A 5-day journey to living from your priorities

It’s easy to spend our day reacting to what comes at us. What if you could be proactive, intentionally making decisions based on your priorities? It is possible!

Our five-day short course guides you through the process of identifying your life priorities and scaling them day to everyday decisions. You’ll learn how to establish a rhythm to build good habits and grow a team that will be with you in the journey.

This simple habit delivers a significant impact by uncovering assumptions, root causes and new ideas.

Here's how it works. You ask "Why?" 5 times. It's that simple.

Let's walk through an example. Imagine a conversation between a father and son.
Dad: Why are you home in the middle of the day?
Kid: Dad, I can't go to class.
Dad: Why?
Kid: The car won't start
Dad: Why?
Kid: The battery is dead
Dad: Why is the battery dead?
Kid: It's been an issue; I think the alternator isn't working.
Dad: Why do you think that?
Kid: It's one of the error codes on the dashboard.

The key is to move past symptoms to causal factors.

Suppose the dad stopped after even the third why then he'd be replacing a battery that would soon be dead. You can imagine even more questions coming after this dialogue about underlying issues like regular maintenance.

Five isn't a magical number, but it's enough to get to underlying causes but not so many that you start to frustrate people. The key is to move past symptoms to causal factors.

I don't feel like every question has to be, "Why?" Asking "How? When? What? or Where?" can also be helpful, but "Why?" seems to be the most effective at getting to the cause of things.

I will use the 5 Whys in one of two ways:

  1. I tell everyone I'm using it to facilitate a discussion challenging the team to keep digging deeper.
  2. I can also use it subtly by keeping a curious posture and continuing to ask questions.

This habit is a great one to teach your team. It will empower each one to do the discovery work that's necessary to leadership.

Reflection Questions:

  1. When do you not ask why and end up treating a symptom rather than a cause?
  2. When will you apply the 5 Whys?

Does life ever feel like a hack rather than on purpose?

You want your life to have meaning and impact. Daily life is made up of the spaces we gather and the moments we interact with one another.

What if your spaces, moments, and interactions not only felt natural and intuitive but also aligned with your priorities and positively impacted those around you?

Discover your Everyday Design so you can focus on what’s important.

A 5-day journey to living from your priorities

It’s easy to spend our day reacting to what comes at us. What if you could be proactive, intentionally making decisions based on your priorities? It is possible!

Our five-day short course guides you through the process of identifying your life priorities and scaling them day to everyday decisions. You’ll learn how to establish a rhythm to build good habits and grow a team that will be with you in the journey.

A GUIDE TO GROWING SERVANT LEADERS

This post is part of my cultivating servant leaders guide where I share lessons learned from 20 years of leading and helping other leaders grow. You can explore other guides at everyday.design or download the eBook.

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