Who doesn’t love team mascots on motorized vehicles? The idea of a moose or raccoon or a…Phanatic on an ATV – hilarious!

Well, I do know of an example of a problem that has occurred at least once where the mascot’s ATV was out of commission. Let’s do another five whys analysis to figure out what happened.

• Problem: The sponsor did not receive adequate exposure during the game.
• Why didn’t the sponsor receive adequate exposure? Their between-innings promotion did not occur.
• Why didn’t the promotion occur?  The mascot’s ATV was unavailable for use.
• Why was the ATV unavailable? Before the ATV was to be used, the mascot saw it had a flat tire and didn’t have time to refill it.
• Why was there not enough time to refill the flat tire? Because it wasn’t checked early enough before the promotion.
• Why wasn’t it checked early enough before the promotion? There was no plan in place to check it regularly in a timely fashion.

So in the end, the sponsor’s promotion couldn’t happen because there was no proper protocol for checking the tires in a timely manner.

(And yes, there are multiple branches off of each of the questions that could show multiple causes for the lack of exposure – the simplicity of the five whys tool promotes flexibility and identification of multiple causes, but the key is that they are all directly linked to the primary problem.)