Why start with 5-whys? In Simon Sinek’s TED Talk on Start with Why that became a cornerstone of his philosophy, he spoke of the importance for an organization/business to have a clear/core why. A raison d’être, a purpose, a meaning, a mission and a vision.He later added the notion of humans as individuals also deriving value from having their personal why. He further stipulated that finding alignment between personal whys and organizational whys held tremendous value. What seemed missing what the mean of arriving at or determining and organization’s or an individual’s core why. Enter the notion of the 5-whys.

A Business / Organizational Core Why

For the business/organization, we can start with core Mission and vision statements in an exec round-table, perhaps at an offsite and going around the room, starting with the member that joined most recently and ask them from their perspective why the company mission and vision matters. Whatever answer(s) they give, keep drilling down as to why that matters or is important. Once you’ve gone around the whole room/table, perhaps one more pass to ask if anything that each person heard tweaks their belief in the core why for the organization/company. The hope is to arrive at a unified and agreed-upon core why.

Informing All Business/Organizational Decisions

With each organizational change, each new product requirement, each new quarterly goal, do a 5-why’s analysis as to why it matters. If this aligns with the core why, you know you’ve found alignment with that decision. If not, two things could result: 1. you abandon that misaligned decision/choice/direction/change. Or, 2. You realize you’ve arrived at something important that warrants tweaking to company/org core why. That makes the core why and raison d’etre a living and evolving thing. Jim Collins attributes Pandora’s failure to making business choices through voting but failing to ensure there was alignment with a core objective and hence, the eforts went all over the map in different directions.

Starting and Continuing with 5-Whys

The 5 Hows

Once you have an established core Why, you can start there (a la start with why) and say, how do we move towards that. That might result in a let’s do this. The next how should then be, and then how do we make that happen, … The final how might be how do we take the first or next MVP incremental step in that direction using which hypothesis to validate it is solving for the how and why objective.

One the Personal Front

As an individual, there are various places we could start a similar 5-whys

  • Why did we choose to study what we majored in?
  • Why did we choose our previous and current jobs?
  • Why did we choose the role we are in?
  • Why did we choose the partner we have?
  • Why did we choose the close friends that we have?
  • Why did we choose our extra-curricular activies (sports, hobbies, etc) we have?
  • Why did we choose to live in the city /town we live in?
  • Why did we choose the house/apartment we live in?

Doing a 5-whys on any of these has value. Doing it on as many as possible will likely have more value. Finding common ground between the core whys on each vector could lead to another round of 5-whys (why did we choose a for this, c for than, m for this, and y for that)?

Once we’ve establish our core why, we can use it, much like a business or organization to do a 5-whys on any choice or decision we face to inform if it’s aligned and we proceed. Or, it’s it not aligned, we abandon or tweak our core why definition/substance.

When thinking about what lies ahead, we can likewise employ a 5-hows approach.

Dopamine in motivational control: rewarding, aversive, and alerting

Dopaminergic orienting mechanisms involve the release of dopamine from the midbrain (VTA/SNc) to steer attention and physical orientation toward salient, novel, or reward-associated stimuliThis system signals when to update spatial maps during movement, acts as an “alerting” signal for unexpected events, and mediates involuntary attentional capture by valuable stimuli. 

Key Aspects of Dopaminergic Orienting

  • Alerting Signal (Unexpected Events): Dopamine neurons provide a short-latency “alerting” signal in response to unexpected sensory cues (e.g., lights, sounds). This signal notifies the brain of potentially important new information, regardless of whether it is rewarding or aversive.
  • Value-Based Attention (Reward Association): Dopamine mediates the “attention-grabbing” quality of stimuli previously associated with rewards. Even when a reward is absent, dopamine signaling (specifically in the striatum) triggers automatic, involuntary orienting toward these formerly rewarded cues.
  • Spatial Map Plasticity (Movement-Linked): Dopamine release, particularly in the brain’s spatial navigation networks (e.g., in Drosophila studies), peaks during active orienting movements (e.g., turning). This acts as a “when-to-learn” signal, updating spatial maps only when the animal is actively gathering new orientation data.
  • Neural Circuits: The process involves projections from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) to areas like the nucleus accumbens, caudate, and posterior putamen, where they modulate attention, motivation, and motor response.
  • Behavioral Modulation: These mechanisms are distinct from slower, long-latency reward signaling. They prioritize speed, enabling fast, automatic shifts in attention and physical orientation toward relevant environmental stimuli. 

Dopaminergic signaling helps filter the environment, ensuring that limited attentional resources are directed toward, and neural maps updated by, the most relevant, novel, or high-value information.