Five Whys

Following a recent post on the Five Whys techniques. I thought I'd add some notes, as we've been using the Five Whys technique quite a lot with a good deal of success. The basic idea is that you try to go beyond a proximate cause and identify the ultimate cause by asking - you guessed it - 'why' five times.

Here's how it works:

eg Why was I late? Because I missed the bus. Why did I miss the bus? Because I was couldn't find my keys. Why couldn't I find my keys? And so on, and so on.

Fishbone Diagrams
My first wind of the technique came via the always excellent (though sparsely posting of late) Shmula. The Five Whys technique is often accompanied by the Fishbone or Ishikawa Diagram (the image above comes from shmula.com).

Using the Five Whys as a brainstorming technique
If you look at the 'fishbone', you can see that each bone has prompts (or capstones) designed to help brainstorm possible causes. Obviously, they're designed for a factory. But what if you don't work in a factory?

Five Whys and Change Management
We've been using ADKAR for our capstones. ADKAR is a simple tool to diagnose personal change. The idea behind ADKAR is that to change you need to go through a number of stages. And that these stages are "sequential and cumulative".

Here are the stages:

A=Awareness
D=Desire
K=Knowledge
A=Ability
R=Reinforcement

Imagine somebody who's always short of money at the end of the month and ends up borrowing money from friends and family.

Stage 1 (Awareness)
You're not aware how cheesed off your family are, nobody's told you.
Stage 2 (Desire)
You know they're cheesed off. But it's not very often. And besides - they're loaded.
Stage 3. (Knowledge)
A budget? What's a budget?
Stage 4. (Ability)
Aha! A budget. How do I go about filling one of these in?
Stage 5. (Reinforcement or Routine)
You've got a budget. Now you just need to remember to stick to it...

Clients have suggested that 'Routine' is a better word than Reinforcement. It's simple and puts them in mind of coaching.

Five Whys and Coaching
I can see this technique being useful in a coaching scenario. But you would probably want to avoid continuously asking somebody 'Why?'

Here's Five Alternatives to Why:

Who was it that first noticed that ... was a problem?
What is it about this ... that causes you problems?
When did you first notice that ... was a problem?
Where do you think the problem with ... lies?
How do you imagine that this ... became a problem?