[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/)

# Por qué hacerle más preguntas a tu equipo puede estar empeorando tus decisiones

## Details

**Authors** Valdés Garciatorres, Jorge

**Year** 2026

**Publisher** Proyectum

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Business & Management

**Secondary disciplines** Systems Science

**Kind of engagement** public

**Applied** false

[Read it](https://proyectum.com/sistema/blog/por-que-hacerle-mas-preguntas-a-tu-equipo-puede-estar-empeorando-tus-decisiones)

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To argue that leaders asking more questions can make their decisions worse when the questions are informational rather than structural, and to offer DSRP as the practical means of asking structural questions before gathering data. The article's framing line is "En lugar de preguntar únicamente por información (¿cuál es el problema?), debemos hacer preguntas que revelen estructura."

### Who or what was studied (sample)

One consulting engagement, reported by the consultancy that conducted it. A client firm believed its analysts were underqualified and sought technical training for them; no number of analysts, interviews or sites is given.

### How they did it (methods)

A practitioner essay in Spanish. It opens on an Ackoff epigraph, narrates the client engagement and what structural questioning revealed, draws the distinction between informational and structural questions, introduces DSRP with citations to the published research, and supplies four structural questions for each of the four patterns. Supporting material comes from Ackoff's notion of a "mess," Box on all models being wrong, and Gall on complex systems evolving from simple working ones.

### What they found (results)

The author reports that the client's diagnosis was wrong: the analysts were technically competent, and the dissatisfaction came from the surrounding system — sales promising unrealistic results to close contracts, projects staffed by leader availability rather than expertise, and metrics rewarding on-time delivery irrespective of value. He concludes that "los problemas complejos se empiezan a resolver entendiéndolos," presents DSRP as the framework that makes structural questioning practical, credits Derek and Laura Cabrera of Cornell with it, and cites their work for the claims that most people use about 20% of the available mental structures and that explicit DSRP training produces a 580% increase in cognitive complexity. He closes by recommending humility about one's first mental model, structural questions before data collection, and openness to having one's understanding restructured by reality, and describes systems thinking as a skill built through deliberate practice.

## Commentary

### In short

A Mexican project-management consultancy uses DSRP to argue that leaders ask the wrong kind of question. Valdés Garciatorres contrasts informational with structural questions and supplies four structural questions for each of the four patterns, built around a client engagement in which poor analyst performance turned out to be a property of the system around the analysts.

### In more detail

The article's case example is a consulting assignment. A firm came to Proyectum convinced that its analysts needed technical training, because clients were dissatisfied with their work. Instead of surveying the analysts' skills, the consultancy asked how the surrounding system worked, and the answers pointed elsewhere: sales was promising results the delivery side could not meet, staffing followed leader availability rather than expertise, and the metrics rewarded delivering on time whether or not the work was worth anything. The analysts could not have satisfied the clients from inside that arrangement. From this the author draws his central contrast. Informational questions gather facts, which are necessary but arrive already filtered through the asker's biases; structural questions examine how the information is organized, and it is these that let a leader see the situation as it is. DSRP is then introduced as the framework that makes the second kind of question askable, credited to Derek and Laura Cabrera at Cornell and supported with citations to Cabrera and Colosi (2008), Cabrera and Cabrera (2015, 2022), Cabrera, Cabrera and Powers (2015) and Cabrera, Cabrera and Midgley (2021). The author also carries over the Love Reality Loop, glossed as valuing reality over being right and letting facts correct one's assumptions. The operational core is four question sets, one per pattern: for Distinctions, what exactly is being defined as the problem, what is left out, and where the boundaries are drawn; for Systems, what parts make up the problem, what larger system it belongs to, and which levels of analysis are being ignored; for Relationships, which actions produce which reactions, what feedback cycles exist, and which elements influence each other; for Perspectives, from whose point of view the situation is being seen, what alternative vantages exist, and how the understanding would change from another one. The closing recommendations are to begin in humility, to use DSRP before collecting data rather than after, and to stay open to being wrong, with a question to readers about the last time they paused to ask about a problem's structure before proposing a solution.

**Patterns it shows** D, S, R, P

Shows it makes a difference

**Added** 2026-10-13

**How to cite this** Valdés Garciatorres, Jorge (2026). Por qué hacerle más preguntas a tu equipo puede estar empeorando tus decisiones. Proyectum.