I couldn't go on. Lack of sleep, frustration, and the incessant sound of a crying baby had literally brought me to tears.
It had been weeks since my wife or I had more than a few minutes of uninterrupted sleep. We had tried every piece of advice we could find to get our daughter to stop crying. We'd sung songs, changed dry diapers, offered a bottle, taken her for a ride in the car, walked the neighborhood with her in a snuggy, played music -- classical, jazz, pop, new age. Nothing helped long enough to allow us to fall asleep ourselves.
The most frustrating aspect of those months (yes, our beautiful baby daughter had colic for months!) was our inability to discover why she was crying. We kept asking her, "What do you want? Why won't you just tell us?" She never really answered.
Leadership can feel like parenting a colicky infant. When you ask your customers (whether they be literal customers, your team, your boss, or your constituents) what they want, their response is unintelligible. You try to give them what you think they want, only to have them ignore you, whine, cry, or spit up all over your brand new dress shirt.
It's tempting to simply assume you know best and give them what you think you know they need. As Steve Jobs once said, "If Henry Ford had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse." However, for most of us, most of the time, that doesn't really get us the results we're looking for.
So what are our options? We can put a pillow over our head and ignore the crying. We can try to force our solution on those we think need it. We can quit. Or, we can learn to listen differently.
After months of sleepless nights, we discovered that the soy-based baby formula we were using was giving our daughter painful cramps. Switching brands pretty much solved the problem.
Plenty of research has shown that simply asking customers, "What do you want?" rarely provides helpful answers. Digging deeper, spending time walking in their shoes, probing their responses, and observing their day-to-day work will provide much greater traction.
So, certainly listen to your customers. But when they answer, ask them "Why is that important?" "How, specifically will that help you?" "What end result do you hope to achieve?" "How will that make you feel?" "Who will be changed?"
These aren't the only questions to ask, of course. You're a smart leader. You can come up with dozens of other examples that will fit your specific situation. The key is this: It takes more than asking a question or sending a survey to understand what your customer wants. It takes a conversation.