Why Ask Why?
Questions are important - no question about that! (Sorry for the intended pun!) Questions demonstrate curiosity, a desire to learn, and a bias toward reflection and collecting information.
However, in my mind, one question stands head and shoulders above the others: why. Why you may ask? (Sorry, there I go again with the puns!) I am a mission-driven person. I need to connect with the overarching purpose of what I am doing. Asking “why” is a great way to understand the connection between what one is being asked to do and the reason for doing it. Imagine a child being told by her parents that she needs to walk their pet dog Buster. The child may understandably ask, “Why do I need to take Buster for a walk?”. When the child’s parents explain that taking a walk allows Buster to stay healthy, get some exercise, and that it makes Buster happy to be outside, the child feels a much stronger connection and meaning to taking Buster on a walk. Since connection and purpose are important motivators for people, we want everyone on our team to understand the why of our work so that they are aligned and motivated by that purpose. That’s vitally important for employee and team engagement.
As a bonus, there is another way in which “why” is a powerful tool for our teams to use. Any good team that is striving to produce new and valuable features and services is going to occasionally make a mistake that impacts themselves or others. When this happens, a team committed to continuous improvement strives both to correct the mistake and to learn from the mistake. One of the key activities to learn from a mistake is to conduct a root cause analysis. The most straightforward way to conduct a root cause analysis is to ask “Why did this happen?” and to keep asking “Why did that happen?” to the subsequent responses until arriving at the true root cause that set everything into motion. A rule of thumb is that it takes about five whys to get to the true root cause. There are lots of references to the “Five Whys”, such as from ASQ and Kanbanize should you want to dig in deeper.
As we settle into a way or working, agile or not, it is too easy for everyone to blindly continue to follow the same processes and ways of working, even though all around us, things are constantly changing, sometimes very subtly but surely. Empowering everyone on your team to periodically ask themselves (and their teammates) “why do we do X?” provides an antidote to getting stuck in a rut that eventually becomes inefficient and over time ineffective or even counter-productive. Sounds like a great retrospective topic to me! One facet of being agile is adjusting your way of work in the face of changing conditions and context. The simple act of periodically asking “Why?” is a strong catalyst for maintaining your agility!
In summary, asking “Why?” can increase our connection to our work, help us drill down to true root cause of our mistakes, and keep us from becoming static and decidedly “un-agile”. Why not give it a try? (See what I did there!)