Why Not?

If someone at work asks their manager “Why do we hold this weekly meeting?” or “Why does our product have this feature?” the response should never be “Why not?”

Why is it important? Maybe it’s mission-critical, maybe your competitors do it, or maybe it’s just “expected” in your industry. Processes are defined with good intentions but over time conditions change and when they do our instinct is to hold our ground.

To ask “Why not?” is to justify losing effort and gaining complexity just because there’s no good reason not to. Instead, we should ask ourselves “Why?” and remove those features, meetings, etc for which we don’t have a good answer. It ensures everything we do has a clear sense of purpose, and it creates space to do the things that our competitors don’t do and that aren’t “expected” in our industry.