Use the five whys to uncover the root problem

- The power of asking why. There are few other words that can create opportunities, change your perspective, and allow people and organizations to rise to a level that was never even deemed possible. The goal is to reveal the true root cause of the problem by asking why five times to explore the cause and effect relationship of the problem. In some situations, it may take more or less time to ask why, but five iterations is a good rule of thumb. When using this problem solving framework, be careful that you are not assuming anything and stay clear of logic traps since the root cause may not be as obvious as you think. The advantages of asking five why's include identifying the underlying cause of a problem, understand the relationship between various root causes, a simple yet effective evaluation technique, and uncovering a chain of problems behind a process. So where do you start? Grab a piece of paper or whiteboard and write out the specific problem. Ask why the problem exists and write down the answer below the problem. If the answer you just wrote down doesn't identify the root cause of the problem continue asking why and write that answer down until you identify the root cause of the problem. Let's look at an example of how this works. Okay, so your problem is that you dislike your job, so you're thinking about quitting. First you ask yourself why you dislike your job. Well, you don't get along with your manager. Okay, so let's unpack that. Why do you not get along with your manager? You're not passionate about the work that you're doing. Let's dig deeper. Why aren't you passionate about the work? You don't feel like you're being challenged or given large roles and responsibilities. Why aren't you being challenged? Your company recently had a reorg, and your new manager does not have much experience managing team members. But why doesn't your manager have experience? Your manager was recently hired into the company, and she was never given proper training and onboarding. To recap, the problem was that you dislike your job, so you're thinking about quitting, but the root cause was that your new manager does not have much experience managing team members. And the action you should take is to schedule a meeting with your manager to discuss ways in which you and your manager can work better together such as scheduling monthly check-ins, requesting roles and responsibilities with a higher impact and voicing what projects align with your interests. If you're interested in another example of how the five why's breaks down in practice I've included a handout in this course that relates to a common problem employees face, when you need your team to work overtime. Check it out in the exercise files.