The WHY Code is a fundamental way to unblock organizational knowledge flow, empowering people to discover and share exactly WHAT needs to be done, HOW and most importantly WHY.

Problem

Many leaders recognise the need to transition from ‘command and control’ to ‘motivate and mentor’ organizations, but they lack tools to help them orchestrate a business in this way.
Highly collaborative systems need better ways to visualize and improve the interdependencies of each system component. Organizations are often ‘vertical’ hierarchies rather than ‘horizontal’ cooperatives.
Information is often intentionally or unintentionally locked away in silos. Knowledge workers need a way to navigate and discover all the interconnected information sources that support the organization’s mission, not just their own silo of information.

Solution

Stop using conventional process tools that focus on inputs and outputs - instead focus on WHAT, HOW and WHY. Peter Drucker said “The first question for any knowledge worker should be WHAT do we seek to achieve? WHY do it at all?”
Don’t use conventional text to externalise and share knowledge. Text is great for information sharing but knowledge needs to be encoded within a WHAT-HOW-WHY structure.
Look at the business as a series of actions connected via WHAT-HOW-WHY chains. WHAT actions does the business take or need to take? HOW does it take this action and WHY? (It turns out that WHY and HOW are opposite viewpoints of the same thing). These chains can become the DNA of the organization.
Share the organization’s WHAT-HOW-WHY chains with all staff and other stakeholders. Encourage them to investigate the WHYs of the organization. When people understand WHY they can become better team players and do a better job.
Use these WHAT-HOW-WHY chains to orchestrate collaboration and social business tools. When dialogue is focused around the organization’s WHAT-HOW-WHY chains it becomes much more effective.
Encourage never ending discussion and improvement of the organization’s WHAT-HOW-WHY chains. When people understand all the WHY interconnections of the organization, they are much more likely to be innovators. “Ah, if that’s what we’re really trying to do, I can think of a better way”.
Use these WHAT-HOW-WHY chains to orchestrate the corporate web and other information sources so that everybody can navigate the DNA of the organization to find interrelated and empowering information sources.

Practical Impact

Leaders have a better tool to ‘conduct’ rather than ‘command’ the organization - the WHAT-HOW-WHY chains empower everybody in the organization to understand, innovate and deliver the ultimate WHY.
Greater cross-functional collaboration results from exploitation of these intelligent interconnections. And because the WHAT-HOW-WHY chains do not need to stop at an organization’s boundary, this cooperation can be extended to customers, suppliers, the community and all other stakeholders.
Information silos can be broken down because all stakeholders can use the WHAT-HOW-WHY chains to navigate the interconnected information sources related to the company’s goals and fundamental mission.
Financial benefits result because everybody and everything is aligned to the WHY of the organization. Tasks with no important WHY can simply be eliminated.
The organization has greater agility because all employees see the complete picture and are empowered to understand the ultimate WHYs of the organization. They can all contribute to improving the organization’s HOWs via this deeper insight.
The process of considering WHY normally causes people to think more deeply about the fundamental purpose of the organization. More focus on the long-term and less short-termism can result.

First Steps

Create a high-level WHAT-HOW-WHY chain (your WHY Code), taking a slice across your whole organization. This can be done on paper, but is better done via the free WHY Organization website (www.whyorg.com). Interesting and insightful chains can be built in hours.
Consider a few quick workshops (maximum 90 minutes duration each) to debate your organization’s WHY Code amongst key players from different functions. Such workshops almost always surface and resolve different views on the organization’s WHYs. Resolving these differences brings about immediate benefit.
Think WHY through to the end of chain – your ultimate WHYs. WHY does the organization really exist? From these ultimate WHYs, think back in the HOW direction - HOW can these ultimate WHYs be better or more effectively achieved. Move to eliminate low-value-adding actions that do not really support the ultimate WHYs.
Connect your WHY Code to your chosen discussion forums and enable participants to focus discussion on your organization’s WHY Code. This will immediately make the discussions more focused and informed, cutting down noise and information overload. Innovation should significantly increase.
Connect your WHY Code to your corporate web to enable participants to navigate your WHY Code and find related information sources that would not otherwise be obvious or available to them.

Credits

Xiaoping Ding, Jo Ferri, Nga Hoang, Oliver McPhee, Ewan Murray, Ian Rainton

Documents

The WHY Code - Illustrations.pdf

The WHY Code White Paper - v111210.pdf

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December 12, 2011 at 6:58am

David Marquet

Yes, unfettering information flow within an organization is important. The "WHY" question seems very prominent. We say organizational clarity. Everyone knows what the organization's goals are.

What's also important is moving the decision making ability to the people with the information. Instead of moving information up to the people with authority.

January 3, 2012 at 4:54am

Trevor Davies

Our work with the WHY Code is very much focused on organizational knowledge.

But we believe the approach to be applicable in other knowledge domains, and some experimentation is currently under way. For example, a project to create the WHY Code of the human body is just beginning, as is another project in the Physics domain.

January 3, 2012 at 5:04am

Joseph Ferri

For those interested, there are now good success stories on using the WHY Code in a number of different industries including Oil & Gas, Banking and Insurance.

January 9, 2012 at 6:01am

Trevor Davies

I've been asked to explain the genesis of this idea.

When I was a CIO, I became disatisified with the approaches for understanding the key business processes and drivers. The divide between business language and IT language was a real problem. I felt that there must be a better way than the techie tools that were mostly (and still are mostly used). It started me thinking. Then as a partner of a big consultancy, I encountered the same problem in a different form. I needed to staff a project in one part of the world, while the person with the best knowledge was in another part of the world. How to transfer the knowledge? Text was pretty useless but was (and still is) mostly used.

So I felt there was an opportuntity to create a common, standard way to define knowledge, regardless of domain. Yes, different tools and different encoding rules may be needed in the detail of some specialisms, BUT it's my view that a fundamental code underlies all knowledge, regardless of domain and that surfacing this code can dramatically breakdown knowledge silos and faciliate much better knowledge sharing. If one can understand and explain a process (natural or human or organizational) in the WHY codes's WHAT, HOW, WHY structure, then one truly understands it. And others can understand and internalize the explanation quicker, and they can replicate it more accurately.

January 9, 2012 at 6:58am

Trevor Davies

And then I met Peter Drucker and became even more convinced that the WHY Code could add real value to organizations. I found, and still find, his words inspiring:

"Because the modern organization is composed of specialists, each with his or her own narrow area of expertise, its mission must be crystal clear. The organization must be single-minded, or its members will become confused. They will follow their own specialist rather than apply it to the common task. They will each define “results” in terms of their own specialty and impose its values on the organization. Only a focused and common mission will hold the organization together and enable it to produce."

"The first questions in increasing productivity – in working smarter - have to be: WHAT is the task? WHAT do we try to accomplish? WHY do it at all?" Classic Drucker, From the pages of Harvard Business Review