A few months ago we discussed the "World’s Best Follow-Up Question" in Operational Excellence Insights. This week we have a related topic for your consideration. Specifically, “Why don’t you ask better questions?”

If you think about it, most of us are born with a high level of inquisitiveness and the need for a deeper understanding of the world around us. Any time spent with young children reinforces this observation as their constantly asking “why” can change from being cute to being downright annoying.

So, what happened? Why were we so good at asking probing questions when younger and now we accept so many things as they are or shrug them off as “that’s how we’ve always done it?” Could it be we are expected to possess more answers as our knowledge base grows? Or, have difficult economic times made it more personally justifiable to keep one’s head down while not challenging the status quo?

This inaction quickly stifles continuous improvement opportunities and is contrary to one of Dr. Deming’s fourteen principles which states organizations must “Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.”

How can organizations drive out fear, especially fear that affects improvement, customer satisfaction and financial performance? By focusing on processes, not people. Obviously, people are integral to any process yet initial questions should not be founded on “who”, but rather, “why” as in “why is process flow being impeded?”

Where can you begin this quest for better process understanding? By getting to gemba, or the actual place where value is being created. Doing so allows for asking questions such as:

• Why are these items sitting here?
• Why do we produce quantities greater than immediate customer demand requires?
• What prevents the reduction of batch sizes?
• Why does this piece of equipment take ___ minutes/hours to changeover?
• Why are we investing capital in new equipment before increasing capacity using SMED?
• Why is that person waiting?
• Why is this activity the bottleneck?
• Why are these items being reworked/re-inspected?
• Why is this product quarantined?
• Why do these items travel away from process flow and get handled multiple times?
• Why is delivery leadtime ___ days/weeks/months?
• Why don’t these items get produced and moved one-by-one?

These questions, which are examples of a long list to be asked while engaging in organization-wide Lean transformation, are not exclusive to manufacturing and can easily be applied to administrative processes such as order entry, purchasing, accounts payable and receivable, and capital expenditure requests. Utilizing this Socratic approach provides for enhanced critical thinking by questioning all aspects of processes while challenging current perceived levels of certainty.

The power in asking better questions is multidimensional as each response must drive towards the identification and deeper understanding of root causes. By applying the “5 Whys” to each process challenge these root causes become the nucleus for continuous improvement initiatives.

We are interested in hearing from you regarding questions used to stimulate critical thinking and process improvements in your organization. Please visit our blog to add your comments by following the link: Our Blog.

Interested in more ways to improve operations and increase earnings at the same time? We invite you to download our white paper “Targeted Lean Six Sigma". You are also welcome to browse the list of free white papers and other articles at Free Resources.

If you have a topic that you would like addressed, or an Insight you would like to pass along, e-mail us at: Jack.Rink@rmdonovan.com

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