[Note: Today's post is broken into two parts. The first is a simple introduction to Retrospectives, and an easy apportunity to apply them. Part 2 will cover how to conduct a Retrospective.]
One of the best gifts you can give yourself is to cultivate a desire for continuous self improvement. By focusing on improvement, you (theoretically) get better week after week, and year after year. And because of your position as a leader in your organization, when you become better, your entire organization likely improves through the force multiplication effect.
Are you looking for an easy way to start improving quickly? No problem! Start introducing Retrospectives into your routine.
What Is a Retrospective?
Many leaders and managers conceptually understand what a Retrospective is (especially if you work in the software development industry), but the implementation details can seem a little confusing. So if you're not sure, put simply, a Retrospective (or "Retro" for short) is an activity that looks back at a historical event or events, and assesses three things:
- What was successful?
- What was not successful or could be improved?
- How to incorporate the improvements into future activities?
You can perform a Retrospective on any aspect of your life (and in fact, I encourage it!), however this post focuses specifically on Retrospectives for recurring meetings.
Why Recurring Meetings Are a Great Place to Start
Why start using Retrospectives for recurring meetings?
In terms of organizational efficiency and productivity, very few activities have the same potential for good or evil as a recurring meeting series. Recurring meetings are any meetings that happen regularly, such as a daily status meeting or a quarterly business review.
These types of meeting series can allow people to regularly come together to solve problems, coordinate and generally act as a high-performance team.
Or, these meetings can be used as an excuse to get together in an unstructured, purposeless mess, talk about whatever pops into people's heads, steal time and produce no results!
Because of this high positive or negative potential, a recurring meeting series is a perfect candidate for a Retrospective.
How to Use Retrospectives on Recurring Meetings
When setting up a new recurring meeting series, I also like to set up a Retrospective for that recurring meeting series after three or four instances. For example:
| Meeting Frequency | First Scheduled Retrospective | Continuous Retrospectives |
|---|---|---|
| Daily | After 1 week | Every 2 months |
| 3x per week | After 2 weeks | Every quarter |
| Weekly | After 1 month | Every quarter |
| Monthly | After 1 quarter | Every half year |
| Quarterly | After 2 quarters | Every year |
The goal with scheduling your first Retro is to achieve a good balance between timeliness and having enough information. If you wait too long to have your first Retrospective, you could be wasting a lot of valuable time together in an inefficient or ineffective meeting. If you schedule it too soon, you might have an ineffective Retro because the participants don't have enough data points to give feedback on. Start by using the times in the table above, and tailor to best suit your organization and culture.
After the first Retrospective is held, I also schedule a recurring item in my task management system to remind me to schedule the next retrospective.
What about recurring meeting series that you already attend? No problem, Retrospectives are great for those as well! In short, just book it!
Schedule a time slot approximately two weeks in the future to give you and your participants time to prepare. Ensure that the meeting agenda is clear so people know what they are getting into.
If you're unsure about your agenda, here is an example agenda that you can customize based on your needs:
Hello everyone,
NOTE: PRE-WORK REQUIRED: Before the meeting, please think about the meeting series and create a list of items that you think we should continue doing, and also a list of items that you think we should change.
PURPOSE/EXPECTED OUTCOME:
Standard retrospective activity. Discuss and identify things to keep and things to change with our current meeting series.
Please note that everyone will be asked for things to keep and things to change in our meeting series, so please think in advance and come prepared. Thanks!
AGENDA:
- Walkthrough things to keep, things to change [All]
- Jointly prioritize top items [All]
- Wrap-up and summary of next steps [Mitch]
So get those Retrospectives book and next time we'll discuss what to do during your Retrospective meeting.
Take care, and I'll talk to you next time.
Image credit: "looking back" by Antony Cowie is licensed under CC BY 2.0