The why in business.
The importance of having an answer to a simple why can change futures and objectives. Indeed, it is one of the most powerful question expressions that the English language has, and most of us who deal with business decisions, most of the time have some difficult in perceiving the why.
Let's back up a notch. Why is so important to question why? Did you ever thought about the current education system in the west and if there is a better solution to it? Let me expose the problem. I was an academic, I am an academic, and I will be always an academic. I love to learn new things all the time and at the same time research and come up with new things. However, the human brain has some limitations and most of the information that we deal nowadays is subjected to a filter/label of relevant/irrelevant. Well in my days as a teenager, I used to have 14-15 different subjects per week and at the time I liked having so much diversity. Nevertheless I never reached the full potential of having straight A's at everything and only until the present day I did the question why not?
Truth to be said, there was a teacher exposing a subject who never clarified why I had to learn things that my brain just considered "irrelevant". No I was not going to be a poet, so why did I had to know old grammatical rules in Portuguese Language? Or, living things never interested me, so why did I need to know biology? Well I had to memorise them, otherwise I knew the consequences, but still no one ever explain me why I was being obliged to memorise, without a clear motif related to my ambition and future.
Nowadays, I have been reflecting on this a lot. We submit our kids to schools where they still used methodologies from 20 years ago. We hope our kids will be like or better than us in the future, but how can progress happen when there is no "renewal/revision" from the current educational system? My theory, not all of us need to have a MBA or a law degree, when some of us are more talented in other creative areas or even biomedical fields.
Let's go back to the theme. If this happens in Education, and we were educated as such during our childhood, I strongly start believing that this is a major leadership problem nowadays on the C-level executives. Not questioning why, it makes c-level executives take decisions based on "what they were told to do", having no space for risk or creative solutions. Recently, I got asked why my own company nortb does not accept investors and I indeed reply…why would we? It is not my plan to go public, the company has a 120% rate of growth compared to 2019, and has the turnover already in the first two months of 2021 that had during the whole second half of 2020 (and in middle of pandemic) so why would I share my ideas and decisions with someone else? For Money? I think creatively that money is produced, and not borrowed, so I think I know my why.
Again, sorry I had to brag a little. Let's go back. If C-executives have such problems of finding creative solutions for the decisions we need to take, then we are on a stagnated system because no one is asking...why? Stagnated systems, produce less economic stranglers and flows which leads to an economic recess instead of progress. Sometimes asking why could change the shift inside a corporation. Why do we spend money on paper, why do we still do the processes this way, why do we sell this, why would even buy your product? Just because you send me a message greeting me, does not mean I know you or that your product is different than all the similar products that I got during the week.
Knowing the why becomes a skill that distinguish some of us. I know my why do you know yours?