okansas.blogspot.com

okansas.blogspot.com
Occassional thoughts about orienteering

Thursday, April 23, 2009

What? Why?

I was at a conference today and one of the speakers described how a lot of government managers confuse what they do with why they do it. If you ask someone who runs a program to inspect restaurants, "what do you do?" They might answer, "we protect the public health." But really what they do is send inspectors to restaurants to compare conditions with a set of rules. They've confused what they do with why they do it.

Being a complete orienteering geek, I wondered about orienteers. Do we mix up what and why? Tonight I was feeling a bit off. I'm getting over a cold. When I look at my training log, I see that I wrote what I did (an easy 20 minutes on the rowing machine). But, I also wrote a little bit about why I did it (to burn off some calories from the brownie I ate at the conference). In the big picture, I'm not even sure I could explain "why" I trained (accepting that 20 minutes of rowing even qualifies as training) today.

I'm guessing that if my training was a bit more focused - for example, if I had a clear medium term goal - I'd have no trouble answering both "what?" and "why?" about my training.

Back to okansas.blogspot.com.

posted by Michael | 7:26 PM

Comments:

I can't but agree, having been in the public sector. I also find it disturbing the other way around. If you ask them - using your example - why they inspect restaurants, you get the answer "restaurants have to comply with a set of rules" instead of "we protect public health".

Being antiher o-geek, I have to come up with a corresponding example. One example would be why you log your training. You might respond that you want to keep track of amounts and divisions of your traing, which again is "what you do". You probably log because it helps you become a better athlete?

# posted by

Jonas : 3:51 AM

In the non-public sector it seems like people confuse "what" with "where." When you ask people what they do, they often tell you the name of the company they work for. It is a bit strange. I guess the lesson is that people tend to give an answer to a question not THE answer to the question. That's one reason auditing can take so long.

Michael

# posted by

Anonymous : 8:50 PM

March 2002 April 2002 May 2002 June 2002 July 2002 August 2002 September 2002 October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010 February 2010 March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010 August 2010 September 2010 October 2010 November 2010 December 2010 January 2011 February 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 June 2011 July 2011 August 2011 September 2011 October 2011 November 2011 December 2011 January 2012 February 2012 March 2012 April 2012 May 2012 June 2012 July 2012 August 2012 September 2012 October 2012 November 2012 December 2012 January 2013 March 2013 April 2013 May 2013 July 2013 September 2013

archives

links

about okansas
Orienteer Kansas.
link