“One organizational repair for this general tendency [to stop searching for the cause of a problem as soon as they located a plausible explanation] is a technique known as the ‘Five Whys.’ Workers at Toyota learned to ask ‘Why?’ five times before they stopped generating hypotheses to solve a problem. When they did so, they were more likely to find a root cause rather than a superficial one. For example: (1) Why did the machine stop? Because the fuse blew due to an overload. (2) Why was there an overload? Because the bearing lubrication was inadequate. (3) Why was the bearing lubrication inadequate? Because the lubrication pump was not functioning correctly…and so on.”
—Pamela Livingston, “Not Beyond Repair: How organizational practices can compensate for individual shortcomings,” Capital Ideas [A publication of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business], Vol. 1, No. 4, Fall 1998, p. 3.
RSS