You’ve heard it since grade school. Who, what, when, where, why, and how. It’s the 5W1H framework, the bread and butter of journalism and police reports. Simple, right? Honestly, most people treat it like a checkbox they can breeze through in five minutes. But here’s the thing: in high-stakes business strategy or data science, if you treat these questions as a simple list, you’re basically building a house on a swamp.
Context is everything.
I’ve seen brilliant analysts spend weeks on a project only to have it rejected because they answered "what" happened without ever touching "why" it mattered to the person holding the check. It’s a classic trap. We think we’re being thorough, but we’re actually just being loud.
The "Who" Isn't Just a Name
Most people think "Who" is about identifying a person. John Doe. The CEO. The customer. That’s too thin. In a professional setting, Who defines the perspective of the entire dataset. If you’re looking at healthcare data, the "Who" could be the patient, but it could also be the insurance provider or the attending physician. Each of those "Whos" sees the same event—a surgery—through a completely different lens of value and risk.
Consider the Stainton and Young (2002) research on communication. They argued that the identity of the communicator changes the semantic weight of the message itself. Basically, who says it matters as much as what is said. If your business report doesn't segment your "Who" into primary, secondary, and tertiary stakeholders, you’re missing the nuance that drives actual decision-making.
It's about empathy, kinda. You have to step into their shoes.
What Are We Actually Talking About?
This is where things get messy. "What" is the most abused question in the 5W1H toolkit. Usually, people answer this with a data point. "The what is a 15% drop in sales." No. That’s a result. The "What" is the specific action or entity under the microscope.
In software development, for example, the Requirement Traceability Matrix exists specifically because people are terrible at defining "What." Is the "What" a bug, a feature request, or a fundamental shift in user behavior? If you misclassify the "What," the rest of your investigation is a waste of time. You’re solving for the wrong variable.
I remember a project where a team spent $50,000 fixing a "technical glitch" that was actually a "user training issue." They answered the wrong "What." It happens way more than anyone wants to admit in LinkedIn posts.
The "When" Is Not a Calendar Date
Time is relative in business.
Sure, an event happened on October 14th. But was that during a fiscal quarter-end? Was it during a global supply chain crisis? Temporal context is the difference between an outlier and a trend.
- Macro-timing: The economic cycle or seasonal trends (like the "January Effect" in stocks).
- Micro-timing: The specific sequence of events leading up to a failure or success.
- Latency: The gap between an action and its visible effect.
If you don't account for latency, you'll end up attributing success to the wrong effort. You see this in marketing all the time. A campaign runs in June, sales spike in August, and everyone credits the August intern. In reality, the "When" started sixty days prior.
Why: The Question That Breaks the Model
If you’ve ever worked with the Toyota Production System, you know the "5 Whys" technique. Sakichi Toyoda developed this to get to the root cause of manufacturing problems. You don't just ask why once. You peel it back like an onion.
- Why did the machine stop? (A fuse blew.)
- Why did the fuse blow? (The bearing was insufficiently lubricated.)
- Why was it not lubricated? (The lubrication pump wasn't pumping.)
- Why wasn't it pumping? (The shaft was worn.)
- Why was the shaft worn? (Because there was no strainer and metal scraps got in.)
If you stopped at the first "Why," you’d just change the fuse. The machine would break again in an hour. This is where most corporate strategy fails. We settle for the easiest "Why" because the real "Why" usually points to a systemic failure that’s expensive or awkward to fix. It's human nature to take the path of least resistance. Honestly, it's lazy.
Why We Get It Wrong: The Cognitive Biases
We think we’re being objective. We aren't.
Confirmation bias makes us look for the "Who" or "Why" that supports what we already believe. If you think the marketing team is incompetent, your 5W1H analysis will magically point to them every single time.
Then there's Attribute Substitution. When we're faced with a hard "Why," our brains swap it out for an easier "What." Instead of asking "Why is our culture toxic?" (hard), we ask "What was the score on the latest employee engagement survey?" (easy). The survey score is a proxy, not an answer.
Where and How: The Forgotten Siblings
"Where" used to be simple. It was a physical location. Now? It’s a digital ecosystem, a cloud server, or a specific stage in a customer journey map. If a transaction fails, "Where" it failed in the tech stack is more important than the physical location of the user.
And "How" is the bridge to action. It’s the methodology. If you have the Who, What, When, Where, and Why, but no How, you just have a very expensive story. You don't have a solution.
Actionable Steps for Using 5W1H Properly
Stop treating this like a fill-in-the-blank exercise.
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Start by interrogating the source. When someone gives you a "What," ask them for the evidence behind it. If they say "The customers are unhappy," make them define "Who" (which segment?) and "When" (was it after the latest update?).
Next, layer your questions. Don't just answer them in a vacuum. Connect them. "Who" did "What," and "How" did that "When" affect the "Why"?
Finally, look for the gaps. Usually, the question you’re most uncomfortable answering is the one that holds the most value. If you’re avoiding the "Why," that’s exactly where you need to dig.
To actually make this work, try this tomorrow: Take a problem you're currently facing. Write down your 5W1H. Then, throw it away and write a second version where you aren't allowed to use any of the same answers. Force yourself to see the "Who" from a different angle. You'll be surprised how often your first instinct was just a surface-level observation masquerading as an insight.
Investigate the system, not just the symptoms. It’s the only way to get a result that actually sticks.