If you want the best, tell me why.

I recently accepted a new office in a volunteer organization. As part of the introduction to the position, I learned of a report I was expected to compile. The report was frustrating on a couple of levels. First, it would not only take a considerable amount of my time to prepare, but it also was going to require the time of other volunteers to gather the necessary information. Although that seemed strenuous, what really bothered me was that I didn't see how the report would benefit the goals of the organization.

I asked the volunteer to whom the report was to be sent what purpose it served. He didn't reply, and I didn't prepare the report. (I discovered a long time ago that volunteers rarely get fired.)

My reaction caused me to reflect on what I would have done had this been part of a regular job. I suppose, if my paycheck depended upon it (and being a wimp), I would have filled out the report. On the other hand, I'm not sure that I would have prepared the report thoroughly if I had not believed it to be significant.

I've always had a problem with that type of thing. Even in high school, if I didn't see how I would utilize what they were trying to teach me, I found difficulties in applying myself. Believe it or not, I really struggled in my Latin class.

My experience indicates that I'm not the only one who feels this way. Most people will do a better job if they know why they're doing what you want. Through the years, I've found most people want to do a good job. On the other hand, I've also found most people don't want to do unnecessary work. That being the case, it's only natural that if employees don't know why they're doing things the way they're told to do them, they'll look for ways of doing them that means less work. Time after time, when I found something not being done properly, explaining why led to an immediate improvement.

There are two caveats to this. The first is that if you don't know why, you have to be willing to allow your people to do some experimentation. Let them try what they want, but make sure they do it in a way that you'll know the results. The second caveat is that, unfortunately, there are those employees that don't care about doing a good job. If you've explained how and are sure they know why, and it still doesn't get done correctly, it's time to start looking into a replacement.

Those caveats don't come into play very often. Most of the time, making sure the why is known will take care of the problems. In fact, I remember one time when I didn't even know what wasn't being done properly, but explaining why took care of the quandary. I was experiencing a quality problem that I could trace back to a specific time of the day. Of course, it didn't happen every clay, only almost every day. I made a particular effort to study what everyone was doing at that time, but I couldn't find anything being done erroneously. I watched and watched and didn't see anything, but the problem continued.

Finally, in frustration, I called the entire crew to my office. I showed them what was happening to the quality at that time and asked them to tell me what was being done differently. Of course, there was no response. After a few moments of embarrassing silence, I said that because they were the people working with the process, they'd be the ones most likely to see what was causing the problem and that I would appreciate them letting me know what they saw. Certainly, I assured them there would be no ramifications from speaking tip.

The problem never happened again! To this day, I don't know who was doing what, but once they found out why they shouldn't be doing it, they stopped. Although I was happy to have the complication solved, I'm still disappointed that they didn't trust me enough to tell me what they were doing. I guess the important thing is that once they knew why, they changed.

I'm not sure who Carl C. Wood is, but I read a quote attributed to him that I've liked. It is, "The person who knows how will always have a job. But the person who knows why will be the boss." After having thought about it, knowing why may have made you boss, but if you want to get it done right, you'd better make sure that everyone knows why!

Roy Lobenhofer, Lobenhofer Consulting Inc., Mount Prospect, Illinois