Team Retrospective – a tool to learn at the end of an organizational change initiative

People are gathered at a table for a meeting, in conversation.

What happens at the end of an organizational change initiative? If you search online or through books and articles on managing change, there are surprisingly few resources to guide change leaders. organizational change leadership

However, the ending phase of change (the Harvesting phase in the RCA Seasons of Growth framework) plays an important role in ensuring that changes are consolidated for continuity. This helps ensure that, by handing over to a different team that will maintain and manage the changed processes and systems, the hard work of the team are not lost over time.

While the changes made by the team will most likely be visible, there is another change that will be less visible – the learning that has taken place in the team. This is learning related to leading and managing change, and much of this will be invaluable to those leading other change initiatives across the organization.

 

So how can this learning be accessed by the team and shared with others?

Written reports, quite honestly, are rarely read or acted on by others. Learning is inherently a social process, and it is through conversations about experiences that learning occurs. The Team Retrospective is a tool that supports this social exchange, bringing the team together with others who are interested in learning from and with them.

The Team Retrospective recognizes that few tasks and activities are one-time events. The Retrospective is designed to allow people to learn from the experience of working on a project, with the aim of improving how they and others approach similar work. (There is a small distinction with the After Action Review, a tool intended to inform ongoing work by the team itself).

 

Who should participate in the retrospective? As the purpose of the meeting is to capture lessons and insights, it is helpful if there is a ‘customer’ – someone who has a close interest in using the team’s experience to inform their own work. It is not always easy to identify who this might be, as there may appear to be few other teams on the threshold of starting similar work.

Nonetheless, it is important to identify stakeholders and allies to invite to the Retrospective as it is important that the insights created by the team do not meet the fate of all those unread reports.

It is recommended that an external facilitator leads the Team Retrospective process. This allows all the members of the team to participate in the review, contributing their thinking and experience. organizational change leadership

 

Team Retrospective Process

  • A useful starting point is to revisit the team’s purpose and its deliverables, which may have been set out in a Team Charter at the start of the team’s life.
  • The next step involves asking ‘What went well?’ Find out, through a process of inquiry, why these aspects went well, and express the insights as advice for the future.
  • Next, ask the team ‘What could have gone better?’ Once again, find out why these difficulties happened, and identify lessons for how they can be avoided in the future.
  • A final step is to ask ‘What next?’ This can be a chance for the team members as well as the external participants to identify how they intend to carry the insights into their next assignments.

 

While the process of a Team Retrospective can appear simple, it is not always easy to facilitate! With the team in the closing stages of its work, feelings might be running high. So space should be provided to make sure that each person feels acknowledged. It is also important to make sure that the gathering does not turn into a blaming session, and that the focus remains on identifying useful insights to inform and improve the practice of other teams and the organization that supports them.

One final thing for attention – how will external participants carry insights back to their own contexts?  The Retrospective provides an opportunity to cross boundaries – between teams and between different parts of an organization. The facilitator can help by allowing time in the session to identify and talk about useful insights, and to consider how they can translate them in their own contexts. organizational change leadership

 

 

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