorgiou Manifesto

Our stories, interwoven, demonstrate the real and relatable power of strategic communication. They show how gifted professionals like us can not only confront personal and professional challenges but also emerge with a clear manifesto that guides our actions and imbues our work with meaning.

Andy is not just a mentor or a guide—he is the catalyst for a breakthrough in purpose and practice. This story, featuring his contributions, books, and accolades, is more than a profile; it’s an affirmation of the profound impact one individual can have on another’s journey.

His ethos of purposeful inquiry and authentic connection is a reminder that our greatest accomplishments may not always be measured in awards or public accolades but in the silent victories of inspiring confidence, bridging divides, and teaching a child to ride a bike.

Through Andy Green’s example and the living testament of those he has touched, we understand that to ask the right questions is to unlock a world of potential. To live authentically in the pursuit of purpose is to enrich not just our narratives but those of every life we encounter.

Gifted awareness

Q: Is this true for you? Because you are a deep thinker, highly intuitive, creative, analytical, and curious, you bring a particularly complex dimension to professional relationships.

Andy: Yes, very much so. Any creative journey begins with asking a question: “How can I ..?”, “What do we need to solve here…?”, “Why do need to…?”.

In my work on creativity, storytelling, and purpose I help people arrive at what I call, ‘beautiful questions.’ Questions that instantly spark ideas, and provide real insights, are sagacious in being the questions you would ask in hindsight. Too many people, in my opinion, grapple with challenges and problems because they are operating with ‘ugly’ questions, failing to explore the real meaningful questions at the starting point, or heart of their creative journey.

And because of complexity, any quest is rarely just one question but often a whole family of questions that emerge from many different dimensions of rationality, emotion, or spirituality, that are needed to provide the effective stepping stones to a better place.

Credit från_kie on Adobe Stock Images

Professionalism focus

Q: Did you become a professional on purpose or did your career path open a door into the profession you identify with today?

Andy: While at University I was elected as a full-time student union sabbatical officer being paid to run the student union for a year. Although my formal role was Treasurer, managing a £200,000 budget (in 1980 prices), I was driven by making the world a better place for the student community which provided me with opportunities to also stumble upon work experiences, like campaigning or running publicity campaigns and events, with accomplishments such as establishing the very first creche at Swansea University and launching for the first time a weekly student newspaper.

Towards the end of my sabbatical term, through a chance picking up of the ‘Guardian newspaper, I came across a job ad for a Public Relations Executive that seemed to be a job description that encompassed all the things I enjoyed and excelled at.

There are many ways of living and breathing public relations. Luckily, early in my career, I had an inspiring boss, the late, great Robert Davy. He told me about the time when working in a public relations consultancy, his agency went to pitch for a lawnmower account, and when asked, “Well Mr. Davy, what are you going to do to improve our PR?” Robert replied, “The first thing I’m going to do is to cut the grass outside your office.”

This encapsulated my public relations ethos of how the totality of what you are and do is at the heart of what I felt public relations practice should be.

Over the years however, I felt that public relations thinking and theory were inadequate, not fit for purpose in a world of growing distrust, and polarisation, that fails to respond to its existential challenges.

This frustration eventually led me to cofound the Dublin Conversations. We have co-created and co-produced a new framework of thinking, with probably the largest freely shared toolkit of tools to put new thinking into practise. All enabling a fitter-for-purpose practice, far bigger and deeper than the existing frames which shape and define our worldviews, where we need to unlearn existing ways of seeing the world such as through lenses of ‘advertising’, ‘communications’, ‘journalism’, ‘marketing’, ‘public relations’ and more to realise true greater breakthrough thinking.

I am currently in flux to state what my career path is leading to – or what you might even call it. Maybe we need new job titles such as ‘Director of Purpose’, ‘Purposistas’, or something to that effect.

In the Dublin Conversations, we freely share a ‘Discover your Character and Purpose’ development programme. By using the different tools and processes for self-examination, I came to realise that the most powerful influence on my life has been my younger brother, Kevin. Born profoundly autistic, Kevin has remained non-verbal and largely unable to communicate or connect with others to this day.

I now realise that growing up, I served as a bridge between Kevin and the outside world. Being closest to him deepened my quest to understand how we make sense of the world—how we process thoughts, feelings, and connections in our social interactions.

Exploring what my purpose is made me realise that perhaps my greatest accomplishment was, when just eight years old, I taught and inspired confidence in a kid, who could not speak nor communicate with the world at large, to ride a bike. Maybe one day, I’ll achieve something equally as inspiring.

Credit Dziurek on Adobe Stock Images

Communication focus

Q: Which of your communication skills do you seem to work on constantly, always learning, always evolving? 

Andy: Listening. Ironically, as my physical capability to listen is diminishing (I wear a hearing aid), my mental capacity to authentically listen and grow with every purposeful conversation and engagement has grown exponentially, underpinned by a greater appreciation and respect for humble intelligence, and the immense power within humility.

Cover, Overcoming Stupidity by Andy Green

Words to live and laugh by

The power of quotes and rhetoric is part of a gifted person’s thinking. Andy, a master of rhetoric himself, often recounts a few select aphorisms that have not only shaped his thinking but also buoyed his spirits in times of adversity.

A particular favorite is a nugget of contrarian wisdom from Frank Zappa: “Just because several million people think you’re wrong doesn’t mean they’re right.”

Equally compelling are the reflective lyrics from Sting’s song ‘An Englishman in New York’: “It takes a man [or fully developed person] to suffer ignorance and smile, Be yourself, no matter what they say.”

Cover, Tubespiration! How to get your new brilliant idea by using the London Underground as a Creativity Tool, by Andy Green

Andy Green running a creative thinking class on the London Tube