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The Power of Why
During my college years I had a summer job repairing failed cable TV lines to homes. In the 80s, the loss of cable was akin to the loss of 5G or Wi-Fi today. The job paid piece work, a fixed low rate per repair, regardless if it took ten minutes, or more than five hours. Needless to say, being a top earner required a keen focus on time, and doing just enough to repair the signal, nothing more. Quality was secondary. Balancing time against the risk of customer complaints was the job. Hence it is a universal truism, the cable guy was not well regarded.
One hot summer day, when a repair was taking me too long, requiring digging down more than three feet, I had the company of the home’s five-year-old. Intrigued with my work, they asked me at every step, why, why, why, why, why. I realized I was lost for an explanation after the second or third why, quickly reducing me to, “I don’t know kid”.
I was challenged, by a five-year-old, to think about my task, my job and how I approached my work. I ended up doing one of my best jobs, and felt better about the day, even when earning less. I am confident that today that five-year-old is a successful leader.
In the early years of my engineering career, I enjoyed success in problem solving, simply by asking repetitively, “why?” When combined with the five Ws: Where, When, What, Who, and Why, it makes for the basis of sound problem solving. Focusing on the facts, reducing emotion and conjecture, eventually exposing the root cause of problems and eliminating the knee-jerk response to only symptoms of the problem.
I later read more structured methodologies to the “five why” problem-solving process, popularized by Sakichi Toyoda, famous for the Toyota quality management revolution. I chuckled when reading, recalling what a five-year-old, unknowingly applied years earlier on that hot summer day.
Such thinking takes more time and can frustrate others when not diplomatically implemented.
In our Catalyst Global Service Excellence workshops we address the key skill of listening with empathy, without judging. Asking why, looking left and right. We highlight attentive listening skills to get a situation clearly identified. Asking why, listening and understanding, can be the key factor to lasting solutions. In many situations, it leads to innovation when all parties participate.
In our workshops, we coach customer facing service teams how to become trusted advisors to their customers. For example, learning the customers key performance indicators (KPIs), and costs of unplanned events. Ask why, listen and make notes, look left and right for potential risks, as well as opportunities to improve their KPIs.
A service provider who continuously improves their level of understanding of the customer context and how best to promote service product solutions, becomes a valuable trusted advisor to the customer.
The power of why is a skill. Like most skills it requires one to be an engaged student. Skill development requires frequent practice to refine personal tactics to continuously improve. As service provider professionals, in demanding time pressure environments, we need to break out time for our own personal service skills maintenance. To refresh our skills on a structured scheduled basis. Often it does not come as naturally as it does to a five-year-old.
Gary Hughes, Partner
December 2022
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