Three Whys, Two Directions, One Uncovered Business Case
Marcus's team publishes a report every Thursday. One person spends five hours assembling it and six others feed it twenty minutes each. Nobody on the distribution list has asked a question about it in two years.
He has never considered killing it. It is due Thursday.
Ask him why it exists and he will say ops asked for it. That is true, and it is not an answer.
The First Why Is Worthless
Everybody has been taught to ask why five times, and almost everybody aims it at something that broke. Five questions down you reach a flaw, somebody fixes it, and that works.
Aim the same question at something nobody is complaining about and you do not need five.
The first why gets you the cadence.
We publish it because it is due Thursday. Everybody has that answer and it is worth nothing.
The second why gets you the request.
Ops asked for weekly visibility after the Q3 launch, when nobody could say what had changed or when.
Push until that has a name on it. Ops is a department, and departments do not ask for things. A person did, and until you have them you are holding the same non-answer you started with.
Don't Ask Another Backward Why
A third step back turns a sound decision into a mistake, and the moment it becomes a mistake it acquires an author who has to defend it.
Why were changes not logged? Ask that and somebody was negligent, and the person who requested your report is sitting in the room while you say so.
Two is far enough. It is also the only depth at which this exercise is safe to run out loud.
Ask a Better Why
The next question goes the other way. Why is this still needed?
Changes have been logged automatically since the spring after the launch. The launch itself ended in November. Nobody has asked the report a question in two years.
There is no answer, and the absence is the finding. You are not holding a complaint about a report. You are holding a reason that stopped being true on a date you can name, and nobody has looked at it since.
That is the excuse for change. Not that the work is wasteful, which is an opinion anybody can argue with. That the condition it was built for ended, which is a fact with a date on it.
Take It to the Person Who Was Right
The second why ended in a name, and that name is who you have coffee with before the meeting.
They were right to ask. There was no log, a weekly report was the fastest thing available, and it worked. What expired was the condition, not the judgment, and you are not going to suggest otherwise.
You are going to tell them what changed. Then you let them be the one who says the report can stop, because a decision that ends the thing costs them nothing and an accusation would have cost them a morning defending it.
Ask It About Something Nobody Is Complaining About
Pick something that gets produced out of habit. The report, the standing approval, the field somebody fills in every time.
Two whys backward, then one forward.
Then count what you are holding when no answer comes back:
A problem nobody had named that morning.
A price on doing nothing, because seven hours a week is twenty-nine thousand dollars a year and Marcus runs three more like it.
An ask that costs nobody anything, pointed at the person the second why produced.
A story short enough to carry: they needed it before changes were logged, and changes have been logged since the spring.
Name the problem, price doing nothing, make the ask, make it portable.
Four gates, cleared before Marcus has written a slide.
Cases usually have to be dragged through those one at a time. This one arrived with them done, because a reason that expired on a date brings the number, the ask and the story with it.
Marcus started the week with a report. He finished it with a case.
Most people go looking for a business case where everybody is already arguing. The one you just found was sitting on a Thursday calendar invite nobody questions.
-BZ
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