‘We all should know the power of why?’ As children, we instinctively know that asking questions is important and our go to question is invariably ‘Why?’. As adults these instincts change to staying silent more, to protect ourselves, especially if asking a question makes you feel stupid in front of your peers.
The problem with this is that questions are our most powerful tool for improvement. Especially those questions that start ‘Why….’ They can help us find out why something has failed, as demonstrated by the 5 Why Analysis that underpins Root Cause Analysis. In addition, they can help us understand why we have been successful. More than that though they should be a part of our everyday working practice.
One of the biggest uses of this question type is whenever there is a proposal to update anything from a document to working practice. Even when I can see the benefits I will always ask ‘Why…’. This is not to prevent the change from being made, but more to start a conversation to support the best choice of change.
Asking ‘Why?’ can help identify both issues and potential improvements as it helps you understand more. This is not only for updates to procedures but also to analyse our failures and successes. The types of Why I have used are
- Why would you add an extra activity?
- Why did we deliver on time? – a good example of learning from success
- Why did we fail to deliver?
- Why should we make this update?
- Why not change?
The list is almost endless but when used within the right context it helps support engagement and understanding, enabling change to be implemented successfully as issues and improvements are identified early.
As a Quality Professional embracing my inner child has helped me improve systems and working practices where I have worked. It also gave confidence to my colleagues that I was listening to their concerns and helped acceptance of the change.
We should never be afraid to ask ‘Why?’, in fact, we should always strive to ask questions.
The only stupid questions are those that go unspoken.
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