Transcript:
Hi all! I'm Jami Yazdani. Welcome to our Impactful  Projects and Planning Microtraining series. In  

this session, we'll talk about retrospectives and  how to use them to strengthen our teams. So what  

exactly are team retrospectives? Retrospectives  are one of my favorite best practices from  

project management. Project retrospectives involve  considering what went well during a project (and  

what didn't) to determine our lessons learned so  that we can apply those lessons to other projects  

and initiatives. While there are a variety of  approaches to conducting these retrospectives,  

I often recommend that project teams and  key stakeholders at least consider the  

following questions. First, what did we set out to  accomplish? So, what was it that we were planning  

to do? Second, what did we actually accomplish?  So what did we actually end up doing? Third,  

what went really well? So what were the things  that went exactly as planned? What was easy? What  

were our successes? And finally, what would we do  differently next time? This question often leads  

us to what didn't go so well - points of failure,  delay, miscommunication or ineffective planning.  

Sometimes the things that didn't go well are  outside of our control and we couldn't have  

planned for it, but often there are things that,  if we were doing this project again, could be  

improved. From these questions, we get lessons  learned or key takeaways that are documented  

and shared so that future projects are better  informed and managed. While project retrospectives  

consider the past, they are actually very  forward-thinking, nudging us toward how we  

can improve future projects and collaborations.  And that's why retrospectives are so very useful  

and can be applied beyond our projects to  any of our collaborative or team endeavors.  

They can be used with all types of teams and  with more permanent or operational activities.  

We don't even need to wait until the end of a  project or activity to conduct a retrospective.  

We can use them to strengthen our teams and  create a culture of continuous improvement,  

but also one where mistakes become  lessons learned and not reasons for blame.  

So today we'll talk about three ways we can use  retrospectives beyond at the end of our projects  

to strengthen our teams. One pretty  simple way to use retrospectives  

is to use them more often. So instead of waiting  until the end of a project or collaboration,  

we can use retrospectives at key  points in a project or initiative,  

or team calendar. More frequent use makes them  a normal part of your team's way of working.  

We can apply these same questions from a project  retrospective to a variety of team collaborations  

and more frequently to understand lessons learned  and work towards improvements. For example,  

you could use them at key milestones in a project,  program, or initiative. Perhaps at the end of each  

phase or stage of work. Often the lessons learned  in an earlier milestone can be applied throughout  

the rest of your project or collaboration. For  more ongoing teams, such as committees, you could  

use them at various points in your team's timeline  or calendar, like at the end of every quarter,  

every few months, or annually. You could also  make them a part of key events or celebrations,  

like annual retreats or professional development  days. You could even borrow from more agile  

project management approaches and let your team  post their thoughts or answers to these questions  

anytime throughout a project or collaboration.  Perhaps keeping a running list of what's going  

well and ways to improve. Some agile teams use  Continue, Stop and Start Boards to add things  

that they want to continue doing (so what's  working well), stop doing (what isn't working),  

and start doing (so what improvements can we try).  Whether it's a Continue, Stop and Start Board  

or a discussion during a team meeting or  event, using retrospectives more frequently  

allows your team to get more comfortable  with continuously evaluating and improving.  

Our next way to use retrospectives is in our  regular team meetings. So we can take the essence  

of these questions and make them a regular part of  our staff meetings. So here's a few ideas for how  

this might look. So we can add a retrospective to  the agenda of our regular team or staff meetings.  

We could use it as sort of a team check-in, so  perhaps at the beginning or end of a meeting.  

We can ask what's going well and what we should  be doing differently. If using it with larger  

groups that may include folks that don't  regularly or really work together, you may  

want to put some context around these questions,  like asking folks to share a project or initiative  

from their smaller subgroup that's going really  well, or ask if there is some improvement  

anyone or any particular smaller team is  working on. You could also make it something you  

ask when your team shares updates or reports  or presentations during meetings. So you might  

follow up their update with something like, "Great  update! So what's working really well? What could  

be improved?" Our goal here is to inject these  questions into our regular ways of working,  

for our teams to get used to considering these  questions as they work or collaborate. If you  

don't want to spring these questions on folks  during a meeting, you can let them know ahead  

of time that this is information they should  be ready to share. Perhaps it's even something  

that they should include in their reports or  updates. Another way to use retrospectives  

is as part of our team feedback process. So we  can add it to more formal feedback processes,  

perhaps as self-evaluation questions. So if you  ask your team members to submit self-evaluations,  

you could ask what went really well and what  could be improved. It could also be a part of our  

discussion during a formal feedback meeting. So if  you meet with your staff for an annual or periodic  

evaluation, include retrospective questions as  something to discuss. The focus could even be on  

your work together as a supervisory team of two  - considering what went well and what could be  

improved. Similarly, retrospective questions  could be a discussion point in any informal  

feedback interaction. So when talking with a  staff member these questions could guide how  

that feedback conversation occurs. So instead of  offering simple kudos or constructive suggestions,  

frame the discussion around what we hoped to  accomplish, what was actually accomplished  

and what went well, and what could be improved.  I found this type of approach really useful  

when conducting interventions with staff. So  when feedback is intended to be corrective or  

solve a particular problem or issue, we can  still approach it with a retrospective frame  

and focus on lessons learned and what could  be done differently next time. Discussing  

what they were attempting to accomplish and what  was actually accomplished in regards to behavior  

can be very helpful in these types of discussions.  So that's a very, very quick introduction to three  

ways we can use retrospectives beyond the end  of a project to strengthen our teams - by using  

them more often, in our team meetings, and  during feedback. If you want more information  

on how to conduct a retrospective, download  our Project Retrospective Worksheet. This  

free download of our simple worksheet is  available at guides.yazdaniconsulting.com.

Great! So in the LinkedIn Live of this training, I  was happy to take questions from folks. I'm happy  

to take questions from those of you watching  it on YouTube. Feel free to either leave your  

questions as a comment or reach out to me directly  - all of the ways to contact me are available at  

yazdaniconsulting.com/contact. So some of the  questions that I've received about this topic  

that I'll share here on this video is, so you  know, "What if my team just isn't interested  

in participating in a retrospective?" And  I would say that this is really common,  

as folks are often fatigued or checked out by  the time we get around to doing retrospectives.  

One strategy is to let your team know well ahead  of time that a retrospective is happening, so that  

they know what to expect, they're prepared, and  it doesn't feel like something you've sort of  

added on or tacked on to the end of a project. As  mentioned earlier, I also think it helps if you  

conduct them more frequently so they become the  norm. You could also try to do the retrospective  

as a survey or on a shared document, making it  as easy and accessible as possible for people.  

Another question is, "How is this different than  other continuous improvement methods?" I would say  

that retrospectives are a tool in the continuous  improvement toolkit. Many continuous improvement  

approaches come from manufacturing and product  environments where success tends to be more easily  

quantified, and metrics more simply calculated.  Since I tend to work with mission-driven  

organizations offering services or with fewer  quantitative metrics, tools and approaches that  

can be more broadly applied and work in less  metrics-focused environments tend to be what I  

suggest. And so that's why I really love project  retrospectives and using them in a variety of  

ways. Again, feel free to reach out and message  me with any additional thoughts or questions. So  

thank you so much! If you need support leading  your projects and teams, visit our project  

strategies page at yazdaniconsulting.com/projects  to learn more. Thanks for participating in our  

Impactful Projects and Planning Microtraining  series! Visit yazdaniconsulting.com/ipp to  

view all of the sessions in the series and learn  about upcoming microtrainings. Thank you so much!