I agree completely, thought I was the only one who saw it much like you. Eric Ries deserves credit. He knows his stuff, he worked his way up, he has a lot of great advice we can learn from but lets not just let him ride on his past successes here. This cannot be his best work. Unfortunately this does end up sounding like it came from some stereotypical higher-up that's totally detached from reality. The 5 why's? How about we save the cute names for it and call it what it is: wrapping up common sense in a cute name and selling it as innovative.
Besides that I don't like how he oversimplifies the root cause of these problems he's talking about. He's pretty much saying that all problems in your company can be traced to people. It's a person that is always the problem according to this video. That's not so. The problem can be people or it can be ridiculous processes like going through "the 5 why's" or it can be anything else in the world including a random act of god. Hopefully Ries bounces back with something better. Hopefully he hasn't peaked like the business school version of a pop star who's 15 minutes are up.
If it's common sense why do so many companies fail at identifying and addressing root causes? If making it a process with a name that's rigidly followed isn't the solution, what is?
It's not a complicated process that requires certification. It's simple enough to be described completely in three minutes.
I'd also love to see an example of a problem you've encountered that is actually pure technology, since virtually all modern technology is created and maintained by humans. I've run into lots of crazy hardware and software problems, but pretty much all of them had a human involved here or there that could help make things better.
If it's common sense why do so many companies fail at identifying and addressing root causes?
One failure that I see very frequently is that the analysis reliably stops at the invisible line between the trenches and the management.
I.e. the people-problems are very well identified by everyone in the room, but nobody feels like calling out the guy who sits on the other end of the table in your next "performance review". It just doesn't seem like a good idea.
This is something that I'd like to see people like Eric talk about.
Because either I live in my own personal bubble here or that is a much more common problem than people not knowing how to trace back a technical issue to people and processes.
In fact, every engineer I know could sing you a song about it. But again, perhaps I really just happen to live in a particular bubble far away from Harvard...
That's a really fair point, but it's also not a problem unique to any particular technique or process. There is literally nothing you can do via process to protect yourself from bad or actively harmful management. Your only choice is to try and drive them out of the company, or leave.
Maybe the problem is that 5Ys worked great and seemed like a nice process improvement because we had healthy management. I think the reality is - the unhealthy managers who could really benefit from Eric telling them how to be better managers? They're never going to go anywhere near HN or the Harvard Business Review.
Maybe we're trying to identify, or dare I say create problems that don't really exist. If its simple enough to describe in three minutes then I'd say it's very close to being common sense. What I see when I watch that video is someone trying to make a simple thing complicated. Do you really need five Why's? I think there are 4 superfluous Why's in that process. Eric Ries has the experience and education to talk about this stuff but at a certain point, after anyone has been out of the trenches long enough, they start to lose touch. This to me seems like an example of someone who once knew what was up now having nothing better to do than over think something as simple as "Ask Why something went wrong" and turn it into "Ask why something went wrong in 5 different ways" even though asking Why just once will suffice. Now, you asked why so many companies fail at identifying and addressing root causes. Well, why don't we apply the 5 Why's and see if we can find out?
He's pretty much saying that all problems in your company can be traced to people.
I shared the same concern, but having heard Ries speak in the past, I think his use of "people" here is a bit misleading.
A commenter on the video made the good point that it's probably more accurate to refer to "process problems" than "people problems". I think this video may have been flavored by his audience, looking down from an upper-management perspective.
"People problems" implies that you need to keep people from messing up. "Process problems" includes more institutional problems: culture, training, scheduling, prioritization, &c.
Besides that I don't like how he oversimplifies the root cause of these problems he's talking about. He's pretty much saying that all problems in your company can be traced to people. It's a person that is always the problem according to this video. That's not so. The problem can be people or it can be ridiculous processes like going through "the 5 why's" or it can be anything else in the world including a random act of god. Hopefully Ries bounces back with something better. Hopefully he hasn't peaked like the business school version of a pop star who's 15 minutes are up.