We’ve written previous articles about how sculpting a culture that resonates with positivity and fuels ongoing growth is the secret sauce to organizational success (here and here).

And one of my favorite quotes about culture from Pat Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, helps fuel my dedication to positive team culture: “Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.” 

Our team is dedicated to a positive team culture and we decided to include a “Culture” focus area in our strategic plan this year. Now that we’re at the end of 2023, we’ve found an enlightening tactic that you may be interested in using for your team. It has benefited our team this year and we look forward to evolving it in 2024.

This tactic is a team retrospective meeting (we call it a “team retro”). It’s a dedicated meeting each month where victories are celebrated and potential avenues for improvement are uncovered.

This article is your backstage pass on how we conduct a team retro meeting and how it contributes to engagement and positive culture.

Overview

Team retro meetings last 45 minutes and are designed to accomplish a dual purpose within our organization. The first objective is to celebrate achievements and successes through "Shoutouts," while the second is to address areas for growth concerning the organization's structure, culture, and operations, facilitated by "Improvements." The participation of everyone within the organization highlights the inclusivity of team retros.

Because we included a focus area of “Culture” in our strategic plan with corresponding goals, someone on our team champions this meeting. Goal champions ensure that we are all prepared for the meeting and remind us to submit points of discussion. 

Point of Discussion

When you work on a busy team, you likely come across things that can be improved, like processes or projects. Additionally, we found that we wanted to publicly praise others on our team for a job well done but also worry about continuously sending email messages that contribute to inbox overload. But how can you simply capture these topics to share?

Enter our online tools where our team members can document this information at any time. 

Improvements: Suggestions for team growth can be submitted through a webform we set up specifically to track ideas for discussion during these meetings. These suggestions are then reviewed through our project management system.

Shoutouts: Acknowledgments and customer success stories can be shared through another online platform. 

Our goal champions ensure this information is organized on the agenda before the upcoming team retro meeting.

The ability to submit these two items helps us feel like we contribute to the team as a whole and helps us all engage more during the meeting.

Agenda

This article provides the perfect opportunity to remind you that every meeting your team hosts should have an agenda that includes the topics to discuss and key outcomes. The agenda for our team retro meeting usually includes the following:

Review

• Shoutouts – Team members review the past month’s words of encouragement or customer success stories. 

• Past Action Items and Improvements – The facilitator provides an overview of the progress made on identified tasks from previous retrospectives and the current status of the Improvements project.

• Review of values and practices, if necessary. We don’t do this every meeting.

• Current Agenda –  An outline of the meeting's topic or topics is presented.

Discussion

The retro facilitator hands over leadership to a team member two weeks before the retrospective, allowing them to lead discussions on a topic they submitted as an improvement. We typically review one improvement per meeting. 

Action Items

The facilitator of the meeting documents actionable steps based on the discussions held during the retrospective, ensuring that identified areas for improvement are addressed.

Following this agenda ensures that our team members’ voices are heard which helps build our positive culture. The meaningful discussions contribute to changes that build on our accomplishments and successes.

Improvement

As we reflect at the end of the year, we constantly try to improve our processes. We discovered that conducting these retros across the entire organization limited our conversation options too much because we couldn’t go in-depth on certain topics such as improvements without alienating some people in the conversation. Moving forward, we plan to apply this format to a more focused set of teams.

Conclusion

Team retrospectives provide a structured platform for celebrating achievements and addressing growth areas within the organization. By actively participating in Shoutouts, suggesting Improvements, and engaging in discussions, every team member contributes to the continuous enhancement of the team's dynamics and overall effectiveness.