Here is a great article by MIKE SCHULTZ, President of Wellesley Hills Group…

Q. Why did the chicken cross the road?
A. Jack Bauer: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I’ll find out.

The first time I heard the five questions I’m about to put forth as the five most important for services marketing, they annoyed me. Actually, the person who introduced them to me tended to annoy me in general. By proxy, I threw the important-question baby out with the annoying-lady bathwater. (I shouldn’t have done that, but I didn’t realize it at the time.)

The concept is the Five Whys. Popularized by Taiichi Ohno, the architect of the Toyota Production System, the Five Whys is a root-cause analysis technique, helping business leaders get past amelioration of the symptoms of a problem and instead address the underlying causes.

Essentially, the Five Whys is to problem solving and critical thinking as removing weeds by the root is to gardening. Fix a symptom in business but not the underlying cause, and the symptom is bound to recur. Fix the underlying cause (i.e., address the problem by the root), and you can gain lasting improvement.

In a manufacturing environment, the Five Whys might work like this:

Manufacturing Example Problem: The Production Line Stopped Again

1. Why did the production line stop? Answer: We blew a fuse.
2. Why did we blow a fuse? Answer: Because the bearings overheated.
3. Why did the bearings overheat? Answer: Because there is insufficient lubrication on them.
4. Why is there insufficient lubrication on the bearings? Answer: Because nobody oiled them.
5. Why did nobody oil them? Answer: Because we don’t have a preventative maintenance schedule.
6. Why don’t we have a preventative maintenance schedule? Answer: Silence.

(True, this example has six Whys. Number five is directional, not absolute.)

The idea is that once you’ve gotten to silence, you should be near your root cause. The temptation by many managers pressed for time (who isn’t) is to solve a problem at the first chance they see something they can tackle. Perhaps in our scenario above, the folks might have pointed a fan at the bearings, keeping them at a cooler temperature and lessening the overheating problem. Or, perhaps, someone might just switch the fuse, and then be ready to switch it again (and again and again). But they won’t get the deeper, more permanent fix.

In services marketing, too many activities are engaged, and too many decisions are made, without asking enough Whys.

Services Example Problem: We Don’t Have Enough Leads

1. Why don’t we have enough leads? Answer: Because the partners aren’t getting enough referrals to build their practices.
2. Why aren’t the partners getting enough referrals? Answer: Because the partners and the marketing group aren’t taking the actions needed on a regular basis to generate referrals and new business leads.
3. Why aren’t they doing what they’re supposed to do to generate leads and referrals? Answer: Because work expectations focus on keeping them billable, and lead generation isn’t a top priority in the marketing department.
4. Why are the partner jobs aligned so narrowly to billing, and why doesn’t marketing focus on lead generation? Answer: Because the managing partner hasn’t historically perceived revenue generation as an issue, and so across the board—from marketing to billable staff—there isn’t much concerted lead generation effort, and, in marketing, there’s no budget.
5. Why? Answer: Now that it’s an important business problem to solve, why hasn’t he addressed this?
6. Why? Answer: Silence.

I’ve seen firms stop after Why #1 and conclude that the partners need training. One year later…no discernable change in referrals generated. (Why? Skills may or may not be an issue, but even if the partners have all the skills, other factors, as we know, prevent them from generating leads.) Some firms stop after Why #2 and conclude that partners need personal action plans to generate leads and that marketing must make lead generation a priority. Twelve months later, even if action plans are built by the partners and the marketers, the actions aren’t taken. (Why? Compensation drivers, expectations of billing, and lack of budget win out over good intentions to get it done.)

No matter what might change to support referral and lead-generation efforts, if the managing partner doesn’t have his heart and actions in full support over the long term (see answer to Why #4), the initiative will head (without passing go, and without collecting $200) to the “flavor of the month” graveyard. Without leadership support, success of any kind of corporate initiative is in serious jeopardy from the get go.

Of course, there could be other Why factors that affect referral and lead generation. Perhaps the firm’s delivery of service isn’t as strong as they think it is and thus their reputation is suffering. Perhaps a major rainmaker retired and the rest of the team simply never took up the slack. Perhaps over the past five years the other firms have established themselves as thought and market leaders, and the firm is still the “best kept secret” with partners who rarely publish and speak? Perhaps the economy is down and every firm is suffering. All of those are possible root causes that would lead to different solutions.

Indeed, don’t ask the Whys, don’t get the problem solved.

In part two, Mike will explain how to use the Five Whys in a professional services environment.