As a Test Manager you get asked all sorts of questions and usually they start with words like “How do I …”, “When should I….” or “What should I…..”.  Occasionally, you get the “Why do I/we….”.  It is these questions that I like.  The How, When or What questions are usually fairly easy to answer, you follow your experience, process, knowledge to answer them.  The Why question is much harder and, therefore, much more interesting because it is these questions that make you think “Yes, why do we…”.  The situation on any project that you have been on for any length of time is that you start to accept the situation you are in, you have done things the same way for some time and it works and where it doesn’t work you try to change it, but you are generally in a comfort zone where everything is familiar and almost routine. 

A friend of mine years ago made an interesting statement.  We had been on a project for a couple of years and we were being well paid for a challenging, but relatively routine piece of work.  He said “We are in a fur-lined rut”.  That phrase made me think and ask myself “Why am I staying here?”.  Within a few months I had left the company because my friend was right, I wasn’t moving forward and I wasn’t in a position within that company to change it (long story!).  It is the “Why” question that should keep being asked and if you get the answer “I don’t know” or “Because we have always done it that way” or “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” then it is time to get things changed and improved.  This is the essence of improvement, be it personal improvement, process improvement or any other type of improvement.  

The answer to the “Why” question may be that there is a good reason why and we don’t need to change, but the very asking of the question makes you go back and re-evaluate why.  If you come up with the answer that you don’t need to change, that is OK, but then you have made a conscious decision not to change for good reasons, not because you are maintaining the status quo.

What made me think of writing this entry was that recently one of my team asked me a “Why” question that made me do some thinking.  It was a good question and a hard one to answer.  As it happens, I am not changing anything as a result of the question, but it made me think hard and that is a good thing. 

Sometimes managers are not good at listening to the “Why” questions with an open mind, especially if the question comes from someone who is less experienced than them.  Sometimes team members are not very good at asking the “Why” question as they think their manager knows better than them or it makes them look stupid or it will seem that they are criticising their manager’s judgement.  

Managers should encourage the “Why” question and should take time to ask themselves the “Why” question.  It is often the only way to get us all to think rather than do.

Maybe we should have a "Why" question day on a regular basis?