The 5 So Whats
Only read this one if you want people to care
The 5 Whys
When you’ve finished college with a plan to become a publisher but you’ve discovered that jobs in publishing don’t grow on trees, you might spend a summer working at a Toyota dealership. And if you do, you’ll know the terrible, gritty heat of sitting in a just-traded-in car on a 90-degree day, trying to scrape Hello Kitty stickers off the inside of the windshield. You’ll know, even as you sit there and sweat, that inside are no fewer than three guys named Jim, and they’re all pretty proud of the fact that the Tundra pickup truck is the most American-made car on the market.
No, it’s Japanese, you might say (these guys like to joke around). But they’ll tell you yeah the company is Japanese. But while American-owned car companies have offshored most of their production, Toyota actually started building cars here. This will strike you as a little bit ironic. You’ll file it away to think about the next time there’s a trade war. But the coolest thing you’ll learn all summer is about the Toyota Production System.
Most car factories have parking lots outside where they put all the defective vehicles until they can fix them—that’s how often a car rolls off the assembly line with a problem. But Toyota has a different way. Their cars, Jim will tell you, roll off the line clean. Because when there’s a problem they stop the line and get to the root of it. To do that, they use a process called “The 5 Whys.” It may not be the most sophisticated method of root cause analysis, but it’s brilliantly named. Even if you haven’t heard of it before, you’ve probably already guessed what it is.
Jim will cross his arms and look out the window onto the dealership lot. They call them the Darth Vader windows, because you can see out just fine, but from outside they’re an opaque black glass that reveals nothing. To follow the 5 Whys, he says, they just ask why a problem occurred. When they have the answer, they ask why that thing happened, and so forth, until they’ve answered the question five times. Simply knowing the phrase “The 5 Whys” will help you remember to at least think about root causes, for the rest of your life.
And that’s why I’m introducing:
The 5 So Whats
I’m going to take a wild guess that whatever it is you’ve devoted your life to, whatever you’re driven to write about, is important. You might be able to remember learning about it and having a moment when it started to feel like a major secret was unraveling for you. The more you learned about it, the more you realized how important it is. And not just to you—to everyone. Either then or later, or even right now, you might feel the urge to write about it. You want to get more people onto the boat.
I’ve written before about the trap of common sense, which is what happens when you have steeped in your field for so long that it causes you to see your own expertise as something that isn’t so special. It will make you think that the things you see are simply common sense—but that denigrates all of the time and effort it took for you to build that sense. It isn’t so common at all.
You may be falling a similar trap, unintentionally leaving people in the dark even as you give them vital information. That’s because they might not realize why it’s important. What’s blindingly obvious to you might only shine so brightly because of everything you already understand.
Take a look at this Bluesky post (the thread is worth reading):
The 5 So Whats is a process to help you connect your readers to the thing that’s really going to feel important to them. Whatever it is you’re communicating, it isn’t the fact itself that’s important, it’s the way it touches the life of your reader, or someone they care about. Imagine if Kogan, in his post, had said the budget “…calls to eliminate LIHEAP, the low-income home energy assistance program,” and left it at that? It might catch the eye of people who already know what that is. But he clearly asked himself, “so what?” and answered that it’s “about helping poor households heat their homes,” and then asked himself “so what” again, and answered that as well: “so no one freezes to death.”
Could he have gone farther?
I want to invite you to think about your own communication this way. Are you providing facts and hoping people will understand the ramifications? Know who you’re trying to communicate with, and think about exactly what they should pick up from what you’re putting down.
Most of my work is animated by a desire to influence the world to be more fair, sustainable, and kind. The books I publish reflect that, and I’d wager that most of the people reading this newsletter, if successful, would contribute to my mission. That’s the so-what at the base of my tree.
I want you to have all the writing tricks. So what? So when people read your stuff or hear you speak, it will resonate and they’ll tell other people about it, helping you reach more people. So what? So if you get in the habit of connecting what you know to the take-aways that will truly matter to the people you’re trying to reach, your writing, or any other communication will be more impactful. So what? So the people you reach might change their behaviors or re-imagine the way they do their work. So what? So the positive influence of this community will spread. So what? So the world will be more fair, more sustainable, and more kind. (if you’re not on board with that mission, please forget everything I’ve told you)
It’s almost time for a summer of writing! Grab a spot on the Author Club waiting list so I can let you know when I’m signing up new members.