Looking Back to Move Forward

Principles to guide a Post-Mortem or Retrospective Meeting

The other day I got a call from a friend. We had previously talked about an event in his organization that I thought required a retrospective evaluation in order to prevent some of the same issues from cropping up again. He called asking for some tips on how to structure the conversation so it would be most valuable.

I have done some pretty bad post mortems in my past leadership roles, and have been a part of poor ones led by others as well. From these painful experiences I’ve distilled some guiding principles.

The first mistake teams make: they only do retrospectives after something goes terribly wrong. An oversize focus on failure will negatively affect open communication and a feeling of safety on a team.

If we’re being honest, every project has good and bad to it. The joyous successes still have parts where there was room for improvement, and the agonizing crash and burn from a project falling apart still likely has some things you’d want to do again. That’s key point number 1 in managing a retrospective:

1. Focus on what was good and how to repeat it before you do anything else

The overarching goal of a well-run retrospective is to make it future focused.. Whether a project went well or blew up in your face really doesn’t change where the focus should be: seeking continuous improvement in the future. There’s nothing you can do to change the past results and too often post-mortems devolve quickly into people pointing fingers and trying to escape negative consequences for their own part in any failures.

Don’t allow the post mortem to dissolve into a blamefest. By starting with what went well, even in a colossal failure, you set a tone: we’re in this together and we want to grow and continue to be better. And the easiest way to be better is to do more of what you did best. “Susan was great at keeping the project mission in front of us when she ran meetings” and “Tom helped keep a positive attitude even when I was thrashing” are important notes for future projects and ongoing task management and development.

That brings the next 2 principles:

2. When you get to parts that need improvement, focus on “what” and not “who.” Stay away from the blame game at all costs.

3. Create a safe environment for people to admit individual fault without penalty

This is where a lot of post-mortems go awry. If you’re running the meeting it’s important to hold people to “what” and “how” language and not “who” when talking about the activities of other team members. It’s 100% appropriate for individuals to fess up and say “I dropped the ball in _______ and that negatively affected our success” You want there to be an environment where that can be admitted without anyone piling on. When someone does admit personal fault the follow-up to that needs to be solution focused. “What can we do to help you avoid that next time?”

People that messed up tend to know it already. And in healthy environments they’re already kicking themselves more than they should be. Spending time assigning blame and guilt has ZERO VALUE TO FUTURE PROJECTS.

Yes, if you have a competency issue it needs to be addressed, but that should happen as a developmental/retention conversation with the individual in question and not as a part of a post mortem.

There’s also an important principle for timing the retrospective:

4. Wait long enough after the project/activity for emotions to level out from the work but don’t wait so long that memories start to become faded

If you have to err, err on the side of earlier because memories get cloudy fast, especially when things didn’t go as hoped.. The retrospective becomes a lot less valuable when people are grasping for facts about how things went well or badly, especially on a project that took months to complete. But you do need to wait a little bit. When things went well, there’s a euphoria about the success that will keep people from digging into areas for improvement. When they went badly, there’s an emotional reset that’s helpful in order to objectively address what went awry but also to see clearly what you did right that you’d want to do again.

As stated: err on the side of earlier. But that means that emotions can still get heightened. You want to stay away from lines of conversation where someone on the team is going to get defensive. It’s hard to moderate a meeting where you dig down effectively but no one takes something personally. It’s your job as the leader to make sure that people are engaging with directness but also kindness. When someone steps over the line and makes it personal, deal with it right there in the meeting. “Tom, I don’t think you showed respect to Susan when you addressed that: will you try saying it in a different way that is more about what happened than about who did what?” Encourage immediate apologies, and don’t expect everything to go perfectly. Let the emotions rise and wane, but make sure rifts get taken care of as quickly as possible

A retrospective is an amazing tool for team growth and for sustaining healthy interpersonal dynamics in ways that become a part of a strong, people focused culture. When you do them regularly after every project you’ll continue to get better at the process and the team will bond more closely in pursuing quality work together. Look for ways that you’ve successfully embraced individual talents and energies in your work together, and where your team has failed to fully use the gifts you have available.

You want to build a great team, I know it! This is a big part of continuing to grow as a team and a way that you can serve the team you work for.