RETROSPECTIVE

"Retro," I said, holding my thumb and forefinger one inch apart, "means 'backwards' and 'spective' means 'looking'." I made the same gesture with the other hand and then shunted my fingers together.

"Put it together, and a retrospective is a time for looking back." I said, proudly.

I love how words give you a clue about what they mean. I particularly like this root idea of being 'retrospective'. I'm not sure we do it enough. Most projects I've been involved in (outside of work) have ranged everywhere from successful to mediocre to let's-never-speak-of-this-again... and I think that's part of the problem.

In the Agile world, the idea is that you constantly look back at what you've done during a sprint or a release or a project. That means the whole team scribbles on post-its, what went well, what could we do better at, what actually happened, how did we do? Then they stick them to the wall and go through them one-by-one.

What great questions. I think sometimes we're afraid of them because they open the door to personal criticism, but in a truly functional team, it's hardly ever the case. Being afraid of criticism in this context is a bit like being afraid of falling down the stairs and choosing to live on the ground floor.

If you want to know what's upstairs, you've got to get over yourself.

And the other side of that fear of criticism is a team that's faced its weaknesses, owned up to its vulnerabilities and is able to have honest conversations about how it got there.

A long time ago, I started Five Minutes Feedback in the worship team I was leading. The idea was that the whole team had an open floor to talk about how the previous Sunday had gone, what could have gone better and what was awesome. It was timeboxed to exactly five minutes.

It lasted about three weeks; someone persuaded me to stop it because it was sounding like a whinge-fest. We never did it again. I wish I had ignored that person; the other side of the whinge-fest was an honest team of people critically analysing what had happened, celebrating their successes and encouraging everyone to be better. They needed to get through that to get there.

So, I think it's OK to be retro spective. Of course you can't get anywhere without being pro spective as well, but my thought today is that looking back shouldn't be scary or daunting. It should show you how awesome you are and how awesome you could be. And there is nothing at all wrong with reminding yourself of that.