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Why can't they just...?
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How to answer an evergreen question
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The question “Why can’t they just…” has been a common refrain I’ve heard throughout my career. “Why can’t they just X” is, at its core, a great question—“why can’t they just find spending cuts elsewhere?” or “why can’t they just tell us what the technical strategy is?” or “why can’t they just tell engineers to write more tests?”—these are all valid questions that come from a place of deep concern.
I hear this from all sides of the same challenge. Let’s use AI mandates as an example:
Engineer: “Why can’t they [senior leaders] just let us keep using the tools that we already know and are frankly more productive with?” and “Why can’t they [managers] see that just because they’re finding manager work more productive with these tools, it doesn’t feel the same way with engineering work?”
Manager: “Why can’t they [senior leaders] understand that mandates don’t work?” and “Why can’t they [engineers] just try these tools out and see what happens?”
Senior leader: “Why can’t they [managers] just get their teams moving faster?” and “Why can’t they [engineers] just get on board? This ship has sailed.”
There’s always a reason why we “can’t just X”. It’s often deeply hard to “just do X.” Maybe there are legal constraints or tax constraints; maybe we are working on it but changing X takes a really long time. Maybe we’ve already done X, but not in a way that’s landed with you.
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Don't fault the question-asker
By and large, those who ask, “why don’t they just” aren’t yet in the weeds with the problem , or haven’t had experience with this problem before. This makes sense: if you already had the experience in it, you would probably be trying to figure out why they don’t just, or you’d be actively working to fix it based on your past experience.
For instance, a coworker once shared with me his realizations about why reorg communications are incredibly hard; in the past, it was easy to say “why don’t they just”, but he once he became responsible for it, he saw why it’s much more nuanced and challenging than the tip of the iceberg he saw before.
Whatever is in the way of X typically isn’t any of the following often-cited guesses from people in my conversations about “why can’t they just”:
A lack of understanding that X is a problem
A lack of feeling urgency about this problem
A lack of willingness to make hard decisions
Disagreement at the senior level
The question “why can’t they just” is valid, because it’s coming from a place of concern, about something that is either deeply affecting someone’s ability to get work done, or affecting their trust in senior leadership, or affecting their trust in the company.
We shouldn’t avoid this question. So how do you face it head-on?
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Read the full post for a simple answer framework
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