Ironstone Critical Cube

The Ironstone Critical Cube is a practical method for examining a decision from six aspects: the 5 Ws, 5 Whys, 5 Hows, 5 Whens, 5 Wise and 5 Weirds. Apply a SWOT check to each aspect. The purpose is to find what the first plausible answer has missed before committing people, money or software to it.

By Rob Tyrie. Version 1.5, October 25, 2026. The six-aspect structure is Rob's updated method. The questions, prompt and hypothetical example below explain how to use it.

Why I created the Critical Cube

I created the Cube for business planning, positioning, software-design alternatives and decisions that need more than one point of view. A team can agree on a polished answer while disagreeing about the problem. An agentic system can make that answer longer without making it better.

The Cube gives the questioning a structure. Turn the problem. Ask what changes when you look at its causes, execution, timing, consequences and less comfortable possibilities. Keep the evidence beside the answer. A completed worksheet is not the result. A better-informed decision, a useful experiment or a clearly identified unknown is.

What changed in version 1.5

The earlier guide organized the work around the 5 Ws, 5 Whys, 5 Hows, SWOT and 5 Wise. Version 1.5 has six aspects. It adds a dedicated examination of time through the 5 Whens and a deliberate challenge to conventional assumptions through the 5 Weirds. SWOT is now a check applied to every aspect, not a separate face.

This gives timing and unexpected alternatives explicit space, and makes the internal and external conditions visible throughout the analysis. That is the design improvement. It is not evidence that the method guarantees better outcomes or has been scientifically validated. Use it, record what changed in the decision and judge its usefulness.

The earlier Cube guide, prompt and recovered example remain available as a historical field note.

The six aspects

1. The 5 Ws: establish the situation

Who is involved, affected or accountable? What decision are we making? Where does the work operate? When does it matter? Why is it worth doing? These questions establish context before a preferred solution quietly becomes the definition of the problem.

Name the people, intended benefit, boundaries and decision owner. Separate the situation you can establish from the story you would like to tell about it.

2. The 5 Whys: examine the explanation

Why does the problem occur? Why do the current conditions allow it? Why has the existing response not resolved it? Why should the proposed change affect the cause? Why might that explanation be wrong?

Follow an answer with another why where useful. Branch when there are several causes. Five is a discipline for inquiry, not a reason to invent a single root cause or stop investigating an important uncertainty.

3. The 5 Hows: make the work visible

How will the change work? How will it connect to existing people, processes and systems? How will authority, security and exceptions be handled? How will performance and quality be assessed? How will it be maintained, changed or stopped?

Look for the labour, dependencies, interfaces and operating costs concealed inside an attractive proposal. If nobody can explain how an exception returns to a responsible person, the design is not finished.

4. The 5 Whens: examine time

When is the need real? When will the prerequisites be ready? When should a test begin and end? When will results be judged and a decision made? When must the system be reviewed, changed or retired?

The When in the 5 Ws locates the situation. The 5 Whens examines its timing in depth: sequence, duration, readiness, feedback and expiry. Distinguish a genuine deadline from impatience, and a useful wait from avoidance.

5. The 5 Wise: examine judgment and consequences

Why now? Why here? Why this way? Why us? Why this impact? Examine whether the timing, setting, approach and capabilities fit, and whether the consequences are worth accepting.

Ask who benefits and who carries the cost, including people outside the transaction. The 5 Whens asks about time and dependencies; the Wise question asks whether acting at that time is sensible. A technically feasible choice can still be the wrong business or ethical choice.

6. The 5 Weirds: challenge the comfortable answer

What if the opposite assumption were true? What unlikely but plausible event would change the decision? What could an outsider or a different industry see that we miss? What if we removed the proposed solution entirely? What strange combination of existing capabilities might work better?

Weird does not mean random. Look for useful surprises, neglected alternatives and consequences the normal plan has excluded. Label speculation as speculation. Test a promising unconventional idea before treating it as an insight.

SWOT checks every aspect

For each of the six aspects, record strengths and weaknesses inside the organization, and opportunities and threats in its environment. Tie every entry to the aspect and a source, observation or clearly labelled assumption. The same evidence can matter in several places; that does not make it several independent pieces of evidence.

A capable reviewer may be a strength under How. Limited reviewer availability is a weakness under When. A customer deadline is an external condition, not proof that the team can meet it. This is where the check earns its place.

Use the Cube within the Creation Model

The Creation Model is the wider model of how we create and innovate. Its energies operate in parallel and recursively, with Execute orchestrating. The Cube can support Think, Judge or Decide, reopen Ideate, or expose something Make and Do need to test. It is not a compulsory stage between two other stages.

Begin with a bounded decision and the available evidence. Work through all six aspects, revisit contradictions, compare alternatives and end with a decision or a test. Keep the analysis and its sources retrievable. New evidence may require another pass.

A reusable prompt

Copy the prompt below into an approved tool. Replace the bracketed fields. Do not put confidential client information into a service that is not authorized to receive it.

Act as a critical partner using the Ironstone Critical Cube v1.5.

Decision: [the specific choice]. Context and intended benefit: [context]. Decision owner and affected people: [people]. Constraints and deadline: [constraints]. Available evidence and sources: [material]. Alternatives already considered: [options].

Examine six aspects: 5 Ws, 5 Whys, 5 Hows, 5 Whens, 5 Wise and 5 Weirds. For each aspect, ask five relevant questions, give only answers the available material supports, and identify what remains unknown. Follow causal branches where needed rather than forcing five whys into one explanation.

Apply SWOT separately to each aspect: internal strengths and weaknesses, external opportunities and threats. Explain why each entry belongs there. Label each substantive claim as a sourced fact, observation, assumption or hypothesis. Give its source and date where available. Do not invent citations, measurements or certainty.

Then compare the alternatives, including doing nothing or improving the existing process. Identify contradictions across the aspects, dependencies, timing risks, ethical consequences and the strongest challenge to the preferred option. Explain what evidence would change the recommendation.

Recommend a bounded next action or experiment, with a responsible owner, review point, success criteria to agree, and stopping conditions. State which judgments require human or specialist review. Preserve the evidence, alternatives and reasons for the decision. The Cube is a thinking aid, not a validated scoring system.

Worked example: a client-brief agentic system

Hypothetical illustration, not a client case or a measured result. A professional services firm is considering an agentic system that prepares a consultant's meeting brief from authorized project records. The initial choice appears to be which model to buy. The Cube tests whether that is the right decision.

Situation and causes

5 Ws: The consultant needs a reliable account of commitments, recent changes and open questions before a client meeting. The client and project team are affected. The engagement lead owns the decision. The proposed boundary is an internal draft, not an autonomous message to the client.

SWOT check: Strength: an engagement owner can review the output. Weakness: records may disagree. Opportunity: clients need better continuity between meetings. Threat: contractual restrictions may prohibit some processing. These are scenario assumptions to verify, not findings about a real firm.

5 Whys: The delay may come from missing or conflicting records rather than slow summarization. Test that explanation by tracing a few past briefs to their sources. If the source record is poor, a more fluent summary will not repair it.

SWOT check: Strength: previous briefs provide material to inspect. Weakness: a baseline has not been measured. Opportunity: recurring customer questions could guide better record keeping. Threat: different clients' reporting requirements may defeat a single template.

Execution and time

5 Hows: Start with permitted, read-only sources. Show citations and disagreements. Route the draft to a human reviewer. Make access revocable and record the version used. Compare the output with the existing preparation process before allowing any further action.

SWOT check: Strength: read-only access limits what the pilot can change. Weakness: permissions and retrieval still need testing. Opportunity: existing tools may support the bounded workflow. Threat: misleading instructions inside retrieved documents could distort the draft.

5 Whens: Begin only after source access and review responsibilities are agreed. Choose a small test set, a review date and a point at which the evidence is too old for the next meeting. Do not equate producing a draft quickly with saving the consultant time overall.

SWOT check: Strength: a bounded test has a defined review point. Weakness: reviewers may be the bottleneck. Opportunity: an upcoming planning cycle gives the test a useful purpose. Threat: an external deadline can push an untested workflow into use.

Judgment and alternatives

5 Wise: An internal, reviewed brief may be a sensible first use because a person remains accountable for what is said to the client. Ask whether the benefit justifies the information exposure, and whether the firm has the authority and capacity to operate the workflow.

SWOT check: Strength: accountable professional judgment remains in the work. Weakness: fluent prose can encourage over-trust. Opportunity: source-visible briefs could make client discussions more useful. Threat: an inaccurate account of a commitment can damage trust.

5 Weirds: What if the most useful output is a list of contradictions rather than a summary? What if a better handover checklist solves most of the problem? Try both alternatives alongside the agentic system rather than protecting the original idea.

SWOT check: Strength: the team can compare materially different options. Weakness: unconventional alternatives can distract from the actual need. Opportunity: customers may value a clarified question more than another report. Threat: an unexpected operating change could make the chosen workflow irrelevant.

Next action: Test the existing process, a better checklist and a cited draft on the same authorized examples. The engagement lead agrees acceptable factual accuracy, permission boundaries, reviewer effort and stopping conditions before the test. Stop if information crosses a client boundary or unsupported commitments appear. No productivity claim is justified until the comparison has been run and reviewed.

Limits, sources and the next step

The Critical Cube organizes inquiry. It does not replace expertise, establish causality or turn an unsupported answer into evidence. Supporting lenses include first principles, systems thinking, second-order consequences and inversion. Use them where they clarify the problem, not as impressive labels.

Version 1.5 follows Rob Tyrie's six-aspect update of October 25, 2026. The earlier guide preserves the previous structure and original working-document link. Return to Ironstone Methods, explore agentic systems for professional services, sales and marketing, or bring Rob a decision worth examining.