The Power of Why is a book written by Amanda Lang, Collins, Toronto, 2012 in which the author examines curiosity and the ability to ask the right questions can lead you to innovation. There is no magic formula to innovation and everyone does it at, although most people tinker at the edges for a variety of good reasons. One of the reasons is as a young person we were curious about everything, but the people around us were not, so through a host of different methods we are taught it is best not to be so curious. The older you get, often the less curious you are, the better marks you received in school. Moving into the workplace, meant working for someone else and they often received the job by not being curious. We are able to think about changing in the workplace but not allowed to say anything until either senior management wants innovation or a new boss arrives who wishes to hear new ideas. What they do with or do not do will determine if you have any more ideas about work.

One easy example people have is browsing on the internet – the internet is filled with vast amounts of information, if you were to check your normal sites where you go, would they have changed in the last 6 months? 1 year? 2 years? The answer is likely not much, which means you are in the vast majority. There is nothing wrong with the answer, it just a quick method to show most of the time we are not that curious and do not ask why more than once? There is a theory you should ask why 5 times to get to the real answer, however coming up with the answer to why 5 times will take some research.

A wonderful example in the book was a hospital – in the hospital hand washing is encouraged, the nurses know this better than anyone else. But in the hospital, the surveys were showing the nurses were not washing their hands, guest to the hospitals were. The question of why? The answer was the soap the hospital was using made the nurses skin red and dry. It turns out the reason why the hospital was using the soap was the purchasing department was under constant pressure to save money and picked a brand which cleaned and was relatively inexpensive. If someone only washed their hands once or twice, they would not have the same problem as the nurses and would be satisfied with the hospital policy. However with multiple washings skin was turning red and dry for the nurses. Two different departments trying to do the right thing by management, but the solution was not working out for patients. Eventually a soap which did not make the nurses hands red and dry was changed to.

The above example and there are plenty more in the book is a great example because people were trying to do the right thing; 95% of the time there will be a reasonable reason why solutions are chosen in the method they are; it takes research to find the root causes of the problem; and solution looking back the solution seemed easy. Innovation does not have to be a game changer, change the world, most innovation is trying to make things better.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, these companies are not necessarily looking for innovations that will change the way they operate, an improvement from year to year in the method they serve their customers is good. Most times similar to the hospital example, there are different ideas to how to improve from each area of the business, and anyone working in a medium to a large sized organization knows management often favours one department over another. Asking the why? and actually receiving answers is the hallmark of an organization at least willing to do innovations.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.