02 Jul
Our number one job is to ask questions. Because the answer is always in the room if you are willing to dig and listen long enough.
We have been working with cross-functional teams at an industrial company to standardize how work is managed across their seven locations. To do this, we always start with understanding how work is currently being done.
Once we have fully mapped and visualized it, we start asking questions.
Why does X happen this way?
Why does Y happen before X?
Who is accountable for this step?
How do you escalate if ABC doesn’t happen?
How can we get XYZ done in half the time? Who else should be involved in this?
Where are too many people involved?
Why are we doing this manually?
Why are you entering this information into two systems?
And on and on.
What gradually starts to happen is the untangling of years of “this is how we have always done it.” Aha moments as everyone finally gets to see the whole cross-functional view of the work. And finally, questions being answered and problems being solved.
This is why seeing the whole picture matters.
When people only see their piece, they solve for isolated incidents. They fix what’s in front of them without understanding how it connects to everything else. But when you show them the whole puzzle, they stop solving symptoms and start solving the actual problem.
Because the answer is always in the room.
People just need to see the whole puzzle, be asked the right questions, and feel like their answers matter.
Our job is not to be brought in with all the answers. It’s knowing how to surface the knowledge that is already in the room and apply our years of experience on how to make changes based on those answers. And to keep digging until we have the full picture of what the future is going to look like.
Too often companies don’t involve the right people in this process. Or they assume that someone outside of them has the answer. They bring in consultants expecting them to show up with a playbook and tell them what to do.
But that’s not how this works.
The people who have been doing the work for years know where things break. They know the workarounds. They know what’s been tried before. They have answers that leadership has never heard because no one asked.
When you skip that step, you miss out on years of knowledge and expertise. And you end up solving for isolated symptoms instead of the actual problem, which is inefficient and expensive.
The answer is always in the room. The question is whether you’re willing to do the work to find it.
When was the last time you asked the people closest to the work what they think needs to change?