Retro

retro

Captures structured learnings and persists them. The OS gets smarter every time this runs. Built on Five Whys (Taiichi Ohno) for root cause analysis and Start-Stop-Continue for action planning. The combination prevents "surface retros" - where the team identifies symptoms but repeats the same mistakes with different details.

Frameworks

Five Whys - Taiichi Ohno, Toyota Production System

When something goes wrong - or unexpectedly right - ask "why?" five times. Each answer becomes the basis for the next "why." The goal is the root cause, not the symptom.

Marketing example:

• Campaign missed pipeline target by 40%. Why?
• Lead quality was poor. Why?
• We targeted too broadly. Why?
• We hadn't updated our ICP definition. Why?
• No one owns ICP maintenance. Why?
• There's no process for reviewing ICP after each cycle.
• Root cause: missing process, not bad execution.

Without Five Whys, the team would have concluded "lead quality was poor" and changed the ad creative. The problem would repeat.

Five Whys applies to wins too. An unexpected outperformance has a root cause. Understanding it is how you replicate it, not just celebrate it.

Start-Stop-Continue

START: What should we begin doing that we haven't tried? STOP: What should we stop doing because it's not working or is waste? CONTINUE: What's working that we should do more of?

Start-Stop-Continue is the action layer. Five Whys is the analysis layer. The two work together: Five Whys identifies WHY something happened, Start-Stop-Continue determines WHAT TO DO about it.

Reusable insight classification

Every insight from a retro must be classified:

• This campaign only: a one-off factor (specific timing, specific partner, one-time event) that won't recur
• All future campaigns: a structural finding that applies broadly and should update how we operate

Only "all future campaigns" insights go into knowledge/learnings.md. Campaign-only insights stay in the retro document.

When to use

• "Run a retro on the Q3 launch"
• "Let's debrief the campaign"
• "Capture what we learned from "
• "Post-mortem on the webinar"

Inputs needed

• What's being retro'd: campaign name, launch, sprint, etc.
• Time period: DD-MM-YYYY to DD-MM-YYYY
• Outcome: did it hit its primary KPI? What was the target vs actual?
• Who was involved: marketing, sales, product, contractors, agencies

Process

1. Load context. Read the relevant output/campaign-brief/<file>.md if a brief exists. Read knowledge/learnings.md so you know what was already learned and don't repeat the same insight.

2. Gather performance data. Never fill a number the user did not give you.

   For every metric record target, actual, delta, and where the number came from. Ask for any metric you do not have. If a metric is unavailable, write [NEEDS INPUT: <metric>] in the table and leave the row incomplete.

   A retro table is a record, not a draft. Once written it is quoted back for quarters. An agent-supplied "actual" is indistinguishable from a measured one the moment it is on the page.

   Flag any metric that missed by more than 10% or outperformed by more than 20%. Those are the Five Whys candidates.

3. Run Five Whys on every flagged metric. Every "why" carries a source.

   The Five Whys is an interview technique, not a reasoning exercise. Taiichi Ohno ran it on a factory floor with the people who were there. Run without evidence it becomes a plausible-story generator, and the story is written in the same words a real finding would use.

   Tag every step with one of three tiers:

   Tier	Means	Allowed source
   [DATA]	A number or artifact supports it	Analytics, CRM, the brief, a document
   [STATED]	A person who was there said it	Named teammate, call note, Slack thread
   [HYPOTHESIS]	Nobody verified this	Reasoning only. Never promoted without evidence

   Metric: <name>
   Target: <X>    Actual: <Y>    Delta: <Z%>    Source: <where the actual came from>
   
   Why 1: <factor>  [DATA|STATED|HYPOTHESIS] <- source
   Why 2: <cause>   [DATA|STATED|HYPOTHESIS] <- source
   ...
   
   Root cause: <one sentence>
   Confidence: <supported | partly supported | unverified>
   Reusable: <this campaign only | all future campaigns>
   

   "We do not know yet" is a valid terminal answer. If the chain reaches a point where nobody has evidence, stop there, mark it [HYPOTHESIS], and name the one thing that would settle it. A chain that runs to five confident whys on zero evidence is worse than a chain that stops at two and says so, because it will be believed.

   Stop when you reach a process, ownership, or assumption gap, not a tactic.

4. Run the retro structure:

   # Retro: <Initiative> (DD-MM-YYYY)
   
   ## Outcome
   - **Primary KPI**: target <X>, actual <Y>, delta <%>
   - **Verdict**: hit / missed / partial
   
   ## Performance breakdown
   | Metric | Target | Actual | Source of actual | Delta | Root cause | Confidence |
   |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
   | <metric> | <X> | <Y or [NEEDS INPUT]> | <analytics / user / brief> | <Z%> | <root cause> | <supported / partly / unverified> |
   
   ## Root cause analysis (Five Whys)
   <Full Five Whys drill for each flagged metric. See process step 3 above.>
   
   ## What worked
   List 3-5 things. Each must be specific and reusable.
   - <Specific tactic, channel, or decision> -> <observed outcome> -> <root cause of the win>
   - Example: "Founder-voice LinkedIn posts pulled 4x engagement vs company-voice. Root cause:
     personal credibility signals outperform brand signals in this ICP."
   
   Avoid vague statements like "the team executed well" or "messaging resonated."
   
   ## What didn't work
   List 3-5 things. Each must include the root cause from Five Whys:
   - <What failed> -> <Five Whys root cause>
   - Example: "Webinar attendance was 22% of registrants. Root cause: no ICP match in the
     registration list - we optimized for volume, not fit."
   
   "It just didn't perform" is a failure of analysis where evidence exists. Where it does not,
   "we do not know why, and here is what would tell us" is the correct answer. Do not manufacture
   a cause to avoid an empty cell.
   
   ## Start-Stop-Continue
   <Actions derived from the root causes above. Every action traces to a Five Whys finding.>
   
   **START:**
   - <Action we should begin. What root cause does it address?>
   
   **STOP:**
   - <Action we should stop. What root cause revealed this is waste?>
   
   **CONTINUE:**
   - <Action we should keep. What root cause confirms it's working?>
   
   ## Surprises
   Things we didn't predict. These are the most valuable findings because they update our model.
   Apply Five Whys to surprises too - understanding WHY something surprised us is the real insight.
   
   ## Reusable insights
   Classify each insight:
   - <Insight> | applies to: <campaign type, channel, audience> | scope: <this campaign only | all future campaigns>
   
   Only "all future campaigns" insights go to knowledge/learnings.md.
   
   ## Root cause vs symptom check
   For each "what didn't work" item: is this insight about WHAT happened or WHY it happened?
   If it's about what happened, run Five Whys again until you reach why.
   
   ## Counterfactual check
   What would have happened if we had not run this campaign at all?
   If the answer is "roughly the same", flag it. Attribution matters.
   

5. Persist to knowledge/learnings.md. Confirm with the user first, and never append an unverified claim.

   knowledge/learnings.md is read by campaign-brief, social-calendar, content-writer, email-nurture, ad-campaign-writer and kpi-review. Anything written there becomes a constraint on future plans, and the provenance is gone by the next quarter. Treat it as institutional memory, not as notes.

   Three gates, all mandatory:

   1. Only supported or partly supported insights may be appended. An unverified hypothesis stays in the retro document, where it is visibly a hypothesis.
   2. Show the user the exact block before writing it and get explicit confirmation. This is the only skill that writes to shared memory, so it is the only one that asks.
   3. Every appended line carries its tier and date. A future reader must be able to tell a measurement from a guess without opening the original retro.

   ## <Initiative> retro (DD-MM-YYYY)
   
   **Result**: <hit|missed|partial> primary KPI - actual <Y> vs target <X>
   
   **Root causes (Five Whys)**:
   - <Metric that missed>: root cause was <finding> [DATA|STATED] (source: <where>)
   - <Metric that outperformed>: root cause was <finding> [DATA|STATED] (source: <where>)
   
   **Start-Stop-Continue (reusable actions)**:
   - START: <action> (applies to: <scope>)
   - STOP: <action> (applies to: <scope>)
   - CONTINUE: <action> (applies to: <scope>)
   
   **Reusable insights** (all future campaigns):
   - <Insight 1> (applies to: <scope>) [DATA|STATED] confidence: <supported|partly> - DD-MM-YYYY
   - <Insight 2> (applies to: <scope>) [DATA|STATED] confidence: <supported|partly> - DD-MM-YYYY
   

Self-check before writing anything to knowledge/

• Every "actual" in the performance table has a named source, or reads [NEEDS INPUT]
• No metric was filled in from inference. If it was not supplied, it is not in the table
• Every why in every chain carries [DATA], [STATED] or [HYPOTHESIS]
• No chain runs to five whys on zero evidence
• At least one chain, if the evidence is thin, terminates in "we do not know, and X would tell us"
• Nothing tagged [HYPOTHESIS] appears in the block being appended to knowledge/learnings.md
• The user saw the exact append block and confirmed it
• Every appended line carries its tier, its confidence and the date

What this retro cannot tell you

Close every retro with this section, filled in:

• Metrics we could not obtain, and who owns them
• Causes we could not verify, and the one piece of evidence that would settle each
• Whether the result would have happened anyway (the counterfactual check), stated plainly as unknown if nobody measured a holdout

Rules

• Never invent a metric, a cause, or a quote from a teammate. Tag it and move on. An invented root cause is the single most expensive output in this whole skill set, because six other skills read it as fact and nobody can trace it back.
• Never promote a [HYPOTHESIS] to a learning because it sounds right. Evidence promotes it, or it stays in the retro doc.
• Never write to knowledge/learnings.md without showing the block and getting a yes.
• If a past entry in knowledge/learnings.md is contradicted by this campaign, say so and offer to date-stamp the old entry rather than deleting it. The record of being wrong is useful.

Related skills

• /kpi-review produces the numbers this retro interprets. Run it first if the metrics are not to hand

• /campaign-brief reads knowledge/learnings.md, so anything written here shapes the next plan

• /brand-context owns the rest of knowledge/, and creates learnings.md in the first place

• /growth-experiment is where an unverified hypothesis from this retro should go to be tested

  Order: newest entries at the top. Every skill that reads learnings.md will see this.

6. Cross-link: if the retro contradicts or confirms an earlier learning, note it: "This contradicts the retro finding that . Updated assumption: ."

7. Save the full retro to output/retro/<DD-MM-YYYY>-<initiative>.md.

8. Offer next actions:

   • Schedule the next campaign brief with the new constraints applied (/campaign-brief)
   • Update knowledge/icp/personas.md if persona insights changed
   • Update knowledge/markets/positioning.md if positioning insights changed

Rules

• Specificity is non-negotiable. "Messaging resonated" is not a learning. "Subject line with a number outperformed without by 38%" is.
• Every "what didn't work" entry must have a Five Whys root cause. Not a symptom. Not a hypothesis. A root cause.
• Five Whys applies to wins, not just misses. Wins you don't understand are luck, not capability.
• Start-Stop-Continue actions must trace back to a specific root cause. If an action doesn't map to a Five Whys finding, it's a guess.
• "Reusable" classification is mandatory. Campaign-only insights do not go into knowledge/. They clutter future retros.
• Always check the counterfactual. Sometimes campaigns "succeed" because the market was already moving.
• The knowledge/learnings.md summary is the most-read artifact in this OS. Make it tight, scannable, and actionable.