The power of why

Most of us have had the character-building experience of dealing with children during the terrible twos. (In my case, that was immediately followed by the really terrible threes.) But the period that truly drains parents is the “why” stage. Sometime in their fourth or fifth year, our budding princes and princesses have discovered the word why, and they use it for every purpose and in every context imaginable.

Many parents and most teachers have a miraculous gift: They can instantly discern the purpose and context, and they almost immediately respond to children with an answer that satisfies them, at least for the next five minutes or so. Possessing no such gift, I ended up tangling myself in metaphysical babble after the sixth or seventh iteration of the Why? string—or simply surrendering with a weak “I don’t know, it just is. Who wants to play some ball?” Neither response satisfied anyone.

I was formally trained in physics and engineering, and along the way picked up a minor in philosophy. The realms of science and philosophy share two common denominators: They both search for truth, and to find it, they both ask Why?—relentlessly. We all have heard the assertion that great scientists and engineers are basically well-trained 5-year-olds who forgot to grow up. The day they stop being that inquisitive kid is the day that they stop being great.

At great companies, people constantly test their assumptions and question everything. A Why? culture permeates their organizations. Most important, they find answers without undergoing endless merry- go-rounds about things that can’t be proved or disproved—no metaphysics.

Great companies—those that achieve superior and lasting success—have a number of core characteristics. Among them are consistently sound decision-making, cultures that promote employee engagement, superior flexibility, a highly tuned ear for the market in general (and customers in particular), and what seems like an uncanny sense of sorting out and focusing on what’s truly important. And they ask Why? a lot.

Why Ask Why?

When you think about it, a range of critical things in modern business have why as their actual or implied precursor: evidence-based management and decision-making, lean processes, 80/20 and Pareto analysis, optimal organization design, pay scales, training programs, even the roster of your most profitable customers.

A key reason for a company’s underperformance in continuous improvement comes down to this: People either don’t ask enough questions, or they become satisfied with comfortable but weak answers that really aren’t answers at all. They fear rocking the boat or have to deal with diktat—basically being told, nicely or not, to shut up and do their job. If any positive change happens in these tenuous situations, it’s more about luck than method, and it’s not exactly a condition conducive to great or lasting improvement.

5 Whys and the Fishbone

You’re probably familiar with the 5 Whys method of getting to the root causes of a problem. Using empirical findings, the method follows deductive reasoning based on a chain of five why questions, allowing you to discover a problem’s root cause. It’s a powerful tool, despite some critiques about its usefulness when multiple causes exist (there usually are workarounds), and the misuse by some who apply it as an absolute algorithm. For instance, they unnecessarily force themselves to ask why five times—not three, four, six, or any other number.

Nevertheless, the 5 Whys method works a lot more often than not, but don’t mistake symptoms for root causes, and you need to present evidence in each step of the chain. Without evidence, the method’s deductive power evaporates, and it will devolve into metaphysics.

The 5 Whys often is used with the famous Ishikawa, or fishbone, diagram that categorizes the problem as having been caused by man, machine, method, and/or material. (Some also isolate management, maintenance, and measurement, but these are subsets of the first four.) It’s a powerful, indispensable tool for solving problems, but the power comes as much from the thinking behind the method as it does from the methodology itself. The power comes from the embedded why.

Why limit this thinking to narrow issues like quality problems or throughput? In fact, why limit it to problems? How about opportunities, or possible actions? The 5 Whys is still valid, though your approach may differ. For example, you may need to change the categories in the diagram, and instead of searching for a cause, you may use it to find an effect. The key, again, is prolific use of the word why.

Pulling Together

Those of you who have read my columns over the past three years know I believe that the key to succeeding in highly competitive industries lies in organizational gray matter; that is, the ability to continuously harness an organization’s collective brain power to achieve goals. I can honestly tell you that the differences in brainpower among owners or senior executives throughout the fabrication industry are not significant; they’re all pretty sharp. I also find very little meaningful differences among workforces.

However, I do find huge differences in the application of collective intelligence. Some companies pull together; some don’t pull at all, except for top personnel; and some seem to be pulling in different directions at once.

Companies that have difficulty harnessing their collective brainpower usually assign the blame to “culture,” and conclude that there really is no clear solution—ever. I would agree with the culture part, but I disagree with the conclusion. In the organizational sense, culture is nothing more than a list, code, or collective notion of what behavior is acceptable and encouraged, versus behavior that is frowned upon. It’s the sum of an organization’s pieces. It’s not on any org chart, and its rules are not written down. Digging out the true culture would take an anthropologist. What we care about is the organization’s functional culture, how it operates.

Asking Why? helps a company pull together. Everyone should use it freely and seriously every day—and demand answers. The benefits are huge. Why do we do that for this customer? Why buy that machine? Why does this always break? Why do we have so much inventory? Why are we always late? Why should we raise (or lower) prices? Why do I have to chase after basic information? Why do we keep trying to build this part? Why did we lose this customer? Why did we get this order or contract?

People, overtly or not, ask these questions continually, and they want answers. It’s intrinsically human to want answers. With a good functional culture, people find answers based on facts and evidence. In a dysfunctional organization, people find answers by guess, bias, nuance, or rumor. This is even worse than metaphysical musing. It’s a cultural IED.

My Favorite Word

Continuous improvement involves fact-gathering and asking a lot of whys that revolve around a specific topic. It’s from these two facets that solid answers and solutions emerge almost automatically. As a manager, you need to know the facts and you really need to know why. Before meetings, ask your management team to bring their lists of whys and their demands for answers.

Consider a typical fact-finding initiative in which employees are asked to write about problems on chits. Instead of writing “The circuit breakers keep popping on the paint line,” I teach people to write, “Why are the breakers always popping on the paint line?” It’s a small, syntactical difference, but it encourages the use of my favorite word.

I encourage everyone to learn to love why … the most powerful word in improvement.