Toyota’s Five Whys approach reveals unexpected reason dad can’t get home for dinner with kids

In my contract-drafting course a couple of weeks ago, I explained Toyota’s Five Whys approach to getting to the root of business problems. Today a New York Times reporter explains how he used the same approach to help him and his wife get home for dinner regularly with their two young children. See Charles Duhigg, How Asking 5 Questions Allowed Me to Eat Dinner With My Kids (Well.Blogs.NYTimes.com March 10, 2016).

Excerpt:

We had started by identifying a problem — we never managed to have family dinner — and by using “the Five Whys” found a root cause: Our kids were taking too long to get dressed in the morning.

Before conducting this exercise, I had never suspected that there was a connection between our morning routines and our evening mealtimes.

But once we forced ourselves to ask why after why, it was clear what needed to change. …

Id. (emphasis and extra paragraphing added).