When it comes to running a business, there is one word that weighs more than most. There is one word that has the power to change everything. This is the most powerful word you will ever use in business. This word is something that you want in every meeting, every idea, and every conversation.
WHY? WHY? WHY?
- Why are we marketing this way?
- Why should we invest in employee training?
- Why are we not seeing results with this campaign?
- Why should we invest in strategic processes?
- Why are we losing revenue?
- Why is our sales strategy working or not working?
- Why should I hire or not hire someone?
Using the word WHY helps you dig deeper into decisions, and it helps you challenge the reasoning behind choices in your business and life for that matter.
By challenging the things you do, you allow yourself and your team to look at decisions from all angles. Something may look good on the surface, but you may find that it hurts your business once you dig a little deeper into the WHY.
Before you figure out your HOW, make sure you should be doing it in the first place. Using the word, WHY can help you identify or avoid problems in your plan, saving you from stressful headaches.
When working with clients at Processology, we use this framework to help them make decisions in their businesses. These are just a few of the questions we ask.
- CLARIFY your mission - Identify the goal of the process (Sales, New Hire Onboarding, Client Intake, marketing, etc.). For example, what is the desired outcome for our sales processes, and why?
- IDENTIFY your inefficiencies - What are the known inefficiencies in the way we operate? Why are these inefficiencies a challenge? Why have we not solved these challenges? Why do we want to address these challenges? What do we get out of it?
- SIMPLIFY your processes - Why are there so many or so little steps in our new client onboarding process? Why do you need these steps? Do we have any redundancies? Why can't we remove this?
- CREATE predictable outcomes - How would predictable results help our business? What steps have we taken to create predictable outcomes? Does our process/system have inefficiencies making it unpredictable? WHY is it important for this process's outcome to be predictable?
- MEASURE to make data-driven decisions - Why does data matter to our company? Why should we measure this? Why haven't we measured this? Why should we make data-driven decisions? Why don't we know what going on in our company?
Asking WHY will help you save time, money, and, most importantly, it will help you be efficient and effective.
Be sure to let your team or client know why you're going to be questioning them. Let them know these questions will help dig deeper to ensure the best possible outcome. Give your team permission to challenge you in meetings. You may not have dug deep enough yourself, and team members that can't voice their opinion or concern can't help your company be it's best-self.
Try asking WHY today in your conversations. Then, come back here and comment below on how it helped you dig deeper into your decisions. If you do this, you will find that it enables you to uncover things that would not have been brought up otherwise.
Key takeaways:
- Ask questions
- keep an open mind
- Allow your team to ask question freely
- Challenging ideas is a great way to find out WHY you should or should not do something before investing in HOW you do it.
If you're interested in operating a business that Just Works, click here to learn how Processology helps untangle your business.
