Stop causal reasoning at process/structure level…

When This Fires

• During any post-action review or retrospective of output quality
• When self-evaluation of a failed output starts producing character judgments
• When asking "What went wrong?" and the answer veers toward personal inadequacy
• Complements Open weekly planning by reviewing plan vs. actuals… (weekly plan-vs-actual review) with the analytical discipline for interpreting the gaps

Common Failure Mode

Character attribution loop: "The presentation was bad because I'm not good at public speaking." This feels true and explanatory but provides no structural intervention. The process-level version: "The presentation was bad because I didn't rehearse, the slides had too much text, and I didn't have a clear opening." Each of these is a fixable structural problem. The "not good at public speaking" label obscures these specific, addressable causes.

The Protocol

(1) In post-action review, ask "What caused the outcome?" and keep asking "Why?" at each answer. (2) When the causal chain reaches a process or structural factor (missing checklist, undefined criteria, wrong sequencing, insufficient preparation time), stop. This is the actionable cause. Design a structural fix. (3) If the causal chain reaches a personal trait ("I'm disorganized," "I procrastinate," "I'm not creative enough"), you've gone too far. Back up one level to the process factor that the trait is associated with: "I'm disorganized" backs up to "My filing system doesn't match my retrieval needs." "I procrastinate" backs up to "The task had no clear next physical action (Capture actions as specific next physical steps…)." (4) Every review should produce at least one structural improvement, never a character judgment. (5) The framing is: "What process would have produced a better outcome?" not "What kind of person would have produced a better outcome?"