The Mindful Sprint 4: Use Five Whys for Lasting Breakthroughs

Rash action can lead to a temporary fix. Use Five Whys to find root causes.

As Aesop said, "Appearances often are deceiving."

Technique

Start with what happened. Say someone didn’t deliver on a promise. In Five Whys, our first question is why the promise was not fulfilled. Perhaps they didn’t have enough time to fulfill the promise. Our second question then is why didn’t they have enough time? Did they get the request too late? Did they have too many other things to do? One cause might have multiple direct whys. But keep asking why until you have at least five in a chain and see what it tells you.

Then review them to find where you can eliminate causes inexpensively and permanently.

Case Study

One of Toyota's welding robots stopped working, disrupting the production line. The first why was that the robot’s circuit board failed. The second "why" was that the board wasn’t properly maintained. The third "why" was that the maintenance staff did not follow the prescribed maintenance schedule. The fourth why lack of training. The fifth why, and a root cause worth fixing was inadequate training programs.

Resources

Dan Greening, “Root Cause Mapping Party,” https://senexrex.com/cause-mapping/

EPM, The 5 Whys Explained - Root Cause Analysis, Youtube link

Try it yourself

Look around for something that isn’t right. Apply the Five Whys technique and see how many causes you can find. Which causes might be easiest to fix? What fixes would lead to lasting improvement?

Listen up

• The corresponding Mindful Agility podcast episode is 13 minutes, and the hosts are rumored to be friendly. Check it out at https://sr.link/map-5whys.