When my daughter was a toddler, she went through that wonderful phase where she responded to everything my wife and I said with “Why?”

It was cute, at first.  Then it became annoying as hell.

At first, we took the time to offer a substantial response.  But on the fifth or sixth rapid fire repeat of the question, our response shifted to “Because I said so…”

Now, with my daughter, the reality was that, most of the time, she didn’t really want to know why.  She was learning how to communicate.

But when it comes to your business, asking why can save you a great deal of time, effort, energy, money….  Asking why can be the difference between profitable growth and bankruptcy.

Why does your business need to hire a couple of new employees in order launch a social media campaign?

Why does your business need to develop a promotional campaign that drives buyers to a landing page with a web form instead of having the buyer call your office?   (Hint: Not that long ago, I had the owner of a business tell me he wanted his reps selling, not doing data entry.  So he created a process that made the buyers do the data entry and wait for a rep to call them.)

Why would your offer be a price discount when your brand is about high quality that helps the buyer save time, money while increasing performance?

Why would you commit a significant amount of money and other resources chasing after a small segment of your target audience based on nothing more than gut feeling?  Why wouldn’t you spend a fraction of the money, time, effort on a little research that can determine whether or not an opportunity exists?

Why do so many business leaders look at employees that ask ‘Why?’ with disgust?  Why would a business leader think that  “Because I say so!” is an acceptable answer?