How to Get to the Root of a Problem Using the 5 Whys Technique

In this week's episode, Ricardo explains the 5 Whys technique to help you identify the root cause of an event, a specific risk, or even support your decision-making process.

The technique, although simple, has nuances that allow you to be more effective and expand its range of uses beyond what was proposed by its creator, the founder of Toyota in the 1930s.

Ricardo shows how to use 5 Whys in measuring intangibles, problem-solving, risk response development, and also in combined applications such as the use of 5 Whys with AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process).

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Episode transcript

The transcript is generated automatically by Podscribe, Sonix, Otter and other electronic transcription services.

Ricardo (4s):
Hello, welcome to the 5 Minutes Podcast. Today I like to share with you one technique that I have been using for quite a while, and it's extremely simple and effective. It's called 5 Why technique, and this is not a new technique. This was developed in the thirties by Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota. And it's a very simple technique. And the name explains pretty much everything. You have a statement and this statement you will, you ask why five times and you ask, why and why have the why, why of the why of the why. And then you go down from a statement to the root cause of that statement.

Ricardo (48s):
So before I use and show you an example, let me give you, because it looks simple, but you need to do it in the right way. First, it's a team exercise. So you don't do this alone. So you do this with your team and you need to do this people that know the topic, I cannot say, okay, why the Mars Pathfinder from NASA stopped working for a while after a couple of hours, you know, I have no clue. I'm not an expert on this kind of device. So I will be just guessing. So you need to have the right people to do that. And the second thing is that you need to make the problem clear and every single answer should be a short, not too short and not too long.

Ricardo (1m 33s):
So it's the size of a post-it notes, maybe a couple of words that do clarify that. And you need to move this in a fast base, because this is the way you reach out to a potential root cause for your problem. So let me use an example to explain this, and please, this is absolutely fictitious, so you don't need to agree with my answers. Okay. I just made up this example. Okay. So let's start with the problem. So I want to share with you is that the user is not using that paid functionality in your mobile app. So the user is not paying for that functionality.

Ricardo (2m 14s):
You just, and then I need to ask you, why did you user is not using that paid functionality? And then the group said, Oh, because the price is expensive and then you should ask the second. Why, why the price is expensive, then the group answer. Oh, okay. Over spent in development. Oh, okay. Then the third, Y Y we overspend in development, all the answers. We selected the wrong development supplier and we had to replace it, generating delays. Then the fourth. Why, why did we select the wrong development supplier?

Ricardo (2m 54s):
Then the last answer it's our procurement process is a hundred percent it on the lowest price. So we selected the cheapest, but not the best supplier for the job. So please, again, I'm not saying this is true. I'm just using this as an example, but did you see the journey from the page software not being used to a problem in the procurement service? So these is the zipper, basically what we want to analyze here, because we want to know where is the root? And of course, when we go that path, I said one answer for each Y, but you can have more, I can say to you, and they user is not using that page functionality.

Ricardo (3m 40s):
And they say, Oh, because the price is expensive. And because the app has a poor quality. So then I need to ask why it's expensive and a second. Why, why it has poor quality? So it's like a three, you start opening. And maybe from one statement, you will find four or five, six different root causes. Of course, you know where I want to reach here. If you start saying why and answering 20 different possibilities. And now, so these plenty possibilities you ask 20 wise and get to a hundred answers at the end, you will not find the root cause you will find just a million causes that every single one knows.

Ricardo (4m 23s):
We want to know which aren't the most relevant and effective causes that I can work with in a look, I said many times here about root cows. I'm talking about problems, but you can use this for many other things. For example, I use this a lot for HB. So for example, I take each of them, the answers of these root cows. So imagine that the user is not using that page software and I have three, four, five different answers at the lowest level. After the five whys, then I can compare one against another saying, it's more likely to be these one.

Ricardo (5m 4s):
Then the Otter is as like, as the Otter. And then I can do all the AHB analytical hierarchy process calculations to define the probabilities of each root cows. So did he, she, I'm combining five wide technique with AHB. Another thing you can use this is to measure intangibles. So let's suppose you are thinking about doing an MBA course and then say why you are doing it MBA course. Oh, because I want to get promoted. Why do you want to get promoted? Because I want to make more money. Okay. So why do you want to make, because I want to have a better quality of life.

Ricardo (5m 46s):
Why making money brings more quality of life? You know what I mean? Then maybe at the end you will find that you should not do an MBA, but you should just move to smaller house. I'm just thinking out loud here. So these is the concept of that, and it's a very simple, very effective. And you can do this, of course, putting everybody in the room or using this collaboration, softwares like mural or like morale to do that. And I'm using that. And it's extremely effective for routes, cows for risks, for HB, for problem solving for measuring intangibles. For example, the book, show me the money and the book, how to measure anything from dog <inaudible> they have parts of it.

Ricardo (6m 30s):
Where are they exactly talking about this five wide technique to go from an intangible, like MBA, to something that you can measure and calculate the return on investment. For example, like the project management office, I published on paper a couple of years ago about how to measure the return on investment of the project management office. And I use the five wide technique. So you can see this on my website. So this is what I want to share with you this week. So I hope you found it useful and see you next week with another 5 minutes podcast.

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