You’ve probably heard of the 5 Whys technique. If not or you need a refresher, The 5 Whys technique originated from Toyota’s production system, developed by Sakichi Toyoda, as a method for getting to the root cause of any issue in manufacturing. The short of it is that it involves asking “why” five times (or as many times as needed) to uncover the underlying cause of a problem rather than just addressing symptoms. Each time you ask why you dig one layer deeper into the issue until you reach the true cause. It works well (try it with your kids sometime ;-). Interestingly though, 5 Whys looks into the past. What if you’re not focused on looking for root causes but rather the potential impacts of improvements you might make?

Ask “So what?” 

Asking “So what?” forces a team to look into the future. “We’re going to add a chat feature.” “Ok, sounds great, so what?” In other words, what do you expect to happen next? The team may say something like, “It will increase the number of conversations between buyers and sellers in the system.” Ok, great. So what? “Well, if conversations increase in the system, people make better connections, build trust and sell more of their products to a broader audience.” Wow, impressive. So what? “If buyers and sellers are more successful using our service they will use it more, spend more time and money with us and our business will grow.”

And there it is – the rightful conclusion of the “so what” line of questioning. What we’re doing when we’re asking “so what” is for the team to put their ideas into the context of the current customer experience and identify how they impact customer behavior both tactically and more strategically. In essence it’s a conversation about leading indicators. Every team should be able to answer a series of “so what” questions about the work they want to do. If they can’t, it’s an indication that they either don’t know how their work fits into the bigger picture. Or, perhaps it’s worse. Their work may not actually fit into the broader strategic goals of the company. This should be a sign for further discussion about the value of the work. 

“So what?” questions help align work and OKRs

One of the side benefits of asking “so what” questions is that it validates the work and prioritization we’ve chosen to take on. Every item in the team’s backlog should have a clear answer to “so what.” And that answer should directly align with the team’s objectives and key results. If the answer to “so what” doesn’t further the key result goal, why are they working on it?

So remember, when you need to get to the root cause of a problem and look into the past, use 5 Whys. But when you’re trying to understand the potential impact of the work you’re doing use 5 So Whats. Let me know how that works for you.