In “Good Strategy/Bad Strategy,” Richard Rumelt introduces the “strategic kernel” which he describes as the “bare-bones center of a strategy — the hard nut at the core of the concept.” The kernel contains only three things:

1. A diagnosis of the current problem at hand
2. A guiding policy (or policies) for dealing with the current problem
3. A set of coherent, concrete actions

The diagnosis is actually harder to define than you might think. In the book he tells the story of a colleague coming to audit his classes in preparation for teaching about strategy himself. After several classes they were discussing how strategy is taught, with Rumelt pointing out that:

… many of the lessons learned in a strategy course come in the form of the questions asked as study assignments and asked in class. These questions distill decades of experience about useful things to think about in exploring complex situations. John gave me a sidelong look and said, “It looks to me as if there is really only one question you are asking in each case. That question is ‘What’s going on here?’”

John’s comment was something I had never heard said explicitly, but it was instantly and obviously correct. A great deal of strategy work is trying to figure out what is going on. Not just deciding what to do, but the more fundamental problem of comprehending the situation.

Rumelt’s book is about business strategy specifically, but it hold true for almost any endeavor.

Any task or activity you undertake requires a strategy, even if you never take the time to articulate your strategy.

Think about a simple task. Doing the dishes! MaKayla and I have very different opinions about doing the dishes. If she is in charge, she tends to do the dishes right after dinner, and includes all our kids in the cleaning process.

If I’m in charge, I frequently wait until the kids are in bed, then just do the dishes myself.

Why? Why do we have these different approaches? I have literally never thought about it until this blog post, but now that I’m thinking about it the reason is because we don’t only have different strategies, our diagnosis of the problem is fundamentally different.

I view the dishes as a task that needs to be done, and so I seek to do it in the way that I find most enjoyable and easiest — on my own, listening to music or with a show going on in the background.

MaKayla views the dishes as a skill that needs to be taught and reinforced, so even though it takes more work, she makes sure to include our children.

(MaKayla is in the right here, I have no delusions about the superiority of my selfish dish strategy)

Our strategy (HOW we do the dishes) is impacted by our diagnosis (WHY we do the dishes). In fact, the WHY completely dictates the HOW, when you stop to think about it.

And it’s that WHY that is so hard to get to. As Rumelt points out, “A great deal of strategy work is trying to figure out what is going on.” It is about finding the WHY.

Let’s use an example of why a WHY is harder to find than you realize, using one of my favorite tools — the Five WHYs.

The five whys

The Five Whys is a lean tool. The idea is that, when you’re doing a root cause analysis, you keep asking why, over and over, until you find a true root cause, because it’s so easy to find A cause, but not THE cause, and cease asking too early.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you have a server in a retail environment that the store needs in order to complete sales. One day the server goes down and you lose several hours of potential process. The issue is only fixed when someone realizes that the server was plugged into a $7 Amazon Basics power strip, and the power strip died.

A non-curious person would say “We found the root cause — the power strip fried. Buy a new one.” They have reached ONE LEVEL of five whys.

But someone who truly wants to avoid the issue might ask “But why did the power strip fry?” The obvious answer being that it fried because it was cheap. The solution is to buy a nicer power strip, maybe even a UPS. Problem solved!

But, if you can count, you will know we’ve only reached two whys. We need AT LEAST three more! (maybe more than that).

So why did we use a cheap power strip? I mean, we spend five grand on a server and couldn’t spring for a twenty dollar power strip? Or a hundred dollar UPS?

Let’s assume that the reason we went with that power strip is because it was just what the store on hand when they set up the server. OK, but why didn’t the IT team send out a power strip WITH the server?

NOW it starts to get interesting. When you interview the IT team they say “Well, we assumed every store had a UPS — this is a replacement server, not a new one, and we figured they could just plug in to the old UPS that they probably had.”

And why did they make that assumption? Because they don’t install the servers, and they never go visit the stores. Why don’t they visit the stores? Maybe they don’t view that as part of their job. Maybe they just don’t like public places.

Finally we’re getting to a real root cause, though. If you had stopped earlier and said “Buy nicer power strips” you may have resolved this problem for this store, maybe even upcoming stores, but you wouldn’t have fixed the fundamental disconnect between your IT department and the stores they (are supposed to) support. Other problems would have continued to crop up because you haven’t fixed the underlying fault.

The five whys of WHY AM I LIKE THIS??

Maybe you have already put something together — in my dishes discussion above I really only went one WHY deep. But what happens if we keep digging?

Why do I view the dishes as a task to be done? Maybe because I view my role as a parent as someone who primarily provides STUFF and/or RESOURCES for my kids, but otherwise mostly gets out of the way.

Why does MaKayla view dishes as an opportunity for instruction? Maybe because she views the role of the parent primarily as a teacher or mentor, not just as a provider.

It’s funny, because I’ve always thought of myself as a teacher and/or mentor, and I wouldn’t consider myself old fashioned, but in my day-to-day interaction I fall into the role that I was socialized into. I was taught that the husband is the provider, and so … I provide. And then I guess I feel like I’m done.

That’s not how I consciously WANT to behave, nor is it how I would describe myself as behaving. But it does appear to be how I actually behave.

Thanks, five whys, for helping me realize I’m not the father I wish I were!

We actually went ahead with some more whys already without realizing it. Why do I take the role of provider? Because I was taught that that’s what good fathers do by my dad. And why did he teach me that? Well, because of his religious upbringing and his own experiences in his youth.

That’s neither here nor there. The point is, getting to why in personal matters takes some introspection and some effort, just like getting to why in anything else. Like, say, running a team.

The Five Whys of WHY ARE WE EVEN DOING THIS, MAN?

In the business world, WHY can be used for two main things.

The first we’ve already touched on, but I want to be more explicit about it.

You use need to understand WHY to make decisions on HOW.

Let’s say you run a cybersecurity team. We’ll go back to our nondescript “chain of retail stores.” What is the problem? Why does your team exist? Here are some potential diagnosis statements, indicating the problem you exist to solve:

1. We process credit cards, and thus must be PCI compliant.
2. We are a target for cyber criminals, and must protect ourselves accordingly.
3. We have legions of loyal fans who trust us with their sensitive personal information, and we must maintain their trust.

Those WHYs could all be accurate. In fact, Rumelt points out that, frequently, a diagnosis cannot “… be proven to be correct — each is a judgment about which issues is preeminent. Hence, diagnosis is a judgment about the meaning of facts … [it] does more than explain a situation — it also defines a domain of action.”

When we SELECT our diagnosis (and we do SELECT one, there isn’t a way to say ‘this one is the absolute truth’), we are making a decision about how we will approach solving that problem.

Let’s say we’re trying to choose which endpoint protection (AKA antivirus software) we’re going to purchase for our business. How would adopting each of the above diagnoses change our decision? Think about it for a second, and then I’ll give you my thoughts.

OK, have you thought about it? Let’s look at our potential diagnosis and the actions we would take.

Diagnosis	Endpoint Protection Choice
PCI compliance	Go with whatever is cheapest, since we’re primarily concerned with compliance
Cyber criminal defense	Purchase the best “bang for buck” solution
Reputation defense	Purchase best in class endpoint protection

Understanding WHY dictates HOW you solve problems.

That’s not just an observation, it is a warning. Because if your team isn’t on the same page about WHY, then their HOWs may very well end up at odds with each other. Just like our family dishes strategy — unfortunately, our kids don’t get a consistent experience because I prefer my own selfish strategy, even though I know MaKayla’s is better. And now I’ll have to actually adopt it and clean stuff with my children! Ick!

In business if the leader doesn’t understand why, then nobody can possibly be on the same page.

That’s why Lencioni is so adamant about “creating clarity” being a leader’s main job. It’s why Rother and Liker both talk about needing to understand a problem fully before you even attempt to solve it. You MUST know why to effectively lead a team. And knowing why takes TIME and EFFORT — sometimes it may seem to make more sense to focus your time and effort on “real problems” but understanding WHY is the most important problem you face. It is the decision that makes a 1000 other decisions.

The second reason why is important

To motivate people! But Simon Sinek wrote a whole book about that, so I’m not going to dig into it too much here. Suffice to say, you have to understand why first before you can use it as a motivational tool, and that is going to take a lot of work all on its own.