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“Ask 'why' five times about every matter”
- Overtonwindow 10y agoAsk why more than twice at my job and you'll get in trouble. Sometimes the boss, and the customer, doesn't want to be asked. I think this idea is too aggressive and indicative of high pressure sales tactics.
- erac1e 10y agoIndeed!
- Tiquor 10y agoIt can be done without just seeming rude. You just have to practice a bit.
- TuringTest 10y agoYou can often avoid asking the "why" question explicitly. If you instead ask about the unintended consequences of the current policy, people will elaborate on the reasons why the situation is undesired, without you asking for it. For example, in the third question of the article you could ask "Is this the usual level of lubrication?" and you will reach the same conclusion of "No, the oil pump on the robot is circulating less oil than normal."
- dilemma 10y agoThe point is to be the boss, then ask five times.
- manigandham 10y ago"Why" is my favorite question. It's also the most important and leads to solutions for 9/10 problems if you just keep asking it. Stop when you get to the root cause that you can fix (not some arbitrary number like 5).
- prmph 10y agoBut sometimes the whys do not converge; for example, in the case of a vicious cycle
- Scarblac 10y agoBut then you can recognize that situation, and ask why it occurs?
- manigandham 10y agoWhen would that actually happen in reality?
- drb311 10y agoA very good approach. Frequently talked about, rarely applied.
- dalke 10y agoI find it hard to figure out if I'm only finding the answer I'm looking for. Apply 5 whys to "Why did Snowden leak classified information?" I can think of multiple directions it can go: "he's a traitor who managed to get around security policies", "the US spies too much", and "contractors aren't covered under internal whistleblower protections so leaking was the most likely way to get things to change."
- dsr_ 10y agoThat's fine. Coming up with multiple answers is useful, and then you can either explore all of them or you can filter. For example, I think that you are jumping down too far with your first responses. Snowden leaked because: 1) he had access to it - exploring the why's here will improve your security 2) he was appalled at what he saw - exploring why's here will lead to discussion of whether he was right
- drb311 10y agoI can, in no more than 5 whys, get from ANY problem back to my own personal hobby horse issue.
- mesozoic 10y agoTypically you'd avoid subjective analysis in 5 why's so transform traitor into person and too much into empty string and in the third answer it should probably have "was perceived by Snowden as the most likely"
- davnn 10y agoThat's a really valuable lesson learned from The Lean Startup :-)
- oblio 10y agoThis method was invented by https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakichi_Toyoda https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakichi_Toyoda. He died in 1930. I'm pretty sure that it predates even the word "startup" as it is currently used :)
- davnn 10y agoI know that Eric Ries did not invent it, but he spread this idea with his highly popular book.
- talideon 10y ago"The Toyota Way" (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0071392319/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0071392319/) probably had more of a hand in popularising it overall.
- corecoder 10y agoThe method creator is duly credited in the book.
- hoodoof 10y ago"Why do vehicle manufacturers lie about emissions?" "Why do vehicle manufacturers lie about emissions?" "Why do vehicle manufacturers lie about emissions?" "Why do vehicle manufacturers lie about emissions?" "Why do vehicle manufacturers lie about emissions?"
- ajuc 10y agoIt's supposed to be why(why(why(why(why(theMatter)))); not why(theMatter); why(theMatter); why(theMatter); why(theMatter); why(theMatter);
- hoodoof 10y agoA bug that I will blame on unclear requirements.
- christogreeff 10y agoWhy?
- KhalilK 10y agoYou could keep the second form but use a ditto operator instead; why(theMatter); why(%); why(%); why(%); why(%);
- zappo2938 10y agoWhen I'm interviewing for a job at VW and they ask this question, I can deflect with my curry skills.
- amelius 10y agoThat sounds very meta.
- erac1e 10y agocompiler error at line 1. unmatched parenthesis. ... oh don't worry it's a loosely bracketed language.
- aaronpk 10y agoThe first speaker at Beyond Tellerrand said this in his talk about 15 minutes ago. Coincidence? Or was this submitted by someone at the conference?
- pluma 10y agop(hnSubmitters ∩ btAttendees ≠ ∅) > 0
- KhalilK 10y agoReminds me of Feynman's answer[0] when asked about magnets. 0.http://youtu.be/MO0r930Sn_8 http://youtu.be/MO0r930Sn_8
- satysin 10y agoI love Feynman. He was an incredible teacher but this video has always annoyed me a little. The interviewer asked a pretty clear question (explain why magnets repel or attract depending on how you align them) but Feynman goes on a bit of a rant about how the guy won't understand if he explains things as he (Feynman) understands it and that he (Feynman) doesn't know how to explain it to him (interview) in ways he would understand. For someone as excellent at sharing knowledge it seems like Feynman just didn't want to do the interview any longer. He sounds and acts a little pissed off with the question.
- harperlee 10y agoWell for me it sounded more like he wanted to stress the fundamentality of the magnetic force, and the weirdness of it by not showing up in other familiar areas to wich he could relate to in an analogy - but I agree that he didn't do a very good job with that answer.
- kamaal 10y agoFeynman tries to explain the absurdity of trying to ask questions which if divided down to their most simplistic forms can't give binary 'yes' or 'no' answers. The issue with the 'why' questions is at the bottom most place in the the 'why' stack you need to have an axiom/postulation or at least a plain assumption, without which you can't explain the subsequent 'why' or 'how' questions. Now this a classic trick in trying to prove science as useless and propel pseudo science concepts among crackpots.
- satysin 10y agoYeah I understand Feynman's point it is just if you watch the whole series of questions he has no problem answering other questions. A perfectly acceptable answer from Feynman would have been to just explain magnetic force in a basic (high school) level. He could have made his argument about any of the questions the interviewer asked as pretty much every scientific question will get down to fundamental physics which will be beyond most people.
- iaskwhy 10y agoI don't force it 5x but asking why was the best lesson I learnt working with users/clients as people tend to talk about solutions and not the problems. That's also where my nickname comes from.
- SoreGums 10y agoYes, this! As someone who likes to fundamentally understand processes and underlying reasons. It does take some practise though to get at the heart of the matter and propose alternative solutions that work without being abrupt or like "c'mon, etc?". People higher up tend to be rather attached to their solutions even though after chatting for a bit it becomes increasingly obvious a different approach would get them what they want and often reduce human error factors and/or make effeicent :) I'm figuring this out slowly, getting "it" though.
- kidmenot 10y ago> people tend to talk about solutions and not the problems Hard to make this any clearer. To expand a bit on this, most of the times the solutions they talk about are of course expressed in terms of what they already know, which makes communication that much harder. It's a key aspect to keep in mind, and one that ideally both parties, but at least the one that's taking the job, needs to be aware of. Otherwise it's like visiting a physician and telling them the diagnosis instead of the symptoms.
- humanrebar 10y agoOn the other hand, it's frustrating to call up the ISP help line to get a bad router replaced and get treated like a troglodyte. Likewise, I'm probably qualified to diagnose when my laceration needs stitches. A conversation about problems and not solutions are frustrating at that point.
- Bartweiss 10y agoWhich is what makes this comic so powerful: https://xkcd.com/806/ https://xkcd.com/806/ The people asking the questions are trying to defend against false confidence, but drive the people with justified confidence crazy. Being able to filter for "I know you're competent, we can skip ahead a bit" is really powerful.
- jackgavigan 10y agoThe Five Whys is essentially Toyota's version of Root Cause Analysis.
- MrJagil 10y agoI preach this whenever i can in regards to social issues. Whenever one of your friends, or any person, acts in a way that you don't agree with (being rude, sleeping around etc), be patient and try to think about possible underlying causes; it's much more fruitful to engage the underlying unhappiness (carefully) than to react hastily to the immediate situation.
- elthran 10y agoWhy do you have the assumption that all behaviour that you don't disagree with has a cause of underlying unhappiness? Some people enjoy things that other people don't approve of.
- krutulis 10y agoAnd also why do some people enjoy things that other people don't approve of?
- Joeri 10y agoAnd why don't those people approve of those things?
- hammock 10y agoBecause they are secretly unhappy
- Piskvorrr 10y agoUnlikely that there's a single cause. One possibility is that people's value systems differ: do you like smoking? Do you like eating bacon? Do you like sunbathing? For each, there are people that disapprove, or would like you not to do this, or would even ban you from doing so (I could pick more controversial examples, but these are sufficient). Conflict clearly exists - but a way of resolution is not clear at all.
- anotheryou 10y agoWhy 5x? You should rather check when you reached the point that it will not happen again. Probably nobody is assigned to the task of installing filters in new machines and the next one will fail again...
- venomsnake 10y agobecause at 7 or 8 you are moving into "the supernova explosion created elements heavier than iron" category
- PeterisP 10y agoThe subsequent "layers" of reasons are fundamentally different. For example, applying this to IT when analyzing the underlying causes of a particular downtime or security breach, usually, the first 2 layers of "why" are technical reasons that need to be adressed by the relevant specialists, the next 2 layers are failures of policy and procedures that need to be adressed by the managment chain, and around 5th "why" you get to weaknesses in the organization, company priorities and values which is slow to change but valuable info anyway. Beyond that you just get to acknowledgements about how life is not perfect that is not actionable, but the first 4-5 layers of 'why' generally do lead to something that can be fixed given proper authority and motivation.
- talideon 10y agoIt's '5x' for two reasons: (a) that's a reasonable target for how many times you might have to ask it before you hit a root cause and (b) the 'five' is meant in a more metaphorical sense - you're meant to ask until you hit the root cause, but 'five' is catchier.
- jdking 10y agoAKA "Popping the why stack"
- Piskvorrr 10y agoWhy is there no filter on the intake? It was proposed, but declined by management as "too costly". Why is it too costly? Because cutting visible costs is perceived as saving money and therefore Good, whereas prevention and maintenance are perceived as unnecessary, because Bad Stuff Just Happens Regardless. Why? Because people suck at statistics ("if we can't eliminate a risk altogether, there's no point in trying, let's just forever keep fixing the fallout") and because Fixing Broken Stuff Is Someone Else's Budget, Let's Pass The Buck. (Or at least, that's the way things tend to turn out when you decide to go beyond the immediate cause-and-effect)
- adrianratnapala 10y agoI was also disappointed that the example list didn't get into people issues. But it is not as simple as prevention vs. cost-cutting. In any place, there are thousands of things that might prevent a problem, but which of them are worth doing? One of many strategies for selecting the right precautions is an evolutionary one: fix the ones that caused problems in the past.
- coredog64 10y agoThis. My management is like generals fighting the last war. They continue to push process as an answer to anything that has caused an outage instead of reworking the process that we already have.
- Piskvorrr 10y agoUnlike the Red Queen problem of arms race, "fighting the previous war" could help with one class of support problems (not always, not all problems). "Hmm, we've been here before, we know how to fix this; plus we should make it harder to get here again by accident."
- Bartweiss 10y agoI think the big question is whether you ever win the previous war. If every problem adds permanent overhead ("add a check for that issue in the review process") then you're slowly losing ground. If problems get solved ("automate that step so no one forgets it"), you're making progress even if you don't anticipate issues.
- egjerlow 10y agohttps://youtu.be/4u2ZsoYWwJA?t=6m19s https://youtu.be/4u2ZsoYWwJA?t=6m19s
- ACow_Adonis 10y agoOr you could, you know, just figure out the root bloody cause of things. Can you package that message up and sell it as a consultancy?
- talideon 10y agoFive whys is a form of simple, expedient root cause analysis. It's meant to be simple enough that you don't need a consultant to teach you how to do it. That doesn't stop people from trying to take 'shortcuts' though, and those shortcuts are what consultants prey on.
- stevewillows 10y agoI survived several years in a Six Sigma organization. The Five Whys was one of my favorite 'tools' despite the 'Black Belts' dragging the process out much longer than required. I've never seen a methodology burn through more easel pads.
- erac1e 10y agoWhy are the five whys one of your favorite tools?
- Angostura 10y agoWhy do you want to know?
- erac1e 10y agoWhy do you want to know why I want want to know?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Spooky23 10y agoUnlike most management methodology nonsense, it works and makes sense.
- WWKong 10y agoWhy are most management methodologies nonsense?
- Spooky23 10y agoWhy are most technology things gooblygook to normal people? Management is a domain with domain-specific terminology and jargon. It's not terrible, just not user friendly. 5 whys is at its core really approachable. You may need to find the guy with domain-specific expertise to answer the 5th why, but still understand how you got there.
- waxenfigurine 10y agoThere seems to be some confusion/mis-interpretation about the 5 part. This is called 五回のなぜ in Japanese ("Go-kai no naze," or Why Five Times) and refers to root cause analysis. Of course the number of times the process need be repeated until the root cause is identified is variable. Five in this case is merely a jingly mnemonic, as Japanese people are so fond of.
- icebraining 10y agojignly?
- waxenfigurine 10y agojingly!
- ethanbond 10y agoJingly – like a jingle.
- mongeone 10y agoCould it be a play on the word 誤解 [1]. As in '誤解のなぜ’. [1]http://eow.alc.co.jp/search?q=%E8%AA%A4%E8%A7%A3&ref=sa http://eow.alc.co.jp/search?q=%E8%AA%A4%E8%A7%A3&ref=sa
- Agentlien 10y agoCould you explain this play on words for someone who doesn't know Japanese?
- ideaoverload 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys
- exodust 10y agoKeep pressing next on that page to see a few more bite size pieces of Toyota wisdom. They won't change your life, but for 30 seconds or so you'll associate Toyota with intelligence and innovation.
- awinter-py 10y agoI know a certain 3 year-old who uses a similar trick to collect knowledge about the world. Not being sarcastic here; orgs can learn a lot from young children about how to acquire new skills and make decisions in the face of uncertainty. Before they can even walk infants learn to judge whether they're about to crawl off a cliff -- a skill the yahoo board (for example) could have really used.
- Bartweiss 10y agoIt's an excellent technique for learning unfamiliar domains (which is almost everything, for a 3 year old). If you don't have a strong framework to fit new data into, ask "why?" a bunch of times and people will hand you relevant pieces of that framework.
- ZeroGravitas 10y agoActually... Babies learn to crawl, then learn to not crawl off cliffs. Then they learn to walk, then they learn to not walk of cliffs. So there is a point after they won't crawl off a high drop, that they will just walk off it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WanGt1G6ScA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WanGt1G6ScA
- jsmeaton 10y agoThe first time I heard about this was from Joel Spolsky of Fogcreek/Stackoverflow. It really changed how I've approached postmortems and encouraging those to really drive deeper into problem solving. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/01/22.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/01/22.html
- lugus35 10y agoThe rule should be "Ask 'why' at least five times" !
- bgribble 10y ago5 whys is my go-to debugging strategy for truly mysterious software and systems bugs. The rubber hits the road at the point where you have an answer like "one of A, B, or C occurred" and you don't know which because none of them are ever supposed to happen :) you know you're within a clue-bat-swing-radius of the problem then.
- dsjoerg 10y ago"when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"
- ck2 10y ago1. Why is Toyota accelerator-pedal drive-by-wire code a spaghetti mess of impossible to debug code? 2. Why still? 3. Why still years later? 4. Why a decade later? 5. Why not fix it? http://www.edn.com/design/automotive/4423428/Toyota-s-killer-firmware--Bad-design-and-its-consequences http://www.edn.com/design/automotive/4423428/Toyota-s-killer... This is why my car is the last model with mechanical accelerator and steering.
- rileymat2 10y agoSometimes I have multiple solutions to a problem in mind and want to throughly investigate them, but run into a minor road block when investigating one of them. In forums, some of the most annoying threads are people that are trying to help you "solve your real problem" instead of helping with the specific question at hand.
- xyzzyz 10y agoYou know what's even more annoying? People who ask very misguided questions, because they're obviously trying to solve a wrong problem, and yet insist on doing things their own way even though it will lead them nowhere. They're much more common than people who know what they're talking about, and it's usually easy to tell them apart based on the communication style.
- Bartweiss 10y agoMore common perhaps, but not always more significant. Stack Overflow is a messy blend of the two: lots of questions want to do some strange thing, and it's not always clear why. The result is that people who don't know better are taught how to do dangerous things (like messing with the history of shared git repos), while people with weird special circumstances get second guessed and lectured. At least online, I absolutely disagree with the idea that it's easy to tell the two groups apart. Doing so is one of the bigger challenges for lots of "advice" forums.
- xyzzyz 10y agowhile people with weird special circumstances get second guessed and lectured. I'd argue that if they cannot make it clear they are in special circumstances rather than being clueless, then they deserve second guessing and lecturing. That's what I meant by communication style.
- xemdetia 10y agoWhat usually happens as one of the 'solve your real problem' people is context. You searched for a path and ended up with a path of A->B->C->D->#block->F but you only tell the group about D->#block and all the readers are guessing how you constructed a path to get to D. The destination of F is often also not clear and missing from the problem description. Even if the reader can approximate a route from A->...->D->#block->F they have a chance of applying their own experience, because often D->#block is a true dead end of the hopeful path of A->F. Too many systems have contextual inputs that only make the solution apparent with adequate context, so really we are hoping for A and F.
- jdimov10 10y ago5 is getting close to the point where all possible answers converge to: "because I / they / someone want(s) to feel good."
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- greenspot 10y agoI have just have one 'why': Why is Japan's GDP growth looking like this: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp http://www.tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp Not that I don't like posts about management techniques but from Toyota (their best years are also some time ago) from Japan... I don't know.
- neffy 10y agoIt's a function of their money supply growth - which is now extremely low. Back in the 70's and 80's during the Japanese Bubble, it was relatively much higher. Prices are a rather fuzzy function of the money supply, total production, and the supply of credit (for things customarily bought with debt). GDP is calculated by adding up prices of goods and services sold. Even though it is typically corrected for inflation growth, this doesn't adequately compensate for monetary growth, because production growth acts to reduce prices, and the two mask each other to some extent. tldr: GDP is a terrible way to measure a countries output/growth.
- adaml_623 10y agoThat seems like a disingenuous question and the generally accepted answer is on the same website you linked: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/japan/population http://www.tradingeconomics.com/japan/population Fewer people = less growth
- gregpilling 10y agoI have read Ohno's book. http://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Production-System-Beyond-Large-Scale/dp/0915299143/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462802966&sr=8-1&keywords=taichi+ohno http://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Production-System-Beyond-Large-... One thing that stuck out to me was how long everything took to figure out on the Toyota Production System. Ohno spent decades streamlining processes. The timeline is in the inside cover of my copy of the book. Fascinating read, and easier to read than some other "Toyota Production" books written by academics. Recommend.
- edoceo 10y agoThis. When folks come to my Startup events I host and ask about Lean I point to this book. Informative and an easy read.
- known 10y agoWhy Moon orbits Earth? Why not Sun? I'm struck with 2 whys :)
- kamaal 10y agoActually by some definition Moon orbits both Sun and Earth.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- franze 10y agoWhy?
- macspoofing 10y agoWhy should I ask 'why' five times about every matter?
- pklausler 10y ago"Why?" is a fine response to a statement of intent; but "How do you know that?" as a response to a declarative statement used for motivation can often be more enlightening. (This kind of epistemological work-out is handy in lots of other situations. When the JWs or Mormons show up at your door, asking "How do you know that?" repeatedly is often all that you need to do until they give up and go away.)
- CullingTheHerd 10y agoWow, Toyota being given some love?! I thought there was a blanket ban on all things Toyota so the community isn't forced to admit that all things agile are actually from the manufacturing industry, decades ago. Where might this lead? Might we be forced to consider that much has been borrowed from architecture? Or math? But then, it will be so much more difficult to feel good about dwindling list of contributions software programmers have born to the world.
- supermatt 10y agoPity they don't believe in this in real life. Why does the hybrid braking system and mechanical braking system disengage with ABS, but then only re-engage the mechanical brake, resulting in a considerable change in deceleration, causing you to have to depress the brake further to avoid colliding with things in front of you. Still waiting on a good reason for that one...
- bitchypat 10y agoIs this different than the "unintended acceleration"? I wonder what the answers were to "Why did we conceal our deadly (not for Toyota, but for their customers) mistakes?" and "Why did we actively deceive our customers regarding the safety of our vehicles?"
- kross 10y agoI believe Goldratt suggested something like "ask why until the answer is a feeling" which is much in the same vein as the five whys. For anyone wanting to learn tactical approaches to root cause analysis, lookup Goldratt and ”reality tree", profound life/career/wealth changing stuff.
- bikamonki 10y agoOh man! I think my two year old boy is set to be a genius manager! He's asking more than five why's about pretty much everything!
- lisivka 10y agofor((I=0; I<5; I++)) ; do read -p 'Why? '; done