The Five Whys

I'm reading The Lean Start Up by Eric Reis at the moment. One of the things he talks about is something I have come across before when I worked for a while in Quality Assurance but hadn't really thought about for a long time.
 The technique is simple enough to describe.  When you come across a problem you ask what the cause of that problem is.  It was developed originally by Toyota as a way of increasing the productivity of their car factories.  

So for example you have light that doesn't work.  

Why not?  The fuse has blown.  

Why did it blow?  Because the rating was too low for that application.  

Why was that rating fitted? That was what the engineer specified.

Why did the engineer specify the wrong rating?  He hasn't been trained on that aspect of auto electrics.

Why wasn't that included in his training?  Because there wasn't enough budget for it.

Why wasn't there enough budget? Blimey, we are now at senior management level responsibilities.  That was interesting!

Potentially it is quite a powerful tool for identifying where problems originate and making sure that they are solved at the right level.  Can we apply it to more personal problems to try and raise the quality of our life?  I would certainly like my life to run with the regularity and predictability of a Toyota production line.  Let's give it a go.  

Why did I arrive at work late this morning?  Because I got distracted by answering a comment on a guest post I had written on a blog.

Why did i get distracted? Because I broke my normal habit of not turning my computer on before work.

Why did I break my normal habit.  Because I decided to leave some information for my wife in the form of a shared Google Docs spreadsheet instead of leaving it in writing.

Why did you do it that way?  Because I wanted an excuse to turn my computer on to check my overnight stats on my blog.

Why did you want to check your stats?  Err, not sure.  I seem to do it a lot and I don't really know why because it doesn't help that much.  I just like the feedback.

So that was interesting.  I have a feeling that might be a problem that really does need looking at.  It was surprising to get to it from simply arriving a bit late at work.  There might be some mileage in this.