five-whyslisted

# 5 Whys ## Concept Toyota's Sakichi Toyoda popularized the 5 Whys: take any apparent cause and ask "Why?" five times in succession. Each answer becomes the new statement; you drill until you hit a root cause that isn't itself a symptom of something deeper. In the consulting toolkit, 5 Whys complements issue trees. Issue trees go *wide* (every plausible cause). 5 Whys goes *deep* on one branch — the one you suspect dominates. It's especially useful after a Pareto step has named the vital 20%, before committing to interventions. Five is a heuristic, not a magic number. Sometimes you reach root cause at three; sometimes you have to push to seven. The discipline is asking "why" until the answer stops being a symptom and starts being something structural. ## Required output format A numbered list of five Why → Because pairs, followed by a one-sentence root-cause statement. ```markdown **Starting problem:** [The apparent issue you're drilling into.] 1. **Why?** [First-level reason] 2. **Why?** [Second-level — drilling into #1's answer] 3. **Why?** [Third-level — drilling into #2's answer] 4. **Why?** [Fourth-level — drilling into #3's answer] 5. **Why?** [Fifth-level — drilling into #4's answer] **Root cause:** [One-sentence structural cause, addressable as a system change.] ``` ## Defaults & flex points | Default | When to flex | |---|---| | 5 levels deep | Sometimes 3 is enough (the structural cause is shallow); sometimes 6–7 is needed (deep institutional cause). Push