The 5 Whys

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From the course by University of Cape Town

Becoming a changemaker: Introduction to Social Innovation

251 ratings

University of Cape Town

Becoming a changemaker: Introduction to Social Innovation

251 ratings

This free 6 week course is for anyone who wants to make a difference. Whether you are already familiar with the field of social innovation or social entrepreneurship, working for an organization that wants to increase its social impact, or just starting out, this course will take you on a journey of exploring the complex problems that surround us and how to start thinking about solutions. We will debunk common assumptions around what resources are needed to begin acting as a social innovator. We will learn from the numerous examples of social innovations happening all over the world. You will be challenged to get out of your comfort zone and start engaging with the diverse spaces around you. By the end of the course, you will have formed your own approach to social innovation, and you will have begun to develop the concepts, mindset, skills, and relationships that will enable you to start and evolve as a changemaker. You will be able to purchase a Verified Certificate if you wish to show evidence of your achievements, but this is optional, and you may apply for Financial Aid if you are unable to pay the certificate fee. The Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship co-created this course with RLabs, a social movement ‘born-and-bred’ in Bridgetown, Cape Town that is now active in 22 countries. The movement empowers youth through innovative and disruptive technology by teaching them vital skills and providing much needed support and a sense of community. Advocating and supporting initiatives such as RLabs forms part of the Bertha Centre’s mandate. The Centre is a specialised unit at University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, and is the first academic centre in Africa dedicated to advancing social innovation and entrepreneurship. You can view the course trailer at www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcWYG64WO20 Tweet about this course using the hashtag #socinnMOOC

From the lesson

What's our problem?

Welcome to Becoming a changemaker! This week, we distinguish between simple, complicated and complex problems. Social innovation takes place in complex systems and complex systems have complex or “wicked” problems, like the kinds of problems the world is trying to tackle right now such as climate change, HIV Aids and other pandemics, poverty and inequality. A complex system has many variables or elements such as different sorts of people, material and rules and those elements of the system are interacting with each other so much that the complexity increases exponentially. So the work of complexity is about bringing yourself into the system, engaging with it, living with it and innovating in yourself as you innovate in that system that you’re working in. You can’t look at the whole system but you can look at more than one piece of it. The more you start to bring in different parts of the systems, you can then start to connect those in ways that they weren’t connected before.

RLabs: Journey of Hope Part 17:23

What is Social Innovation?4:39

Simple, complicated and complex6:03

Wicked problems4:54

Case study: Mothers2mothers8:35

Reflecting with RLabs: problems10:23

Meet the Instructors

François Bonnici
Director
Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town
Warren Nilsson
Associate Professor
Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town
Marlon Parker
Founder
RLabs

[MUSIC]

How do we get to delve deeper and understand wicked problems?

One of the tools which was actually developed by Toyota is called the 5 whys.

Some people say it's the 3 whys or the 7 whys, but it's a tool heuristic,

rule of thumb, an exercise that we can use to try and unpack problems and

get to deeper levels of understanding of the nature of these problems.

So I'll give a recent example from last year.

I was taking my son to school and run out of petrol and we're stuck on the road and

we have to walk more than a kilometer to the gas station,

to get us on road to school.

And clearly, he was very late and

we were dangerously walking on the side of the road with cars whizzing by.

So if I ask myself, well why did I run out of petrol?

The first set of whys I might say well, there no petrol in the tank.

And why was there no petrol in the tank?

Well, I didn't look at the fuel gauge.

Well, why didn't I look at the fuel gauge?

Well, I was distracted and rushed.

Well, why was distracted and rushed?

Because I'm trying to do too many things in my life,

I'm too rushed and too over committed at work and

trying to be a good father and trying to do all of these things.

And ask myself, why have I designed my life in that way?

I could start to get to some much deeper level questions of

understanding the nature of why I ended up on the side of the road

in a dangerous situation with my son.

And start to think about ways in which I might prevent doing that in future,

other than just well, I need to fill up my tank.

Yes, I need to fill up my tank, but that might not be helpful when

all all these other things in my life continue to be happening.

So it opens up different kinds of solutions and

something that maybe more long lasting than setting a note for

myself that says fill your tank in front of my steering wheel.

The 5 Whys can also be applied to kind of much greater problems.

So let's take another example. Let's take an example of literacy in the world.

So there are many children who don't have the opportunity to learn how to read.

And we can ask ourselves well first level of why,

why can't they get the opportunity to learn how to read?

Well, first answer could be well there are no schools or

teachers near to where they live.

Well, why are there no schools or teachers near to where they live, or libraries?

The next question might be answered by saying well, the government does not have

enough resources to build schools and employ teachers in these regions.

And ask ourselves well why does the government not have resources?

Well the answer might be, well education is quite expensive.

Ask ourselves, well why is education so expensive?

Well the ways we've designed education systems is very human resource intensive,

lots of infrastructure.

And so

we get to some deeper level questions about what might be a simple answer.

Well, let's teach children to learn how to read by giving them books and

someone to help them read.

If we go back to the top level again and say,

well, why do children not have the opportunity to read?

We might start answering the question different ways and start exploring and

exposing different parts of the system.

So we might say well children who are not well nourished don't have

the ability to concentrate sufficiently in order to gain the tools of literacy.

And we might be getting down to questions about biology and nutrition and access to

adequate food supplies and other parts of the economy,

that might be an important part of answering this question of literacy.

And so we might find that else working on many different aspects of the system to

look at the issue of literacy, economics, politics, education for examples.

Finally, what we seem to do in the human world is develop

lots of complicated solutions to these complex problems.

And that leaves us, sometimes,

with very inadequate ways of solving these wicked problems.

And inadequate in ways that sometimes we might be having marginal improvements to

very small parts of the systems at best.

And at worst, actually worsening situations and further entrenching some of

the root causes of why these problems exist in the first place.

In our next video, we're going to be looking at a case of mothers2mothers

to start to look at what solving what might be a simple problem

preventing the transmission of HIV from mothers to children.

But really start to unpack the complexity of the problem and

the kinds of ways that this organization mothers2mothers started to approach it.

[MUSIC]

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