Whether you’re running a fast-paced start-up, delivering a high-stakes presentation or workshop, or running a small micro-business, regular retrospectives may help to correct your course.
When I worked at creative, tech and digital agencies we regularly ran retrospectives to see where we are, and what we needed to do to course correct.
Think of retrospectives as a “performance review” for processes.
After a project, workshop, meeting it helps you ask:
- What worked?
- What didn’t?
- What needs to change next time?
Here are 3 retrospective frameworks I’ve seen work in small teams.
Pick one. Try it out. Or, make your own!
- Start, Stop, Continue
Ask:
- What should we ‘start’ doing?
- What should we ‘stop’ doing?
- What’s working, that we can ‘continue’ to do?
- Working, Not working, Do, Measure.
Ask:
- What’s working?
- What’s not working?
- What do we do about it?
- How do we measure success?
My tip: Try adding another column “Who is responsible for”, and assign tasks.
- Ship retrospective
I’ve used this the most, and is my favourite tool. It asks 4 questions:
- Wind: What’s pushing us forward?
- Anchor: What’s slowing us down?
- Rocks: What’s coming up that might be a risk, or threat
- Island: What’s the goal? / What is the treasure?
Another one you could add is ‘Sun’: What are you excited about (looking forward to)?
Q: How do I use these?
Pick a retrospective, invite your team for half an hour (or more if you need it) to share and bucket reflections about a project, workshop, etc.
It’s important you allow the participants to post reflections on a shared board, and do it silently, without editing them, and without hovering over people.
Review them in a group. Co-own the journey.
Q: How often should you do this?
This really depends on the project. Perhaps you can do it every Friday, or if it’s critical, maybe even every day.
From my own practice, I ran a quick retrospective after every workshop with other facilitators.
Try it out for a month. Review it. If it doesn’t work then try something else, or even abandon it and do something that is a better fit for you / your team.
Q: How do I know it’s working?
If nothing is changing, or no-one cares, then all the retrospectives in the world won’t matter; it’s just theatre.
Do a sense check. Is this working? If not, why not? What should you try/do instead?
Remember that retrospective exercises above are NOT about blaming people, or finger-pointing; about improving processes.