Why Five?

Here’s a good piece of advice from the National Health Service and unusually it isn’t about Health.

NHS The Improvement Network - Five Whys

They recommend asking why five times in order to drill down to the core of a problem. It does leave me wondering what happens if you need to ask more than five whys to get to the root, but I suppose you have to draw a line somewhere.

I think this ties in well with my last post as far as the way in which you should break down problems is concerned.

Many people see a problem and then produce a solution to it, without giving a thought to the underlying cause of that problem. By asking why a few times the problem, and others like it, can be solved for good.