The importance of Why

The link between the two worlds might not be obvious but there is one entrepreneur that links them together. Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota Industries, developed the concept of the 5 Whys. His approach was that when a problem occurs ask why five times and that will lead you to the root cause of the problem. This simple and effective technique have now reached far outside the Toyota sphere and form part of standard quality systems like Kaizen and six sigma etc.

So what has this got to do with negotiations? It is a very useful tool to apply in a negotiation setting as well as it assists you to get to the true interests of your counterpart instead of just being told their position(s) and as such you open up the negotiation for more opportunities.

To put it in context, your counterpart might state a position of requiring delivery in just one month, something which is difficult for you to accommodate. By utilising the 5 Whys your counterpart might tell you it is because of budget issues, production requirements or maybe something with optimising shipping routes. Either way, by you getting to the core of things you have a much better opportunity at coming up with a solution satisfying both parties.