Seth Godin has a post about answering “why?” sorts of questions, concluding with a great line:
“The single most efficient (and lowest cost) technique for improving your operations is answering the why questions! You should embrace these people, not send them away.”
Last week I had a customer ask me why my team has a policy to do something a certain way. My response was “you know, I know why we did it in the past, but it doesn’t make any sense now.” The simple question of “why?” prompted a policy change.
I always try to answer “why” questions with a truthful answer. If I don’t know why something is the way it is I find out. I hate argument by authority answers like “because it’s our policy.” I will never leave an answer at that. Sure, sometimes my explanation of why we do things a certain way doesn’t go over well, but then the customer and I can have a productive discussion to sort it out.
As a system administrator, what do you do when someone asks you ‘why?’
Can everybody on your team answer a “why” question? If not, do they feel comfortable passing that question to someone else who can answer it?
Why not?
Homework: at your next team or group meeting let everybody ask one question of the rest of the group, about anything work-related. If you run out of time pick it up again at the next meeting. If a question cannot be answered designate someone to figure it out.
Of course, that would be assuming that people actually cared about ‘why’ and not just about meeting timelines and number goals. LOL
🙂 i love the idea of asking ‘Why?’ – Sometimes we get so involved in what we have to do that we forget why we were doing it in the first place…
Yes, it does assume people care, but if people don’t care then it’ll be hard to do anything, including keep your customers. 🙂