What - Why- How framework

What - Why- How framework is an exercise to provide the intended information clearly and without ambiguity, with the minimum required effort to understand it. The order of these 3 questions varies from discipline to discipline, for instance, in marketing, it is important to ask why first then ask how and what. However, as a common practice in journalism and academia, we aim to answer the “what” question first, so the reader knows what this information is about, and can decide whether to continue reading or not. Then, we answer the “why” question so the reader knows its significance and importance. Finally, we complete the message by answering the “how” question.

A great example of this framework is academic paper structure: in the introduction, we answer the question “what is this paper about”, in the literature review section we answer the question “why is this paper important”, and in the methodology section we answer the question “how was the research done”.

Why is it important?

RuFaS is a diverse team, we come from different cultural and academic backgrounds, we are at different stages of our lives, and we have different years of experience. It is important for us to be able to communicate effectively.

How are we going to practice it?

The effort of practicing this framework, as you have noticed by now, starts from this document itself. Moving forward, we expect to have this framework in all of our documents, especially in our reports. In other words, when reading and writing a document, you should expect these 3 questions (what, why, how) clearly stated and answered for each part of the document that can have some level of independence from the rest of the document.