I recently stumbled upon an interesting speech from 1984 by Charlie Munger of Bershire Hathaway fame. Charlie is Warren Buffet’s right-hand-man, and a straight talking genius in his own right. It’s a fairly long speech and Charlie has a few very interesting things to say, but one particular section on ‘explaining the why’ really struck home.
Here’s a brief quote:

….if you always tell people why, they’ll understand it better, they’ll consider it more important, and they’ll be more likely to comply. Even if they don’t understand your reason, they’ll be more likely to comply.
So there’s an iron rule that just as you want to start getting worldly wisdom by asking why, why, why, in communicating with other people about everything, you want to include why, why, why. Even if it’s obvious, it’s wise to stick in the why.

The ‘why’ is notably absent from most conversations in our high-tech sphere. I’ve wasted countless hours interpreting solutions to ill-defined or undefined problems. I’m guilty of writing many ‘why-less’ documents and emails also. Upon reflection, I can recognise the folly of not explaining the problem at hand before launching into the solution.
When I drop the reasoning and background and go straight for the solution, I find that I trigger much frustrating communication, organisational friction and ultimately lost time.
Perhaps I feel I’m being efficient by banging out a quick email which omits the ‘why’, but it’s certainly not effective. Perhaps I fall into the trap of assuming everyone is on the same page and the ‘why’ should be self-evident.
I’m with Charlie on this one, I think we could all provide more ‘whys’ in our email, network designs, change control documents, etc. I’m going to try and add more ‘why’ to my communications over the coming weeks with the goal of reducing friction and improving the effectiveness of my communication.
What do you think?