We all know that asking the right questions and identifying root causes are key in problem solving. And a technique I’ve found useful over the years, primarily because it gets the emotion out of the dialogue, is using the “Five Why’s Deep” formula.
Originally developed by Sakichi Toyota at Toyota, the premise is you start with the obvious and keep drilling down until you come up with a workable answer. Nothing works all the time of course, but this is useful in at least heading in the right direction, and can often get you where you need to be.
As an example, if you’ve got a highly annoying colleague who frustrates people, you might ask:
Q: Why is she such a micro-manager, wanting to get in everyone’s business?
A: She’s just a busybody.
Q: Why is she such a busybody?
A: She has to have all the information all the time, and it’s annoying.
Q: Why does she need information all the time?
A: She has a boss who demands she is aware of everything that is going on in the office, and this boss reports everything to corporate.
You may go all the way to five “why’s” or you may get an answer at three or four. One more example:
Q: Why is this piece of machinery malfunctioning so often? This is costing us money to repair.
A: Looks like it only breaks down during the last shift; it must have to do with the people operating it at that time.
Q: Why don’t those people know what they’re doing? Do they need to be retrained?
A: Looks like they are doing their job and they’re well trained.
Q:Then why is the machine breaking down on this shift? Who else is involved?
A: The only people around are those doing cleanup.
Q: Why are those doing cleanup touching the machine?
A: They aren’t supposed to, but there’s been a contest going to improve efficiency, and in order to win and get a bonus they’ve become careless and are sloshing some of the cleaning fluid on this machine. (True story)
This particular method helps take us from assumption or emotion toward the real answer, and of course allows us to solve the problem.
