A few years ago I attended a seminar about relating to your customer. The instructor asked for a few people to come to the front to help him with a project. We approached a table set up with a ream of paper, a few pairs of scissors, a couple of rulers, and some pencils. Our project, as described by our instructor-turned-customer, was to cut a few thousand one-inch squares out of the paper. We had only a few minutes to complete the task. There were about a half dozen of us volunteers, and to clarify the task, we could ask any question before the task started. It seemed we asked all the wrong questions before we got started, unknowingly missing the most important question of all.

After a few minutes it was clear that we were not going to achieve the objective, as we had spent most of the time tracing lines, making accurate cuts, and various other things that made the process very slow. When the project deadline passed, we had maybe a hundred squares. When the instructor asked us what happened, we told him we didn’t have enough time for the difficulty of the project and the accuracy it required. The instructor agreed with our assessment but mentioned that we failed on more than one front. Not only did we not complete the requirements in time, but we failed to understand the whole purpose of the project.

In short, we didn’t ask, “Why?”

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