When “1 Who” replaces “5 Whys”

 A company or a business unit culture is a set of group norms, behaviors and underlying shared values that help keep these norms in place according to the renowned management guru Kotter (www.kotterinternational.com). The leaders and managers in an organization play a very vital role in setting examples for either undesirable or good behavior. Some very common place undesirable behaviors have to be called out which in itself is a reflection of one aspect of the culture! I want to highlight one example using the context of problem solving.

It is usual during project execution, we encounter technical problems. In Japanese tradition and culture, technical problem solving is strongly linked to 5 Whys. To describe it in simple terms, it is an approach where the team drills down to a root cause by asking why such a problem occurred. Usually if one drills down by asking 5 times, one can get to the root of the problem. Then there is 3 legged 5 Why approach which looks at immediate problem being solved, how such a problem slipped through the verification process and how such a slippage can be prevented in the future by making a systemic change. The above is a desirable process and hence a good culture.

However in the same context, what can be an undesirable manager behavior and hence the culture? In simple terms when 1 Who replaced 5 Whys !

Many times managers want a “scape goat” and hence the “1 Who”. It is common manager behavior when problems come up to immediately start asking “who” messed it up instead of 5 whys. There are several problems with this culture. As you can imagine it most often would be that one junior engineer at the bottom of the food chain who gets punished. “1 who” invariably makes it personal and thus losing an opportunity to be objective and tackle the issue at hand.  Manager behavior gets repeated by others in the team for issues in the future. Not to mention how that engineer grows up to be a manager. The ultimate damage is to the organization because the problem solving capability gets stunted and hence it remains mediocre.