The Metiss Group's Blog

In 2012 there was a television commercial for Hyundai Sonata featuring a little boy following a man doing yard work and asking him “why?” about various questions (see it here).  At the end of the commercial, the man looks at his neighbor and then to the boy where he says, “Why don’t you go ask your Dad?”

It seems somewhere between childhood and management, leaders stop asking “why.”

The 5 Whys is a formal iterative question-asking technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem. The primary goal of the technique is to determine the root cause of a defect or problem. The “5” in the name derives from an empirical observation on the number of iterations typically required to resolve the problem.

Great leaders are always trying to understand what’s going on. Empower your team to ask “why” and you’ll have more success.

This entry was posted on April 7, 2014 at 5:00 am and is filed under Leadership, Performance Acceleration. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.