Keep 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.
“Ask 'why' five times about every matter”
71–80 of 172 posts
Re: “Ask 'why' five times about every matter”
#72Why 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, le…
Just as "Five" is really just a rule of thumb as pointed out by other people, "Why" is really just a rule of thumb too. "What can we do to prevent the underlying problem?" just isn't as catchy, but it's closer to what you should be really asking.
"People suck at statistics" is not an answer to that question. "Train people" is an answer, but only an answer. You've also got "something to make us more robust to bad statistics" and, no sarcasm, "trust the statistics less in the future", and several other such things. Another one I'd consider, for instance, is that if some set of statistics is truly bringing negative value to the process, stop collecting them.
Also, "we've got fundamental management issues" can be a valid answer. If you're in an engineering environment but your management isn't able to work that way, try to do something about it. In the end, it is not out of the question for the process to produce "I need a different job", though I think one has a professional obligation to at least try to fix the underlying problems first.
This is a process in which neither blind idealism nor blind cynicism is the road to success. If you're just getting cynical answers, that's not a reflection of the process, that's a reflection of your cynicism being too strong. Tone it down. Don't get rid of it. I would never suggest getting rid of it. But tone it down. And get more specific than "people generally suck" or anything that is simply a variant on that.
Re: “Ask 'why' five times about every matter”
#73I 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.
Re: “Ask 'why' five times about every matter”
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could 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
Could you explain this play on words for someone who doesn't know Japanese?
I'm guessing but 誤解 => 'go kai', which means 'misunderstanding'. That sounds like 五回 => 'go kai', which means five times.
In Japanese, you often encounter words/phrases that sound more or less the same but are written differently.
Re: “Ask 'why' five times about every matter”
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could 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
Could you explain this play on words for someone who doesn't know Japanese?
Both the original Japanese (meaning 5 times) and possibly pun Japanese (meaning misunderstanding) are read as 'gokai'.
Re: “Ask 'why' five times about every matter”
#76The 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
Re: “Ask 'why' five times about every matter”
#77The rule should be "Ask 'why' at least five times" !
Re: “Ask 'why' five times about every matter”
#78"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).
But sometimes the whys do not converge; for example, in the case of a vicious cycle
But then you can recognize that situation, and ask why it occurs?
Re: “Ask 'why' five times about every matter”
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I usually ask, "What problem are you trying to solve?", to anyone who brings me a solution instead of a problem, but it comes down to the same thing. I guess I don't even really know which question would be more efficient at getting the real answer.
I wonder how that sits with "Don't bring me problems—bring me solutions" that I occasionally hear from non-technical managers...
There is a need for both approaches. If you have the expertise to be able to diagnose the problem, asking for the problem to be solved is the right approach. When dealing with non-technical issues, where the person coming to the manager is familiar with the process, it makes sense to ask them to bring solutions (as a first step) instead of imposing something on them.
Re: “Ask 'why' five times about every matter”
#805 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.