When people come to me for performance coaching, they often have a high level of skill and knowledge already. They’ve usually had some level of success using their skills. Yet, something is missing that is stopping them from achieving the higher-level outcomes they’re looking for.
It could be that they’re missing some key skill or piece of knowledge that’s the difference between staying where they are and moving forward, but often it’s some deeper mental block that’s the real culprit.
One of my go-to strategies to unearth this mental block is the “7 Why’s” method. This is a variation of the “5 Why’s” method developed by Sakichi Toyoda at Toyota to find the underlying cause(s) of a problem. Toyoda’s methodology is used in Kaizen, lean manufacturing, and 6 Sigma.
The method is easily applied to much more than finding manufacturing or business process problems. It can help with goal setting, visioning, decision making, solving “Both/and” vs. “Either/or” situations, and finding cognitive dissonance or mental blocks that stop people from taking action.
Here’s how the 7 Why’s method works to uncover core issues:
Ask a question starting with the word “Why.” You can ask this of yourself or have someone else ask you.
Take the answer to this question and ask a new question, starting with “Why,” about the answer.
Continue this process until you feel you have gotten to the root of the issue.
You can find specific examples of using this technique in the Wikipedia link above, here, and here.
Here’s what’s funny: The number of questions you ask is irrelevant. The idea is to keep going until you find something new or uncovered something surprising. I’ve seen “3 Why’s,” “5 Why’s,” and “7 Why’s” as the name for this method. Forget about the number! Just keep going until you arrive somewhere interesting.
One other thing: Know that this method won’t always do anything useful for you. While it’s highly effective, it misses sometimes – usually because of the direction the “Why” questions take.
When it works successfully, though, it can be exhilarating and eye-opening and give you a whole new perspective to get what you want in life.
