Following up again on the “5 Whys” survey, I’m still planning on going through and categorizing the analyzing the full responses, but I wanted to go ahead and release the full text of the responses.

Download the PDF here.

Example response (each bullet is a “why?” response):

Top Reason: Lack of crisis

• Why? Employees at all levels do not have a sense of urgency
• Why? They do not understand the real drivers of the business
• Why? We do not do a good job of educating them
• Why? We don’t understand what metrics would have the biggest impact on their perception of the business
• Why? We are don’t know how to communicate them correctly

The fifth response doesn’t seem like a “why” response to the 4th response… it’s more of an elaboration on that challenge. “Not knowing how to communicate metrics that have the biggest impact on employees’ perception of the business” is more of a root cause of Lean implementation challenges than “lack of employee buy-in.” I think looking at those responses paints a much more complete view of why we struggle with Lean instead of pointing fingers.

The results make for interesting reading. It’s a lot to take in.

If you have any comments about trends or specific responses, click “comments” to participate or click on the “5 Whys Survey” link, below, to catch up on what this survey was inspired by.

About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a consultant, author, and speaker in the “lean healthcare” methodology, focused on improving quality and patient safety, improving access, reducing costs, and fully engaging healthcare professionals. He is also the Chief Improvement Officer for KaiNexus.

Tagged as: 5 Whys Survey