Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Churches love and support their members, volunteers, and employees.
Showing that support involves learning to be problem solvers!
Organizations that are good at problem-solving use tools to help them determine the best solution.
There are many creative ways to solve problems, and one quality tool that is commonly used in problem-solving is called the 5 Whys.
We will demonstrate an example of 5 whys.
The 5 Whys tool involves an exercise that identifies a problem and asks the question why? Five times.
This exercise allows you to quickly drill down to the root cause of a problem by asking why until you fully understand the source of the problem.
When we are working to resolve a problem, it can be tempting to jump to the first conclusion.
However, it is important to make sure that what is thought to be the root of the problem -truly is.
That is the beauty of using this tool!
Let’s look at this example.
Ok, let’s look at this problem and ask the question why 5 times?
Problem: Children’s ministry has to turn away children because there are not enough workers to comply with the teacher-to-student ratio.
1. Why? The first answer might be – All of the scheduled workers did not show up for their shift.
2. Why? When calling the workers who did not show up for their shift a few answered “I didn’t know I was scheduled.”
3. Why? The worker didn’t receive their monthly schedule in the mail.
4. Why? Schedules were mailed, and this worker was on the list to go out but didn’t receive the mail.
5. Why? The worker moved and didn’t notify the office of an address change.
Now, if you look at the answer to the first why and stop there, you may be tempted to lay blame on the worker and jump to the conclusion that the worker is not responsible and unreliable.
But as you dig down into the fourth and fifth time you ask the question, you quickly realize the problem is very different than originally thought.
One of my favorite quotes is it’s not about the people – it’s about the process and that if you put good people in bad processes, the outcomes don’t improve.
When problems arise, it is only human nature to try to find the culprit and lay blame on someone but more times than not, the person is working in a broken process that limits their ability to perform well.
Let’s look at another example, let’s say you are getting a lot of complaints that the receptionist doesn’t know the answers to many of the questions she gets asked on the telephone and continues to transfer callers to the wrong person or wrong department.
You can discipline that employee or you can try to learn what in the process is not working.
Going through the five whys could flush out reasons and possible solutions. Let’s look at another example.
Problem: Complaints about the receptionist.
1. Why? The receptionist doesn’t know the answer to questions or gives out the wrong information.
2. Why? The receptionist manual does not have accurate answers to common questions.
3. Why? The receptionist manual is not updated as scheduled.
4. Why? Changing information is not given to the receptionist to update the manual.
5. Why? The administrative assistant who takes minutes at the manager’s meeting does not pass the information along to the receptionist.
6. Why? The administrative assistant was not instructed to do so during a review of her job description.
As you can see from this example, the problem is a training issue but not with the receptionist.
This level of detail as to the cause of the problem would not have been identified without asking the question “why” – at least five times.
These examples demonstrate that once you separate the person from the problem, you can drill down to the root causes and fix the process.
Which will ultimately fix the person.
I’m a firm believer that employees come to work and want to do a good job.
In order for them to be able to do that, those who manage them are responsible to make sure the work processes make sense and help the employee do a good job.
What tools does your church use to solve problems?
If you would like more information on how to manage how work gets done in your church, please check out Church Quality: Why Excellence in the Local Church is Essential for Growth.
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