Asking the Right Questions for Better Futures
- APF Community
- Aug 28
- 4 min read
by Rachel Magaji
One reason I enjoy foresight is that it makes me more effective in my day-to-day job. Startups move fast and change all the time. Every week feels different. As a product designer, I often work with teams that want to move quickly and fix problems. In that rush, it is easy to guess or jump to solutions too soon.
Foresight slows me down. It helps me ask better questions. Importantly, foresight is never about predicting the future. It is about exploring different possible futures and making choices that work across multiple futures. That way of thinking also improves how we solve today's problems.
The Churn Problem
One time, we noticed that users were leaving one of our main products. In a startup, churn is always a serious problem because it affects growth and revenue. I looked at the data, made a quick guess about why it was happening, and felt sure I had the answer. I even made a Miro board with many ideas to fix it.
But when leadership reviewed my work, they asked a straightforward question: “What is the root problem?”
That was an ‘aha’ moment for me. I was working under the flawed assumption that all our users were the same. But it turns out that people who remained were a lot different from those who left. My mistake was to come up with a one-size-fits-all solution that would have cost us more once implemented. So I went back, reviewed our analytics, and spoke with users directly. This time, I used the Five Whys approach by asking “why” repeatedly, and I found the deeper cause. In the end, my first ideas wouldn’t have worked. They would have solved the wrong problem.
What the Five Whys Is (and Isn't)
The Five Whys is a lean method, not a foresight tool. When you face a problem, you ask "why?" five times or as many times as needed to reach the real cause. If you stop too soon, you only fix the surface issues, and the problem comes back.
A good example:
Why did the car stop? The battery died.
Why did the battery die? The alternator stopped charging it.
Why did the alternator stop? The belt broke.
Why did the belt break? It was old and not replaced.
Why wasn't it replaced? The car wasn't serviced on time.
The real issue isn't the battery. It is the lack of regular maintenance.
The Five Whys was first used at Toyota by Sakichi Toyoda, but it works in many fields. In startups, it saves time and money by preventing us from fixing the wrong thing.
But it has limits. The method is linear and usually points to one cause. In complex products, problems often have many causes, shaped by context and assumptions. That is where foresight and systems tools help us gain a deeper understanding.
From Root Cause to Futures-Ready Choices
Finding a root cause is not the end. It is the pivot. Products are complex systems, so there is rarely just one cause. Five Whys helps us pull on one thread at a time. Each thread reveals a cause of the problem we can explore with a futures lens.
Here is a simple way to do that:
Name the causes: What causes did the Five Whys uncover (e.g., one-size-fits-all onboarding, weak trust, wrong user segments)?
Sketch a few futures: Imagine two or three possible contexts (e.g., new rules, AI onboarding, users caring more about community).
Test your options: Which solutions work across most futures? Which are risky bets?
Watch signals: Pick signs to track so you can adjust (e.g., user behaviour, policy shifts, competitor moves).
This futures step keeps you from building a solution that only fits today.
What about CLA and the Iceberg?
Another tool I use is Causal Layered Analysis (CLA). While the Five Whys explores cause and effect, CLA asks at what level the problem is happening. It has four layers:
Litany: Surface headlines or data (e.g., users are leaving).
System causes: Structures behind the numbers (e.g., we designed one flow for all users).
Worldview: What we naturally assume (like believing you have to standardise everything to scale)
Myth/Metaphor: The main stories guiding us (e.g., the product is a factory line, not a conversation)
The Iceberg Model is also helpful:
Events (what we see): users are leaving.
Patterns (trends over time): certain users churn after week two.
Structures (systems, incentives): onboarding is one-size-fits-all.
Mental models (beliefs): "users will figure it out";
The Iceberg Model shows that these causes sit in deeper layers. CLA gives us a way to work with those layers, especially assumptions and metaphors, so that we can create better choices.
Looking back, I should not have relied solely on the Five Whys to understand the reasons some customers were leaving. If I had used the CLA framework, I would have found not just the structural cause, but seen the beliefs and stories shaping how my team thought about the product. Often, the barrier is not the data but the assumptions and biases we are working from.
Closing Thoughts
Foresight tools make today’s work smarter. The Five Whys helps us avoid shallow fixes by tracing a problem to its root. But on its own, it is backwards-looking.
Foresight tools help you test how different solutions hold up across a range of possible futures. The Iceberg reminds us that causes sit in patterns, structures, and beliefs. CLA helps us focus on our own assumptions to see how they might change in different situations. When we bring these two methods together, we find that we are not just solving today’s problems, but we are creating more sustainable solutions.
And because foresight is not about prediction, but about choices that work in more than one future, asking better questions today leads to wiser decisions for the futures we want.
Driven by a passion for design and innovation, Rachel Magaji is dedicated to helping businesses succeed through sustainable and user-centric solutions. With over four years of experience in the startup ecosystem, Rachel brings a unique blend of skills in empathy-driven design, human-computer interaction, and behavioural psychology. Currently, she is enhancing her expertise in business strategy and entrepreneurship through an MBA program at Quantic School of Business and Technology, to become a leader in the intersection of technology, foresight, and sustainability.
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