RCA Workshop Kit
Agendas, slides, worksheets — and the exact words to say when the room starts blaming, stalling or guessing.
Founding price for the waitlist · planned launch price $399 · one email on launch day, nothing else
CARD 8/8 · NO DATA — THE TEAM SPECULATES
CARD 3/8 · A MANAGER TAKES OVER
CARD 1/8 · CRISIS CARDS
The team starts blaming each other
WHAT YOU SEE
Names come up, voices rise. The room is hunting for a culprit, not a cause.
SAY THIS
“We’re not looking for who missed it — we’re looking for the gap anyone in that seat would have fallen into.”
1 of 8 crisis cards in the kit
Why root cause workshops fail
No metric, no data, the wrong people invited. Three hours later everyone has analyzed a different problem.
Someone gets blamed, the manager takes over, the team jumps to fixes or starts guessing. You improvise — and lose the room.
Twelve actions, no owners, no review date. A month later the problem is back and the workshop “didn’t work”.
What’s in the kit
Nine files, numbered in the order you’ll use them — distilled from real workshops. Pick one to look inside: these are the real pages.
Before · two weeks out
In the room · the session
After · day 0 → day 30
Plus 00 · Start here — one page that tells you where to begin.
Four tests of a root cause
| Test | Question | How to check |
|---|---|---|
| Time | Did it appear before the problem — or with it? | Put the date of the change on the metric chart. |
| Reach | Does it explain where the problem is — and where it isn’t? | Compare lines, lots and shifts with and without it. |
| On / off | Does removing or restoring it change the effect? | A small, safe trial — the strongest proof you can get. |
| Mechanism | Can we walk through how it causes the effect? | No “somehow”. A gap in the story is a missing link. |
USE IT WHENbefore your first workshop — 20 minutes for you and your co-facilitator: 5W2H, 5 Whys, fishbone, Pareto, and how to verify a cause.
Four tests of a root cause
| Test | Question | How to check |
|---|---|---|
| Time | Did it appear before the problem — or with it? | Put the date of the change on the metric chart. |
| Reach | Does it explain where the problem is — and where it isn’t? | Compare lines, lots and shifts with and without it. |
| On / off | Does removing or restoring it change the effect? | A small, safe trial — the strongest proof you can get. |
| Mechanism | Can we walk through how it causes the effect? | No “somehow”. A gap in the story is a missing link. |
USE IT WHENbefore your first workshop — 20 minutes for you and your co-facilitator: 5W2H, 5 Whys, fishbone, Pareto, and how to verify a cause.
Intake brief — 10 questions for your sponsor
| Ask | What to listen for |
|---|---|
| 1. Describe in your own words what’s happening. | Are they describing what happens — or already a diagnosis (“the problem is that people…”)? Log a diagnosis as a hypothesis. |
| 4. What have you tried? What protects the customer today? | Failed fixes show which “obvious” causes are already ruled out. If nothing protects the customer, agree containment now. |
| 9. Who is the sponsor, and what’s their role? | Agree it now, not in the room: open, leave, come back for the findings. |
USE IT WHENone to two weeks out: the sponsor call, three invitation tones, the pre-workshop survey and room checklists for on-site and remote.
| If… | …then |
|---|---|
| No agreement on the problem after 25 minutes | Narrow it to the best-documented symptom and move on. Park the rest — they’re often separate problems. |
| The problem is still live and nothing protects the customer | Stop for 5 minutes: agree a containment action — what, who, from when. It becomes action #1. |
| The action plan grows past five items | Stop. Vote for the 3–5 with the biggest effect on the metric. The rest go to a dated queue. |
USE IT WHENyou plan the session — and it sits next to you on the table. Every agenda also lists who must be in the room, who may be, and who you don’t invite.
Is this action strong enough?
USE IT WHENthe action plan starts filling up with “retrain the operator”.
USE IT WHENthe problem reached a customer: one chain for how it happened, one for why you missed it.
The deck at a glance
USE IT WHENthe session wobbles: all eight cards on one page, readable at a glance.
Subject: [PROBLEM] — one month on: what the metric says
It’s been a month since the workshop. Time for an honest look at the numbers:
— Metric at the workshop: [BEFORE]. Today: [NOW].
— Actions done: [X of Y]. Blocked: [LIST].
USE IT WHENthe evening after the workshop — then day 3, 7 and 30, plus a 15-minute check-in call.
action-plan.xlsx[your logo]
| # | Action | Type | Strength | Owner | Due |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 100% inspection until fix verified | containment | medium | QA lead | Oct 01 |
| 1 | Material-change sign-off by process eng. | prevention | strong | M. Ortiz | Oct 12 |
| 2 | First-piece check after each lot change | correction | medium | QA lead | Oct 03 |
| 3 | Refresher training for operators | correction | weak | Supervisor | Oct 10 |
USE IT WHENthe same day — and before every review. Late rows turn red; weak actions are flagged.
[ YOUR LOGO ]
Paint-line rejects — workshop report
4 · CONFIRMED CAUSES
Material change doesn’t trigger a parameter review — time and mechanism tests passed
7 · EFFECTIVENESS REVIEW
☐ Close ☐ Correct ☐ Re-analyze
USE IT WHENwithin two days of the workshop — under your brand — and again after the review.
06 · Crisis cards — try them
Each card tells you what you’re seeing, why it happens, two or three moves, the exact words — and how to get the session back on track. Pick a moment:
CARD 1/8 · CRISIS CARDS
The team starts blaming each other
WHAT YOU SEE
Names come up, voices rise. The why-chain stalls — the room is hunting for a culprit, not a cause.
FIRST MOVE
Turn every “who” into “what in the process allowed this”.
SAY THIS
“Let’s stop. We’re not looking for who missed it — we’re looking for the gap anyone in that seat would have fallen into.”
+ why it happens+ 2–3 alternative moves+ how to get back on track
03 · Agendas
Pick the 1-hour, half-day or full-day format. Each block tells you what happens, what you do, and which card to reach for if it goes sideways.
Half-day workshop · 240 minutes
Plus 7 decision points — e.g. the why-chain closes early: take the third branch or plan how to verify the cause with data this week. Don’t finish early.
The alternatives, honestly
Each of them works sometimes. Here’s what each one costs you.
Free. Works until the first blame spiral, or the manager who answers for everyone. Then you improvise in front of the room.
Agendas, slides, sheets, scripts, follow-ups, a tracker, a report. Fine if you have the weekends — do the math below.
Hundreds of slides built to teach the method — not to run a session on a live problem. No scripts, no follow-up.
Often right for a one-off crisis. Expensive for every recurring problem — and the know-how leaves with them.
Building your own? Do the math with your numbers — we don’t know your rate.
That’s $19.90 per workshop — and you get back the weekend you’d have spent on slides.
Who it’s for
One assumption: you facilitate root cause sessions on real problems with a cross-functional group — paid engagement or a Tuesday at your own plant.
Sell problem-solving workshops under your own brand. Your logo on every participant-facing file.
8D, customer complaints, supplier escapes — run the session your customer expects to see.
Inherited the “figure out why this keeps happening” job? Start here.
Post-incident reviews that end with systemic fixes, not a name.
Not for you if you want to learn RCA from zero (start with the free guide), need a certification, or want practice scenarios — the kit assumes a real problem on the table.
Subject: Request: RCA Workshop Kit (one-time $199 at launch) Hi [name], I'd like to buy the RCA Workshop Kit for our root cause sessions on [problem]. It gives me ready agendas, slides, worksheets, scripts for difficult moments, and a follow-up and reporting system — so I can run the session without building materials from scratch, and reuse it for every future workshop. One-time payment, no subscription. Link: 5xwhys.com/workshop-kit Thanks, [you]
Who makes this
5xWhys is an independent library of root cause analysis tools, guides and templates — free, with no signup, and your analyses never leave your browser. The kit is the one paid part: everything around those tools that a real workshop needs.
Facilitator license
No subscription, no per-session fee. Buy once, use with every client and every team.
Founding price · waitlist only
$199
≈ $4 per workshop across 50 sessions · planned launch price $399
Why $199? It’s v1 with no reviews yet — you pay less, we get your feedback. One email on launch day with your link. No spam, no list-sharing.
What you download
Questions
The free templates are single worksheets — a blank 5 Whys, an FMEA grid. The kit is everything around them: agendas with decision points, slides, crisis cards with exact wording, the intake brief, follow-up messages and a report for your client. Templates help you document an analysis; the kit helps you lead one.
No. Quality engineers, CI coaches, ops managers and incident leads use the same agendas, cards and follow-up. If you facilitate root cause sessions with a cross-functional group, it fits.
The basics of 5 Whys and fishbone diagrams. The included 20-minute refresher covers the rest, plus how to verify a cause and judge the strength of an action.
Yes. Word, PowerPoint and Excel files are fully editable; slides, the client report and the action tracker have a place for your logo. Session sheets are deliberately unbranded so they fit any room.
Yes, with every client and every internal team you facilitate, as often as you like. The license is per facilitator: if three colleagues run workshops, each needs their own copy.
The files are built for Microsoft Office. Google Slides, Keynote and Google Sheets open them, but some layouts may shift slightly. The PDFs print anywhere.
Most of it is the 30–45 minute intake conversation with your sponsor — the questions are written for you. Then you put the problem, the metric and your logo into the slides and print the session sheets.
No — and we say so upfront. It's a digital product with instant access. If a file is defective, we fix or replace it, and you get 30 days of email support on using the kit in a real workshop.
Yes. All v1.x updates are included — new cards, formats and improvements land in your download.
Soon — and deliberately without a date. Join the waitlist and you'll get one email the day the kit becomes buyable, at the founding price of $199. No spam, no list-sharing.