In praise of the collective retrospective
By: Farrah Nazir
Tags: Teamwork, Learning, Retrospectives, Organizational Culture, Agile

Daria Nepriakhina, Unsplash

In the last month I’ve had quite a few requests from colleagues to facilitate a ‘retro,’/‘lessons learnt’ session to review key projects recently completed.

It seems that many are eager to mark the end of the year somehow, speed up time, move on and start fresh. Understandable, of course. After a year of extreme adaptation, taking time to take stock and make sense of it all feels important. A chance to decide what to hold on to, and what to let go of.

I often perform personal ‘retros’, usually at the end of each month, or when I hit key milestones. Collective reflection offers something unique though. It provides an opportunity to review everything that happened together as a team, to air pains and spot gains, and through the lens of others, widen and challenge your own interpretation of how something went.

Prioritising time for this can be tricky. Ideally, the full team should take part, but with diary challenges and working remotely, this can feel like a big request, particularly outside of digital teams, where running retros is not common practice.

I really think they are worth the time, so in praise of the collective reflective, here are five benefits to make the case:

1. Reinforcing an effective feedback culture

We all know that giving and receiving feedback supports our personal development, yet we seem to offer it so infrequently that when we do, it feels awkward for both parties involved.

Giving feedback is like a muscle that needs to be stretched — it really does get easier (and becomes more timely, smart and effective) the more you do it. Collective retrospectives help to stretch that muscle.

With a focus on reviewing what happened within the context and parameters at the time, collective retrospectives support participants to not take things personally, or make it personal. The goal becomes about exploring ways to work smarter, offering feedback constructively, whilst at the same time, building psychological safety and resilience in teams.

2. Being more open and honest about our needs

As humans, we are not so good at communicating what we need help with, and there’s no exception in the workplace. Sometimes, it’s a fear of being seen to struggle with something that others seem to find easy. But we all know that the sooner we can surface barriers, the sooner we can address them.

When facilitated well, collective retrospectives create the space, time and the conditions for employees to voice their needs. We learn to listen better too, deepen our understanding of our colleagues, become more empathetic and work together to resolve pain points, improving ways of working so they work for everyone.

3. Getting more comfortable with iteration

We often wait to improve how we do things until after a project has ended, rather than iterating along the way. Of course, we don’t always know what will or won’t work until the end, but by leaving any sort of review until then means you’re more likely to end up with a mammoth list of things change. You all agree that you can’t change it all, so you prioritise what feels most important — the big things. But it’s often small changes that can make the biggest difference.

Running collective retrospectives at regular intervals helps to surface issues along the way, making change more manageable to take on. No one wants to see the same issues arise at the next retro, so the team feel a sense of responsibility to make the change quickly, naturally setting you into a rhythm of iteration.

4. Making the invisible visible

On delivering any project, it can be hard not to orientate our story of success towards the outcomes of the product. This is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, the goal is often to create something that has impact, but it does limit what you include as your success indicators. What’s more, if you were part of the team that delivered the many operative steps along the way, you might be left feeling a little unrecognised.

Running collective retrospectives allow you to surface these steps and visualise the full process. Everyone can see how the elements interconnect, whilst noting some of the less tangible elements that are often critical in making the end product successful, such as team mindset and culture.

5. Collective ownership of continuous improvement

We all have our own opinion about what we believe needs to change to improve things at work. But unless it’s something we have direct control over, we have more chance of seeing that change happen if others agree too.

Through the collective retrospective, we can get consensus on priorities for change, and coupled with noting the strengths in our practice, actions for change not only become clear, it’s hard to ignore if not delivered.

So how do you do it?

Here are my go-to resources for running collective retrospectives. Do you have others you turn to?

If you want to go a step further, I recommend running a pre-mortem, allowing your team air their fears and concerns at the beginning, giving you time to put in place measures before the project has even started — super proactive!