Last week, I was interviewing a woman for a position on my HR team.  During the course of the interview, she said something that was really profound and important.  Here’s what she said:

“I like to know why I am doing everything that I do.  If I am just completing a list of steps on a checklist and I don’t know why each step is important, if something goes wrong in the middle, I won’t know what to do to fix it.”

This is so important and it was so refreshing to hear an HR professional say these words.  By simply changing our mindset to question why we do everything we do, not only will we be able to execute our job more seamlessly, our processes and approaches will improve.  And, more importantly, we will find a bunch of things we are doing today that really don’t matter (stop doing those things).

And, in case you are wondering, she got the job.

Jason Lauritsen