Five Whys to Kill Surface Excuses

“Five Whys The Five Whys are a method to get to the root cause of a problem. When people stay at the first layer of a problem (the first “why”) they tend to overlook the real root cause. Therefore, the tool is to ask Why five subsequent times (or as many times as needed) until the final root cause of a problem is found. In our example: Q: Sales fell by 10%. Why? A: Because of the demonstration. Q: Why the demonstration affected sales? A: Because some streets were closed, and our trucks couldn’t reach merchants. Q: Why didn’t we use smaller trucks to deliver goods on that day? A: Because we don’t own them. There! You’ve reached the root cause of the sales drop, which is much more subtle and specific than merely blaming the demonstrations. The root cause often makes an action plan to solve the problem obvious. In this case, the suggestion is to buy a smaller truck for use during the demonstrations scheduled for the next month. If sales are maintained after the experiment, the company then adopts a new standard: having smaller trucks for those events. The fishbone graph The fishbone graph (also called an Ishikawa Diagram, or…”

“A gap example A scientist starts by defining a problem to be solved (or theory to be proved.) For example, someone at AB InBev may be interested in understanding why sales fell by 10% in a certain Los Angeles neighborhood. The employee formulates a hypothesis as to why the problem (the sales drop) happened. For example, he may conjecture that it happened because of a major political demonstration that happened in the region. The next step is observing the problem in…”