Always Ask Why (by Corey Smith)

Another guest post by a good friend and author, Corey Smith, mastermind behind the business and technology blog, masterthebusiness.com. In his spare time, Corey has also founded several companies to include Resumango and TributeMedia as well as being the Chief Web Architect for Dealer Marketing Systems and Editor-in-Chief at Office Product News. I do hope you enjoy reading this post as much as I did.

I have spent a little time thinking about the questions we ask to uncover problems in our businesses, but “why” seems to be the question we always forget.

I have been talking a bit about identifying and solving business problems. One of my first posts was The two most important questions sales people never ask.

When we are working to understand business problems, it becomes even more important to ask the question why. If we don’t understand why we do something, we may never be able to figure out how to change.

If you identify that an employee walks across the building four times a day to hand deliver a report, you may say, “You know, if you email the report, you don’t need to walk every day.” When you ask why, you might find that the answer is, “The person at the other end doesn’t have a computer because of the nature of that person’s job.” In that case, another solution may be considered.

You never know what the answer to the question ‘why’ might bring. Sure, you run the risk of sounding like a seven year old, but it will help you develop the right solution for the right problem.

 Corey Smith’s business and technology blog provides a common sense approach to running your business. He also maintains a news feed service for the copier, printer and document management industries.