The Complexity of “Why”- Be Curious.

I’ve been thinking about the hidden “complexity of why”. My passion for purpose and research Redvespa is doing right now prompted this. I’ve been thinking about how we ask "why." It seems such an innocuous one-word question. Especially since it is such a powerful tool in building our understanding of the nature of things. I wanted to think about how I could ask better questions. If I can do so, I’ll get a truer, broader understanding of the things I work on.

A Curious Analyst

I ended up in this train of thought because I was trying to find a resonant way to explain what I meant by "a curious analyst". I toyed with the concept of "leave no question unanswered" to explain it. The idea of considering all possible perspectives.

But that's so difficult.

We know what we know. We may even know what we don't know. (You know what's coming next...). We can’t consider a perspective we don't yet know. There are also perspectives we think we know, but which we misunderstand.

The complexity of why

When we ask "why" and then ask "why" again and again - do we end up with the one immutable truth of the situation?

No, I don't think we do, not all the time.

The problem as I see it is that "why" is a loaded question. It's loaded with the experience, biases, objectives and constructs that cause us to ask it. Either we acknowledge these effects on our interpretation or we ignore them. If we acknowledge them, we can start to deal with them. If we ignore them, we suffer from them.

Perhaps this helps explain how investigations involving smart people sometimes go wrong.  "Obvious" problems are missed or there are catastrophic failures. Even when seeking to learn, we sometimes see what we want or expect to see. We may feel comfort in fitting new things into an existing mental model.

There are things we might do to recognise this problem and then address it.

An analysis vignette

Here's how my thinking ran when I was contemplating this. This is a fictitious example I conjured up. How might strands of thinking diverge depending on how we ask simple questions?

Client: "I need to fix this problem with my processes"

Me: "Why?" [Thinking: "What symptoms do you see?" (Or is it "What pain/opportunity has made you ask this now..." Or maybe "What's worrying you about it...") Let's imagine my mind's on the first meaning.]

Client: "Because I see poor customer satisfaction with orders"

Me: "Why's that?" [Thinking: Awesome, starting with the end-user's symptoms is focusing on the key person. Now I want to know what is causing this wrongness for them. Not thinking: Pain/opportunity are now secondary, as is risk/worry...]

Client: "Because the items we're picking are wrong; we're inaccurate"

Me: "Hmm. Why?" [Thinking: Splendid, just three "whys" and we'll have nailed the issue behind the symptoms. Not thinking: Was the customer ordering the right stuff in the first place... What's the impact of the wrong shipping... Is it likely to get much worse, very quickly... How does the service compare to the competition... How does it compare to other industries...]

Client: "Because when we get stock items in, they can end up in the wrong bins"

Me: "And why's that?" [Thinking: Bingo! Gotcha, in the net, etc. fix this one and we're all done here... Not thinking: How often are they in the wrong bins... Does the customer always order what they think they have... Are the goods out processes suffering similar problems to the goods in processes... Does no-one check quantities... Do people know what to check before sending... What are our return and rework costs... What churn do we have because of bad service, if any... Who's saying what about us online... Etc.]

Client: "The person reconciling orders with receipts only works afternoons. Morning deliveries are checked retrospectively, if we have time. We try to catch them all, but can't always"

Me: "Ah yes. Sounds like you need to skill-up the goods handlers and give them access to parts of the stock management system. [Thinking: <smug>classic case of smart positioning of responsibilities across roles removing a bottleneck...</smug>]

Let’s bookend this vignette. Imagine imagine that the analysis missed the true root cause of poor customer satisfaction. Let’s say it was actually poor product descriptions on the website compared to descriptions in sales materials. It was this that led customers to complain they didn't get what they expected.

Yes, there may have been some issues with misplaced stock items. But not as many as feeling let down with the suitability of the product itself. In this example, maybe my bias came from having spent my life in production roles. That’s where I build my reality from. Or maybe in this experiment I’m in the sales and marketing team and feel that my side is fine (sales are booming!), so the problem is likely to be elsewhere, downstream.

These are not “I win, you lose” type biases I’m thinking about. They are more the differences between disparate frames of reference.

Curiosity: It's a web not a line

This example is trivial. The intent is to show that by following one biased line of questioning, we leave behind a growing web of potentially unanswered questions. Some of these might be better than those we ask.

Of course, in real life, we have experience and gut instinct to steer us in such conversations. We'll pick up on a key word or phrase that people use. In the example above, the client might joke that the newest goods handler, here for only 5 years, has just about mastered what goes where.

Me: Sorry, say that again? 5 years? Let's just hold for a moment on the process symptoms you're seeing... why has it taken 5 years to learn where to put things on a shelf...?

Perhaps organised curiosity, purposeful curiosity, can play a part when the example is not so trivial. If we partner "why" with "so what, for <person>/<thing>/<measurement>?", we might find new perspectives.

A single "why" could have multiple "so whats" or "becauses".

As an analyst, part of asking "why" is to share the benefit of our experience and contribute to finding an answer. That's potentially also the thing that blinkers our thinking.

Maybe what we should do is ask "why" once, but keep exploring the "becauses." Keep exploring until we find one that surprises us as the questioner or the person we're interviewing. Only then do we move on to the next "why" - or set of "whys". We could look at the “why/because” conversation as a lateral or web-like, rather than a linear journey to the One Root Cause.

How to be a Curious Analyst

So, being a "curious analyst". What could we do towards this?

Rather than knowing the right way to ask "why" we could set about challenging the answers we receive, to find the range of "becauses." Here are some things we could try:

• It’s not just "leave no question unanswered," but about not accepting a single answer for a question. Not until there's only one answer we can find, research or imagine.
• Yes, ask "why?" But also seek out what different perspectives bring with their "because..."
• Be humble with your brain knowledge. Trust your gut when it feels like there is still room for doubt.
• Be bold about "turning off what you know." Build understanding from scratch. How would you explain your question or thinking to a 5-year old?

How do you foster curiosity? What do you do to get outside your own thinking? How does it help you?

May our curiosity never be satisfied!