By asking the question ‘why?’ you can peel away the layers of an issue to get to its root-cause. It can uncover the real cause of a problem that has occurred during a project or programme. It not only uncovers glitches in the delivery, but also issues with organisational or team processes.
The causes of a problem often lead you to ask other questions. You may need to ask ‘why’ more than five times to get to the origin of a problem.
Top Tips;
- Avoid assumptions and encourage your team to keep drilling down to the real root-cause of a problem
- Focus your resources in the correct areas and make sure the right action is taken
- Ground your answers in fact, avoiding listing events that might have happened
‘Five whys’ – a practical example – what do you think is the root-cause?
The root-cause here is the lack of a schedule for equipment maintenance .
Setting up a proper maintenance schedule helps ensure that patients should never again be late due to faulty equipment. This reduces delays and improves flow. If you simply repair the trolley or do a one-off safety rail check, the problem may happen again sometime in the future.
This analysis technique uses counter-measures, rather than solutions. This makes sure that action(s) prevent the problem arising again, rather than a solution which just deals with the situation.
