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Why 鈥淲丑测鈥�? The word is the bane of many a parent. But somehow children instinctively understand the power of asking, 鈥淲hy?鈥� It鈥檚 a potent tool for understanding the world around us, though we seem to lose appreciation for it over time. In the military context, Sun Tzu exhorts warriors to 鈥渒now the enemy and know yourself鈥� so that 鈥測ou may make your victory complete.鈥�

Organizations follow this principle by pursuing development of a common operational picture (COP) to provide them with situational awareness (SA). With the display projected on the wall of the operations center, organizations can then be proud of the decision aid they鈥檝e created.

To be truly impactful, though, decision aids need to actually aid decision-making. But how many COP or data-visualization projects start out by asking, 鈥淲hat decisions do we need to make? What information do we need to make those decisions, where do those data reside, and how do we interact with the data most effectively?鈥� Pretty straightforward, right?

So why is this so hard? Don鈥檛 feel bad; human nature is to blame. Because people tend to think and communicate first about the clearest elements, we tend to focus on the 鈥淲hat,鈥� which is the most accessible and easily grasped. Sometimes we don鈥檛 get to 鈥淗ow,鈥� and we often never get to the 鈥淲hy.鈥�

Visionary thinker Simon Sinek developed a model showing how inspired leaders and organizations think, act, and communicate from the inside out. They start with 鈥淲hy鈥� in the center, and then in concentric circles, ask 鈥淗ow鈥� and then 鈥淲hat.鈥� This helps them ponder such questions as, 鈥淲hy do we exist? How do we fulfill this mission? What do we do to generate the outcomes we seek?鈥� The questions progress from the more abstract to the more concrete, tangible, and understandable.

Military communicators have long striven to deliver 鈥渢he right information in the right place at the right time鈥濃�� but how do we know what the right information is? We start with 鈥淲hy!鈥� In order for technologists to deliver truly impactful solutions, they must start with a decidedly nontechnical approach: analyze the organization鈥檚 mission and from that, map out the decisions a unit or a commander needs to make. That knowledge may be found in administrative instruction, mission directives, or even operational orders, and it should be refined through interviewing key mission stakeholders up, down, and across echelons.

Further decomposition will then lead to understanding what information technologists need to make those decisions, and identifying the authoritative sources of data that will generate that information. The technologists can then create the connections to those data sources, build the interfaces to facilitate data sharing, and apply the data science skills to ingest, analyze, and present that data.

This hybrid, inside-out approach is where the magic lies. Tapping into our inner toddler to ask, 鈥淲hy?鈥� is the key to creating impactful, data-driven solutions that drive decision advantage.