How vs Why: Do You Know the Difference?

HOW and WHY are two basic questions we all ask. We can't screw up answers to those questions; otherwise, our intervention in the system to make it better will fail or go wrong. We can learn from failure, but even for that, we have to ask HOW and WHY questions. No disagreement on that I hope.

But if we ask someone a WHY question but gets a HOW answer and fail to detect that wrongness , we are in serious soup. That's the soup that this world keeps on getting into and it's bigger soup than people think its is because they are in soup without being aware. You don't believe me. Let me cite a simple example.

WHY IS THE SKY BLUE?

Why is the sky blue ? question is standard question everyone of us must have both asked and also answered. The answer you must have gotten or given is is micro particles, refraction, light Raleigh Scattering, wave length etc.. Great. Most will agree that is a correct answer. So where is the problem? Don't see a problem ? Think hard!. Your question was a WHY question but the answer was a HOW answer? Shocked ! you better be. It's indeed a HOW answer. We asked WHY question and got a HOW answer, and we take it as WHY answer and move on, clearly we failed to understand the real WHY while believing that we go it. I hope you realize the wrongness and implications of that wrongness. If you find nothing wrong with taking HOW for a WHY question, there is nothing that SystemsWay can do for you. You can hang around , but I doubt any of our post will be valuable to you because we force you to confront similar wrong that we do all the time without being aware. If you agree that taking HOW answer for a WHY question can cause serious problem then it's time to ask two questions. HOW we allow that to happen? and WHY we allow that you happen? and you better get two different answer to those questions because they are two different questions.

**DO WE ALWAYS TAKE HOW FOR WHY QUESTIONS
**Not really, and that makes a problem not smaller but much bigger. If we always took HOW for a WHY question, fixing that problem would have been easy. The issues is sometimes we are really good in detecting HOW answer for a WHY question and sometimes we are not and we don't the know the difference between then so problem becomes much harder. For example, If your boss asks you: "Why did you sign that contract?" and if you answer, "I took the pen, pressed the top, and then pressed pen against paper..." Your boss will be frustrated with you. "Damn it, I did not ask HOW you did it, I asked you WHY you did it." You see, you were able to detect HOW for a WHY answer.

WHAT WAS THE DIFFERENCE IN TWO QUESTIONS

If you look closely the difference was that in first question "Why is the Sky Blue?" was missing a subject or an observer or actor. Whereas "Why did you sign that contract?" had a subject which was an actor. We have a general tendency of answering a WHY question with HOW answer when when subject, object or observer is missing. So the question "Why is the sky blue?" is a incorrect and bad question. The right question is either "How is the sky blue" or "Why do you or a observer sees the sky as blue". The "How is the sky blue?" should be described in term of objective reality of micro-particles, light Raleigh Scattering, wave length etc.. and "Why do you/observer sees the sky blue" should be answered in terms of genetic knowledge encoded in the genes that drives the design of human body that drives them to perceived the light of certain wave length as blue. So the difference is that HOW question is answered independent of knowlege the observer holds and WHY question should be answered in terms of knowledge embedded observer, actor or subject. So HOW answer points to physical reality whereas WHY answer points to mental model of observer, actor or more importantly of the designer.

HOW AND WHY MAKE UP SYSTEM OF KNOWLEDGE

So if you think deeply, HOW and WHY makes the System of Knowledge. The loop of HOW and WHY makes up the learning loop. WHY forces us to take responsibility for either lack of HOW knowlege, or holding wrong knowledge of HOW, acting or not acting on a knowlege we were holding, thereby drives responsibility for outcome we get, which then drives us to seek better behavior or seeking a better HOW knowledge. The root of the issue is that physical and analytical science ignores the role of observer in study of system so physical chemistry and engineering are study of mostly non-living system which we also call analytical sciences. So we have developed habit of using HOW and WHY interchangeably and perfectly conditioned to accept HOW for WHY question. This mistake does not hurt analytical scientists who are in pursuit knowledge of physical world, but deeply hurts management of social systems such as corporations where human has to constantly learn and every time we take HOW for a WHY we fail to learn because humans fail to take responsibility for what we done wrong or what we have done right. So taking HOW for a WHY have serious implications more serious implications when we work as a team. We have been constantly taught, aks WHY but we settle for HOW. When you do retrospective/root-cause analysis/anything, you ask recursive WHY questions and you get recursive HOW answers. If you believe in FIVE WHYS, you get only FIVE HOW answers. You draw a fishbone diagram by asking WHY questions and end up with bunch of bunch of HOWs. You are drowning in HOWs, when you are seeking WHY. Because WHY drives people to point their understanding of systems from which intervention emanated. People fail to take responsibility for their action which is a serious problem that management talks when they themselves fail to take responsibility, all because we happily take HOW answer for a WHY question. This is the reason the Fishbone Diagrams, Five WHY, Value Stream Mapping, RCAs, Retrospects and list of stuff don't work any more. They were great or may be okay for manufacturing where we dealt with physical systems, but when we talk about software or knowledge developing companies which is the case for all modern corporations, WHY is equally more critical critical over HOW and organization that take HOW for WHY are failing to learn and develop knowledge.

HOW AND WHY GIVE WHOLE EXPLANATION

Once you understand how HOW and WHY are different and forms Systems of Knowledge it's super power becomes very clear. The "HOW is sky blue?" answer can never explain why color blind people don't see sky as blue. It can't explain why dog's can't see sky as blue. Only WHY does the observer see the sky as blue can explain why color blind people see sky as gray or whatever dogs see when dog see at sky. In systems there is the idea of variability. You see, we do not always get short waves[blue light] light all day. In evening , length of light waves changes due to multitudes of reason. Similarly there is variability and perception and biological variation of how eye and brain works. So if you take all variability of HOW and and Variability of WHY, you can explain all possible ways in which observer see sky as. This seems basic, but in world of management, innovation and problem solving, most solution fails or not even considered because we never had full explanations. We are just running solution-ing with HOW without WHY. Near all all systemic problems in organization persist not because we have poor quality of HOW because we never answered WHY. Unless you ask WHY, chances of HOW improving is low. This is the reason organizations keep on trying same solutions because the do not have improved HOW and because organizations have short memory, the HOW looks like a new HOW.

ROOT CAUSE IS GOOD BUT FIND ROOT CAUSE OF BOTH HOW AND WHY

When we suggest that HOW AND WHY are two different view of knowledge, people do not get it. They think of getting to root cause. But getting root of HOW is different from getting root of WHY. So if you ask a question, 'How did the faucet leak', you can get event oriented answer of pipe breaking down. Now you might ask the question "Why did the pipe broke down", the answer is it was corroded due to years of use. Stop, see what happened, You asked the WHY and got the HOW answered. Pipe getting corroded due to use is HOW answer. WHY answer has to be point to knowledge or lack of knowledge with with human took or did not take action. So Why did the pipe got corroded, because Manish did not replace the pipe in recommended time. Why did Manish did not replace the pipe in time ?Many possible answer, He did not have knowledge that pipe need to be replaced every 20 years, or he believed that his buddy was responsible for it, or he knew pipe has to be replaced but thought his house water is not salty so pipe can go for 30 years. Irrespective of what the answer, it's about human taking responsibility for failing. It causes learning as individual or team or as organization. So finding root cause is ineffective unless you are seeking root cause of both HOW and WHY and in a social organization like corporation, root of WHY is way important it would enable us to get to root of HOW automatically. But reverse is not true.

UNDERSTANDING DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HOW AND WHY HAS BECOME MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER

It's not that we never asked HOW and WHY.But because we never understood the difference categorically and clearly, sometimes we forget to ask WHY or worse take a HOW answer for WHY question. The consequences and implications of those are far worse today than it was yesterday. WHY ? Because WHY forces us to take responsibility for poor knowledge or behavior, and most modern corporations is turning into knowlege organization where knowlege workers work, WHY has become more important. You see, there are three kind of knowledge. Genetic, Memetic and Explanatory and WHY has to point to one of those. When we confuse about HOW with WHY when only genetic knowledge is engaged e.g. Why is the sky blue? , there are implications but not that great, because we can't change the genetic knowlege. When knowlege engaged is memetic, implications are much greater because that's difficult to change, but changeable. But when knowlege engage is explanatory in natures, it's completely changeable but we constantly fail to create and better explanation and update our knowledge when we accept HOW for WHY question. So much effort to become learning organization fails, because of how we ask question and kind of answer we accept.

WHAT CAN WE DO TO FIX OUR MIXING OF HOW AND WHY ISSUES

It's not easy. It's year of conditioning of both language and scientific indoctrination that ignores the role of observer's mind or actor's mind. It has taken me long time for me to grasp this concept. My journey started few years back once I realized that Science never answers a WHY question.Science only answer HOW question. Coming to my workshop mentioned below is best option but in the mean time

1. Be clearly about your intent. Are you asking HOW or WHY as I have defined above
2. If you ask WHY question, always include the subject, actor or observer otherwise other person takes it as HOW question.
3. Intent is part of WHY answer, but more importantly focus on the knowlege[genetic, memetic and explanatory] people held from which design of system or operations of system and other intervention emanated. Our goal is improve our knowledge of systems from which we design and intervene in systems.
4. It won't be easy for you to adopt these, because your people will be baffled on why you are not happy with our answers. So your people have to be on same page on understanding ofHOW vs WHY. So forward this article to them.
5. Lets have group training or discussion on it and SystemsWay will be happy to facilitate that.

You have more ideas, live in comments and will be update it here.

IMPLICATIONS OF NOT TRAINING EMPLOYEES AND MANAGEMENT ABOUT HOW AND WHY

There are many implications already mentioned in the post, but if I were to sum them all into one implication, it would be this: HOW looks at how the operations of systems fail in a mechanistically linear cause-and-effect way and fixes the failure step, but the system's design remains the same. WHY, on the other hand, focuses on the design of systems that led to the failure of operations and therefore drives a re-design of the system. This re-design not only fixes the specific problem at hand but also addresses countless seemingly unrelated problems that have occurred—and will continue to occur—because the problem is not in the operations of the system but in the design of the system itself.

WHY leads to structural changes in systems, meaning it identifies leverage points in interconnected systems. This is critical because all problems are interconnected, so when we address a leverage point, we don't just kill two birds with one stone—we sometimes kill hundreds of birds with a single stone.

There are two enemies of systems redesign, particularly in the context of techno-social system redesign. First, analytically trained scientific technologists often don't see—and as per their scientific training, cannot see—the interactions that systems thinkers can see. More importantly, they don't realize that they cannot see those interactions.

The only solution we know is to ask you to take a leap of faith and attend our workshop on Introduction to Systems Thinking, because it will train you to see the interactions that were right in front of your eyes but that you have never noticed. Then, you can ask HOW and WHY in tandem and smartly detect whether a failure is an operational failure or a design failure—and you will develop the ability to fix both.

CLOSING NOTE

Here is the picture of fishbone diagram, where the part is produced of wrong size, the people asked WHY "parts produces are of wrong size" and got all HOW answer such as machine malfunction, employee's fault, machine defect, wrong production condition, wrong procedure, wrong specifications which are all HOW answer and none design of systems and designer's mental model. This is a perfect example how much we take HOW for a WHY. The diagram is taken from WIKIPEDIA, which represents the whole world is behaving that way. This may not have been this much a great problem when we were dealing manufacturing of physical goods, but in software development and knowledge development industries where there are no physical goods and always have deal in knowledge, taking HOW for WHY has serious implications. My as is that if that you go back to your company and look at all the old Five Whys, Fish Bone diagram, or Value Stream Mapping or any such diagram, you will get only HOW, HOW and HOW. If that does not alarm you, we hope it would at least intrigue you join one of our workshop on Systems Thinking, where we spend substantial time on System of Knowledge in a five-day introduction to SystemsWay workshop. You will soon hear launch of Introduction to SystemsWay workshop at SystemsWay and the date for our first workshop and of five days, where we plan to spend one full day on this topic. Stay tuned for that announcement. Happy to conduct a corporate workshop if you desire because it can cause fundamental shift in how people behave, acts and produces knowledge and solve problems.