How Retrospectives Are More Than Just a Corporate Jargon?

The great American philosopher Michael Scott once posed a question as a form of reflection to his compatriot – “Why are you the way you are?”. This was and is a great thought experiment and one of the key tenets of retrospectives. Essentially “why things are the way they are?”

Hindsight is 20/20. Looking back and analysing events of the recent past allows us to take advantage of this perfect vision. Retrospectives provide a framework to do just that.

Known by many names like debriefs, postmortems etc, this exercise is simply about an individual or a team huddled together (or solo), answering 3 basic questions: What went well? What didn’t go so well? What can be done differently?

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What Is A Retrospective And Why Should I Care?

The primary goals of retrospectives is to make incremental improvements periodically and learn from the past. This is achieved by looking back at the past using the supernatural power of hindsight and get answers to these 3 questions:

• What went well?
• What didn’t go well?
• What can be done better?

While the exact questions in the framework may vary, I’ve noticed that these questions remain at the core across both creative and technical fields like filmmaking, product/design/engineering in Tech companies, Formula 1 and in personal lives of some authors.

Here’s an interesting anecdote from Ross Brawn, former Managing Director at Brawn GP and the mastermind behind Michael Schumacher’s 7 World Championship titles. When he was at Brawn GP (2009), he noticed that the staff conducted debriefs (or retrospectives) only when someone died in the trainings. They didn't have time to conduct debriefs after every training regardless of the results.

According to Ross, when you discuss to see what worked well, what didn't and sort out the problems only after someone has died, then it's too late. Conducting debriefs helps improve the process when people have time, i.e. before any crisis.

Companies, like individuals, do not become exceptional by believing they are exceptional but by understanding the ways in which they aren’t exceptional. Postmortems (retrospectives, debriefs) are one route into that understanding.

– Ed Catmull, Creativity Inc.

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How Does A Retrospective Help?

While this process is mostly harmless, the little Napoleans of the corporate workforce can use retrospectives to gather ammunition to pick fights and cause havoc at a later stage. They can use retrospectives as a way to arm themselves with what the kids these days call as ‘receipts’ that you can bring to the aforementioned fights.

In addition to the being useful for any organisation, looking back at our personal lives every now and then doesn’t hurt. Using ‘retrospective’ may be too pretentious in this case however.

James Clear, author or the best-selling Atomic Habits, employs two primary modes of reflection and review. Each December, I perform an Annual Review, in which I reflect on the previous year. I tally my habits for the year by counting up how many articles I published, how many workouts I put in, how many new places I visited, and more. Then, I reflect on my progress (or lack thereof) by answering three questions:

• What went well this year?
• What didn't go so well this year?
• What did I learn?

For a brief period, I did what James Clear suggested where I used to capture monthly and yearly summaries. My habit of daily journalling became the base of this form of review. In monthly reviews and journals, I marked each entry with either red (negative event) or green background (positive event) colours. At the end of each month, I used to add the top 3 highlights, top 3 setbacks/downers. I also add the general mood and emotions through the month.

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Final Words

“Be wise enough to learn from the past, shrewd enough to capitalize on the present, and clever enough to prepare for the future.”

– Matshona Dhliwayo

Retrospectives allows us to make incremental changes and improvements over a period of time. It allows us to look back at the past, cringe yes, but also to learn from the mistakes we made, and make a new, more creative mistake in the future.

It can also help to consolidate learnings over a period of time. Such a reflection can also highlight what we need to be careful of next time in the form of additional questions to ask.