At the end of a busy, stressful work week we all need to decompress a little bit. For a lot of us that process starts with a trip to the pub for a few cheeky weekend tipples, and while we here at GGA happily subscribe to that too, we also have a pre-pub activity that is just as good: The Weekly Team Retro.
Anyone familiar with Agile and Sprint will know the benefit of the retro. If you’re not, think of it simply as a retrospective look back over the past week that allows every member of the team to unload, raise issues, discuss, share and congratulate. It’s simple, fun and easy to do. Here’s how…
What you’ll need:
1) A wall
2) Marker pens
3) Post-it notes
4) Paper, a whiteboard, or a wall you don’t mind writing on (ahem)…
On the paper/whiteboard/wall draw 2 columns with the headings ‘Good’ and ‘Change’. The ‘change’ column is deliberately labelled this instead of ‘bad’ to encourage discussion, solutions and ideas instead of just dead-end negativity. When this is setup you’re ready to go.
The simple rules are as follows:
1) Each team member has a couple of minutes on their own to jot down their wins and challenges from the past week on post-it notes.
2) 1 post-it per ‘item’.
3) Everyone stands up around the columns — this means no chairs, everyone on their feet, thinking and engaging with each other.
4) This happens at the same time, same place every week. We do ours at 4:30pm every Friday.
5) The retro is an open and honest forum. For us nothing is off limits and this is everyone’s chance to participate and fully feedback on their week.
6) Make sure its timed. We run ours to be 15 mins but this depends on the size of your team.
7) Each team member takes turns to put their post-it on the wall and discuss.
8) Be aware that you want to limit each discussion per post-it to keep to time.
9) When running retros for the first time, we suggest each person has at least 3 post-its. Nowadays we usually have between 10 and 20 each!
When the retro is finished you will have a wall full of ideas and honest opinions from your team. This will not only give you invaluable true insights into your business, it will also help strengthen team morale and sense of ‘we’re all in it together’.
The benefits of the retro are far reaching:
1) Celebration! How many of us go blindly from one week to the next without any sense of our company’s achievements?
2) Everyone ends the week on a high, fully understanding what has been achieved.
3) It acts as closure at the end of the working week, and helps you to fully enjoy the weekend with friends and family.
4) New ideas are introduced from all sides of the company for improving the business.
5) Solutions are identified for current challenges.
6) It highlights the positives when everything else can seem to be spinning.
7) Team members get an opportunity to thank and acknowledge the work of others.
In summary, you and your team can grow through positive action and have fun. If you can’t find 15 minutes a week to do this you need to rethink your time management — find the time! We find that the biggest winner is the team’s attitude which directly affects the quality and service our clients receive.
Here’s 7 reasons why you shouldn’t run a Weekly Retro in your business:
1) You can’t spare 15 minutes.
2) You can’t afford the ‘expensive materials’ to run a retro.
3) Everything in your business is perfect and you don’t want to improve.
4) Team morale is at an all time high.
5) You don’t want more sales.
6) You can’t improve upon the existing quality of your delivery.
7) You don’t want more, happy customers.
Those who have heard of the Slight Edge will know it’s the 1 or 2 changes over a sustained period that add up to 100’s of 1%’s that have the biggest impact, and The Weekly Retro is an easy way to help get you there.
