Introduction
Recently, Nonsense was asked by a client to run a workshop as part of a Creativity Day they were running for their teams. Rather than focusing on “inspiration” or “bravery” the Nonsense team decided to talk about the value of really understanding a problem by asking “why?”. This short thought-piece picks out the most salient bits from the talk, and hopefully provides a little food for thought…
Why “why?”
Asking “why?” switches the autopilot off. And this is something that we all need to do from time to time. Too many of us, too many businesses in fact, run on habit. Asking “why?” more often helps us wake up and make smarter decisions.
At Nonsense, we think there are two big risks associated with not asking “why?” often enough.
Firstly, we focus our efforts on symptom-solving, rather than problem-solving. We don’t dig deep enough to shine a light on the root cause. Therefore, we end up kicking the can down the road, simply delaying the effects of the root cause.
And, secondly, we maintain the status-quo. We start saying, “this is how we do it round here”. We stifle progress. We ignore a better way.
Symptom vs. problem solving
A symptom is just an indicator that a problem exists. Thinking objectively, it clearly makes sense to define and solve a problem rather than a symptom. However, the reality for many of us, organisations and society as whole is that we can easily confuse symptoms with problems.
This is largely because symptoms are more obvious and easier to approach. As such we tend to subconsciously misdiagnose symptoms as problems. We dupe ourselves into believing that our approaches and solutions will lead to real change, and performance gains.
Before long, treating symptoms can begin to preoccupy our efforts. This is short-term thinking. A false economy that never materialises into more than a marginal improvement in the current state of affairs.
Peppa’s example.
Plonking an increasingly agitated child in front of Peppa Pig to calm them down is just treating the symptom. It easier as parents to do this, than to recognise — in the moment — that the child doesn’t yet know how to interact with the world around them, so ‘acts up’. The more fundamental solution would be to spend time with the child to teach them how to ‘play’ using their own imagination and basic toys like LEGO to amuse themselves. (Easier said than done!)
PC Plod’s Example
Attempts to reduce knife crime by indiscriminately using stop-and-search powers that target marginalised minorities only treat a symptom. The bigger, trickier problem is gang culture. If we treated this fundamental problem, we would recognise the requirement to give those at risk a reason to trust society, a way for them to find an alternative path than the gangs... and we’d argue we’d get better results.
Focus on real problems
At Nonsense, our view is that to be effective — not just in society but in our case as marketeers — we need to focus on the reason for, rather than the result of, an undesirable outcome.
Take for example, a brand suffering from declining brand consideration, as suggested by a tracking study — a common complaint of many marketing teams. Generally speaking, consideration will be treated as the problem. And as such an ad agency will be asked to develop a campaign to counteract this. But what we fail to acknowledge is WHY consideration is falling. It might be because people are looking at product reviews and being put off. And following this example, if we were to dig down we might find a root-cause that has a far more effective solution than to simply make a new ad campaign. Potentially we might need to address how well customers understand how the product works, or even look at augmenting the product or service itself.
Key to our performance at Nonsense is our curiosity about the world around us. As an agency, we have learned we need to be resilient enough to appreciate that we might not be right first time, and that is pays to keep digging. We believe marketeers should be spending far more time identifying the problem. Not least because once a root-cause problem is properly diagnosed the effective solutions can often be self-evident.
Asking “why”? breaks the status-quo
Many organisations suffer, especially in marketing, from swearing allegiance to the status-quo. We would all benefit from finding a simple and effective way of avoiding the path of least resistance!
What we have learned at Nonsense is that changing the way we think is actually not very hard at all. We just have to ask “why?”.
Not only does asking “why?” help to dig deeper, but it helps others recognise that they too have been victims of the status-quo. Suddenly, when you ask “why?” the answer that they will give you will be different to the recommendation that they usually share. “Why?” wakes us up.
Jay’s story
A recent example of “why?” in action is the case of Jay, a 7-Eleven owner in The States. Jay caught a young guy attempting to steal some sweets. Initially angered, Jay asked the store manager to call the police. However, Jay then decided to ask the young guy, “Why are you doing this?” — and in so doing completely changed the usual narrative.
It turns out the young man was desperately hungry and was trying to feed himself and his younger brother. Jay understood from this conversation that having the guy arrested, and then spending a little time in jail, would have no positive outcome on him. So, Jay cancelled the 911 call, gave the boy some nourishing food instead and talked to him about all the reasons he had NOT to steal. The guy got a second chance and hopefully after this encounter the guy won’t try it again.
How to use “why?”
It’s important that your “why?” needs to be contextualised as an investigative tool, not a confrontational one. The “why?” question needs to be focused on the symptom, rather than the person or team that have encountered it. Applied in this way the wider teams’ sensitivities to criticism are protected. This approach helps to corral people around a positive objective — problem solving.
On its own, “why?” is not a silver bullet. It is a process that leads you, or your organisation to somewhere new and more insightful.
Thanks, Toyota!
Using “why?” as a problem-solving tool in organisations was made famous by Taiichi Ohno of Toyota Motors in the 50’s. His “Five Whys” methodology underlined Toyota’s scientific approach to problem solving in manufacture.
The process simply equated to getting all the relevant people in a room, identifying a problem and asking “why?”, five times, until the root-cause emerged. It’s a methodology that has been well-used to solve seemingly complex problems and something we can all put into practice.
The best example of its use is probably the case of the crumbling Washington Monument in D.C. Professor Don Messersmith of the University of Maryland was asked to help the US Parks service find a way of protecting the Washington Monument which was beginning to crumble. His use of the “Five-Whys” methodology went something like this:
- First, WHY is the monument deteriorating?
Because harsh chemicals are frequently used to clean the monument. - Second, WHY are harsh chemicals needed?
So, they can clean off the large number of bird droppings on the monument. - Third, WHY are there a large number of bird droppings on the monument?
Because of the huge population of spiders on the monument that are a food source for the local birds. - Fourth, WHY is there a huge population of spiders on the monument?
Because vast swarms of gnats, on which the spiders feed, are attracted to the monument at dusk. - Fifth, WHY are swarms of gnats drawn to the monument at dusk?
Because it’s the first local landmark to put its lights on in the evening.
This led to a genuinely simple solution — to turn the lights on at the monument after the lights on other local buildings had been switched on.
Another way of looking at this is that the first solution you have to a problem might not be the most effective, especially when we consider that the first problem we see might not be a problem at all.
And from a marketing perspective this is a lesson that we could all do well to learn.
In summary…
We exist in a world that moves at a million miles per hour. There is relentless pressure to ‘do stuff’, and do it quickly. This seldom leads to the best outcomes because we don’t give ourselves permission to identify real problems — which actually, as humans, we are really good at solving!
We allow falsehoods about what is right, or why things are so, to become organisational law. However, if we just took a couple of steps back and began to dig for the underlying problems of the symptoms we normally tackle, we are much more likely to develop fundamentally stronger, more effective solutions. (Of course, this is ultimately what we have been asked to do in our job descriptions anyway!)
By spending more time thinking about problems and less time trying to solve them we will spend no more time in total delivering an answer. This is why we should employ “why?” as our fundamental problem-solving tool. It is simple, easy to use by everyone, inclusive and proven to work.
From a marcomms perspective it would mean that client-side marketeers could write more effective, pointed, and accurate briefs for their agencies. And agencies themselves would spend more time developing the right ideas for the client’s needs, which would lead to more effective work overall.
So, let’s just finish by saying that if you’ve got a “problem”, that after reading this you think might only be a symptom … give Nonsense a shout. Or, if you’re all good from this perspective, we’d love to hear your examples of unearthing root-cause problems which led to better, more effective communications, working practices or products / services…
