October 9, 2026
Hi Everyone,
Aino Corry has spent more than 15 years helping teams run better retrospectives: meetings where the team looks back at what worked, what didn’t, and what needs to change.
One of the most common mistakes, she says, is jumping straight from complaints to solutions. She calls this the Wheel of Fortune — because, without understanding what caused the problem, teams are essentially guessing at the fix.
Today we're sharing four questions that help teams get from problem to root cause to solution.
Find the cause before you pick a fix
Corry gives the example of a team that complained about having too many meetings. They landed on the solution of no meetings on Wednesdays and none after lunch.
However, Corry says that the real problem may have been how well the meetings were run, and if so, having fewer of them doesn’t address the underlying issue at all.
It’s an easy trap to fall into. Acting quickly feels productive, but a complaint only tells you what people have noticed, not why it’s happening. You need to understand the cause before you come up with a solution.
Four questions that reveal the root cause:
1. What happened? Each person names one thing that slowed the work down. Describe it as an event, such as a deadline that moved, and keep it factual and specific. Avoid making assumptions about why it happened or who was responsible.
2. Why did it happen? Choose one or two issues the group cares about most. For each one, keep asking “Why?” until you uncover a cause the team can actually address. This is sometimes known as the “5 whys” technique.
3. Which causes can we change? Sort each cause into three groups:
- Things the team can change
- Things the team can influence
- Things the team can't change
Focus the discussion on the first two. Repeatedly discussing something the team has no power to change usually leads to frustration rather than action.
Corry describes one team that repeatedly discussed the poor quality of an external supplier’s software. They had already raised the issue with management, but nothing changed. Each retrospective simply brought them back to the same frustration.
For issues like these, document them, raise them with whoever does have the power to act, and take them off the retrospective agenda. That leaves more time for problems the team can actually do something about.
4. What one change will we make, and who owns it? Choose one cause the team can address and agree on a concrete action. Give it one owner and a deadline. For example: “Sam creates an agenda template for weekly meetings by Friday.”
Go deeper
👉 Martin Fowler's site: Retrospectives Antipatterns — read Corry's full article for the Wheel of Fortune and the vendor-software story, plus a third common mistake we didn’t cover.
👉 Institute for Healthcare Improvement: 5 Whys: Finding the Root Cause — use it for step-by-step instructions, a worked example, and a printable template for question 2.
👉 Atlassian: Sprint Retrospectives — read this for a free run sheet and templates for the whole meeting, including how to set a tone that focuses on fixing instead of blaming.
Coming up on Monday
The next issue is for the manager who misses their old job, with three checks that tell you whether to go back.
Have a great weekend!