Remember your last sickness. Caught a cold or a flew? Weren’t you only curing the symptoms? Usually nobody cares for the real reasons when getting ill with these small diseases. But there are lots of persons who are able to somehow avoid any disease. What’s the difference? Why were you felt sick?

It’s like weeding your garden. Very often only the symptoms are cured, but no real solution can be achieved. The weed gets back soon. Removing the root would do the job,

Within the business context regularly the management requests an immediate, complete, fast and reliable solution of problems. But is that possible without finding the real cause of a problem? Without fixing the real cause of a problem it might pop the same way again as the weed does.

That’s the ideas of root cause analysis. Dive deeper into a problem to find the real underlying cause of the problem. The diving should be that deep to find not only a cause, but the process which is failing or is insufficient

This episode is about the first and basic technique of finding the real root cause of a problem: the 5-Whys technique

The 5-Whys is a technique first time introduced by Toyota within the Toyota Production System (TPS). It is an iterative question-asking technique to explore the cause-and-effect relationship underlying a particular problem.

The technique belongs to repeating the question “Why?”. Each question forms the basics of the next question. The “5” in the name derives from an empirical observation on the number of iterations, which is typically required to find the real cause of a problem – the root cause.

The idea of 5-Whys is to dig deeper. But it’s even more. It not only stupidly asking Why, Why, Why again and again. It’s a change in the paradigm of evaluating the cause of a problem by not getting stucked with the symptoms. It’s like unveiling an onion. You work from one shell to the other until you come to the nucleus.

The 5-Whys technique has several benefits:

The 5-Whys is most useful for problems involving human factors and interactions, like handling, reactive, planning, or design problem. However complex problems might benefit from a more detailed approach. Hereby the 5-Whys can deliver useful insights.

The 5-Whys technique has several disadvantages and is under critique for:

Nevertheless “5-Whys” is a great tool to start with the root-cause analysis. It is fast, in an elaborated hand very effective and therefore efficient in an outstanding way.

To improve your understanding of how to do the 5-Whys I have these 3 steps to follow:

Start with a description of the problem by providing answers on these questions:

Best thing first is to invite for a meeting to start the 5-Whys questioning

First you should define a 5-Whys master or moderator. This should be an elaborated person who is able to work on a meta-level of the outstanding communication. It should not be one of the major stakeholders, if he have the tendency to fell blamed for what has happened.

Especially the last step is the most essential one. This changes your perspective from symptoms and easy causes towards a general view. This is the starting point of real improvement. Knowing the failed process is a cornerstone in becoming really better.

If you have digged out one or multiple root-causes for your problem, then summarize the results:

Please be aware that the 5-Whys are simple in concept but sometimes tricky in reality. The following 3 aspects are essential to keep an eye on:

5-Whys are living from experience and excercise. Don’t be impatient if the result is not that good in the first usage. Using it continuously will give you the expertise to do it quicker and more elegant. Don’t hesitate to improve!

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