Honest Analysis of What Went Wrong — Business

This skill runs a blameless 5-Whys retrospective after a failure (failed launch, missed quarter, bad hire) to uncover root causes and produce a change register with owned, dated actions. It guides you from precise event definition through root cause analysis, warning signs, and control assessment to a verification plan.

c-level-advisor claude-code

📂 View skill on GitHub ↗ 🚀 How to use

✨ What it does

Defines the event precisely with expected vs actual outcomes and impact.
Guides a proper 5-Whys analysis to reach a root cause that can be fixed.
Distinguishes contributing factors from root cause.
Identifies warning signs that were ignored and why.
Separates what was in control vs out of control.
Builds a change register with specific actions, owners, due dates, and verification.

🎯 When to use it

After a failed product launch, missed revenue target, or other significant business failure.
When a bad hire or team underperformance needs analysis without blame.
When you need to prevent recurrence of a systemic issue rather than just patch symptoms.
When a post-mortem is needed but you want to avoid both blame sessions and whitewashes.

🚀 How to use

Trigger: /em:postmortem

Trigger with the slash command /em:postmortem <event> or by asking for a post-mortem analysis of a specific failure. Provide the event details (what happened, expected vs actual, impact). The skill walks you through the framework step by step, prompting for information as needed. Example prompts:

/em:postmortem Q3 revenue miss

Run a post-mortem on why our Q3 release slipped six weeks.

📄 Output: A structured post-mortem report following the output format, including root cause, contributing factors, warning signs, and a change register with verification date.

📦 Add this skill to Claude Code

# 1. Get the skills repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/alirezarezvani/claude-skills /tmp/claude-skills

# 2. Copy this skill into your project (or ~/.claude/skills for all projects)
mkdir -p .claude/skills
cp -r /tmp/claude-skills/c-level-advisor/executive-mentor/skills/postmortem .claude/skills/postmortem

Skill source: c-level-advisor/executive-mentor/skills/postmortem/SKILL.md

⚠️ Good to know

Requires honest input and a willingness to avoid blame; the skill provides the framework but cannot enforce organizational culture changes.

❓ FAQ

What is the main goal of a post-mortem?

To extract maximum learning value from a failure so you can prevent recurrence and improve the system, not to assign blame.

How do I know if I've found a real root cause?

A real root cause is one where you could prevent recurrence with a specific, concrete change. If you can't, you haven't gone deep enough.

What is the most commonly skipped step?

The verification date—checking later whether the changes actually happened and worked. Without it, post-mortems are theater.

🤖 Overview, features, install steps and FAQ were generated from the project's SKILL.md on Sep 4, 2026. Always check the original source before running commands.