Understanding the real problem, iteratively.
Popularized by the Toyota company, 5 Why Analysis is a root-cause finding, problem-solving technique. The process is what it sounds like. When a problem occurs, ask why it occurred. Look at the reasons given. Ask why those things happened. Ask again. Ask yet another time. It is diving deep to the core of the problem. It’s not treating the symptoms, it’s making the causes known, so that they may be treated.
Asking Why 5 times is what gets you from “I was late because I lost track of time” to “I was late because this event wasn’t important enough to make me stop thinking about an argument I had with my spouse”.
If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes defining the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions. - Albert Einstein
5 Why analysis isn’t limited to applications in the world of manufacturing systems and business - the practice has great potential for helping you understand yourself.