Lessons Learned vs. Retrospectives

Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where Peter Madison and David Sherrick discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale. Hello, Dave. How are you today? Great. How are you doing, Peter? I'm doing wonderful. And uh what wonderful topic do we have for our listeners today?

I think we're gonna talk about uh retrospective lessons learned. How's it about that?

Or lessons learned retrospectively or something like that, yeah.

So a combination of thereof, right? Exactly. I find it quite interesting. There's so many conversations around lessons learned uh and then retrospectives, and they're two very, very different things in some ways. Uh what about from your perspective? How do you see the difference between lessons learned and retrospectives?

Well well, there's kind of the the activity and the and the thing that we have, right? So the lessons learned being the thing that we we have, we create it, we say, Oh, what did we learn from that? Oh, that's nice, that's interesting. And then there's the retrospectives, which uh has a bit more of an activity and a structure around it, to be able to say, well, okay, so what went well, what didn't go well, what can I go back and maybe do again? And there's lots of different ways of running it, and there's all sorts of fun bits and topics and stuff like that we could potentially talk about.

Yeah, it's interesting because I I see it as slightly differently in the sense that um retrospectives are these spot checks that we're going to do frequently. And as you say, there are many different forms for it, and and the the intent is almost like a just a micro intervention for us to go and look at what's going on. Whereas when I think of lessons learned, I see that as much more of a weighty um tome of a long list of different things that over the last three, six, eight, nine months we've learned, and we'll somehow carry those forward going into the next major program that we're involved with.

I think the emphasis there in your your statement is the somehow carry those forward. Uh the the gap in time of that we've taken to be able to generate all of the that understanding of what potentially happened means that there's both maybe perhaps too much of it, and somehow uh is kind of this mysterious thing that's never quite clarified. So, how do you see addressing that?

Well, it's um I think that the critical thing is that it's just it's almost too much, too late. Uh, the the metaphor that I have in the back of my mind when I'm thinking about this is this is a little bit like a sports team having a big kind of meeting at the end of the season to understand how they could have performed better in the last season and what those lessons are that they'll carry into the next season. And I don't disagree that a conversation along those lines, a sort of reflection point is valuable, but uh the kind of season to season, this big piece to big piece, loses a lot of impact because honestly, the the objectives of the season may change. The individuals involved will change. So many different things happen. And and also um, I mean, the the data's in, if you like, in in order to change things, we need to we need to capture them at the moment that things, the behaviors that we want to change, happen so that we can somehow uh adjust that behavior and change them going forward.

When we when we look at um uh habit systems and uh look at uh reflection that occurs, especially in mindfulness and things, the the with reflection you you do this, you look at it. Hey, what am I what did I get done today? What did I get done this week? What did I get done this month? What did I get done this quarter? What did I get done this year? And the and setting yourself the cadence and what you look at during those cadences is different. Uh, is there a relationship between that concept and idea and what you're describing?

Um yes, I I mean I think definitely so. I it it's it as you're describing it, this is what pops into my mind is the in my context, the lessons learned is a little bit like bringing up your children by having a moment with them every birthday and sitting down and saying, This is the behavior I'd like you to change in the following year. And what you're adding is this really interesting thing is there is absolutely a valid conversation to have annually, for example, uh, but it won't be about the behaviors that the kids do on a regular basis. You're going to catch those as and when they happen and have a conversation with your children in that case, as and when they happen. So I think to your point, there is there's a cadence, there's a there's a um a sort of uh I I want if I'm having a conversation regularly, the scope of that conversation, the focus of that conversation will be quite tight and focused on whatever, what I've been doing today, what I've been doing in the last week, whatever it might be. So there's a there's a tie between frequency of conversation and the focus or the scope of that conversation, what will change.

I think this applies to an a lot of things as well. It's uh in all sorts of different types of changes when we're we're looking at uh not not just necessarily changes in behavior, but in uh in changes, well, I guess this is changes in behavior, but any kind of change to the system where we want to be able to uh look back and say, well, well, how did that go? How can maybe maybe there's something we want to try differently based on what we observed or what we learned? Uh maybe there's something that uh for this next period of time we'd want to change. Uh it's you could say this also occurs in any kind of interaction between uh people where it's uh uh like a uh for lack of words, it's like the management relationship between when do we follow up, uh, when do we uh have those regular one-on-one conversations, when do we have uh the uh well, I I've got to try and avoid the annual performance review because that's a whole other nightmare that a lot of people have probably just gone through.

Well, but I know it's interesting you mentioned that because I was having a conversation this morning with um uh with a friend, and we were talking that whole idea of of uh um annual performance reviews bubbles up. And of course, you know, we have that same frustration with an annually reviewing performance when you're having daily interactions with your boss or your colleagues or whatever it is. And I think the learning that we're taking from this, or the conversation has led me to appreciate this is there is value in the annual conversation to look at things that change on an annual cadence. But there isn't the value in an annual conversation to talk about the habits that you have at your desk or at your workplace on a daily basis. The cadence is completely mismatched there. So um what I'm and again I really appreciate having this conversation with you, Peter, because it's kind of clarifying the thoughts in my own mind. I think that the the cadence, the frequency with which you have the conversation predetermines the scope or the focus of that conversation. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, no, I I think that's uh that's a good way of looking at it. It's uh I I and I also I think there's another um corollary to that, that uh we often uh end up bringing the wrong scope to the wrong conversation, uh that we end up trying to have a conversation about uh, for example, oh, do you remember this thing that went wrong a year ago? That uh it's like, well, not really. It's uh it's too long ago. I don't remember exactly what happened then. It's uh so it's having the right conversation at the right moment in time.

Yeah, that that's completely true. And and I think um part of this conversation is making me realize that the struggle that I have with, for example, that classic lessons learned meeting at the end of a many, many months program is the same frustration I have with annual performance reviews talking about that program or that project, that event that happened 11 months ago, in that the the frequency and the focus are out of step. Um, I was just reading uh a book by Adam Grant, and Adam Grant in his book Think Again, he talks about the value of reviewing your um your career choices on a regular basis. And he talks about doing that sort of every six months or something like that. That feels to me like a really good matchup of frequency and focus because there's no point me looking at my career choices on a weekly basis because things aren't changing fast enough. But on a six-monthly or an annual basis, making sure that you know that focus of my career choices are moving in the right direction makes a lot of sense at that frequency. So I think matching that frequency and focus is a really important piece that in many cases are mismatched performance reviews, lessons learned, things like that.

So, what should we do when we find something is the uh next part of this. So we we spend this time looking at the the right uh scope, we're focusing in the right space at the right cadence, we're looking at the right pieces. So I know the next part of this is now what do we do with the things that we've seen?

Yeah, and I think this is an interesting question because I think it goes with how long is that conversation? How much time do we need for it, and so on? Because there's a tendency in many of us for completeness, for discussing every single aspect to death. And um the reason I mention that is whenever I'm working with a team or with a group of individuals and a leadership team, for example, whatever that might be, and we're going through a retrospective, um, my focus is on one small change, not solving all of the problems that arise, but focusing on the one thing which is the burning issue, the thing that's bugging us the most, and trying to make some minor change to that, to change that experience. Would you do that differently or do you have a different perspective or something similar?

Uh no, I the I 100% agree that uh anytime you're looking to make change, especially large-scale change, what you really need to be looking for, what is the one small change I can make now that will move us towards that outcome? Uh so it's it's valuable to have an understanding of the outcomes you're looking for, but you you really are just looking for like what's the next small incremental step that I can take towards that goal? Um, so that I and from this I can like now devise what is my strategy gonna be, what am what am I gonna do to be able to test that out and decide where how I'm gonna get there? It reminds me very much of um another book a favorite of mine, um, by a guy called James Clear, who's big into uh habit systems. He wrote a book called Atomic Habits, and there's there's many books on habits, but I particularly enjoyed this one because it uh did such a good job of relating it back and giving you very practical ways of looking at applying the the practices and the methods in there. So I uh that's one I would uh also recommend to people. And he he also talks about that uh cadence of reflection as well in there.

Yeah, yeah. And and I mean this is kind of points to that fact that we're all very familiar with is January 1 is often a time that people review what they've been doing. And of course, if we try and take on a huge amount of change, we all know where that's going. It's as as a human being, we're very poor at trying to change everything around us. We need to kind of control that in a you know, so that it's something that we can be persistent at and actually uh successfully make that change. There's another part to it, and that's to do with complex systems, which is when you make a change in a complex system, that change will have unintended consequences. And if you make a big change or lots of change, that gives you effectively a tsunami of unintended consequences. And so, in order to be confident that the change is moving us in the right direction and not to be overwhelmed with those unintended consequences, we need to take small steps, make small changes in complex systems in order to validate that there are, you know, either the benign unintended consequences or that we're aware of them and we can mitigate those or constrain them in some way. So both in terms of habit systems, humans and how they handle things, but also in terms of understanding kind of systems and complex systems in particular, the real value is that that small change that disrupts the flow of work, the flow of activity, uh only by a small amount, so that we can kind of A, manage it from a human systems, habit systems perspective, and B, not be overwhelmed or caught out by unintended consequences. Yep.

I think that's a very good way of uh of pulling it all together. I think we can actually now uh sum this up rather neatly, uh, because a lot we've covered off here now. We've covered off that the making sure that uh with your cadence of looking back, that you're uh analyzing the right scope, that you've got the right frequencies. Uh so you've got the right frequency, you've got the right focus on scope, and now we're talking about ensuring that we don't disrupt the flow. So, how would you sum up these uh these three F's we've got here? Frequency, focus, and flow.

Right. I think you've covered that, Peter, really, really well. You've got to match frequency with focus. The frequency of your conversation determines effectively what you're focusing on in that conversation, and then the result of that conversation leads to changes, small changes, which don't disrupt the flow, but actually are able to be managed within the flow of work that you're doing so you gain the benefits uh as quickly as possible.

Yeah, that's uh I think that's a beautiful way of uh of summing it up. So I hope everybody has enjoyed uh this episode. I think uh I think we've done a reasonably good job of uh covering off all the different topics, and uh and we've now got uh emails for people to be able to reach out to us and uh and contact us and let us know if they have any feedback, which you'll find in the uh podcast description. So so thank you to all our listeners and uh thank you, Dave, for joining me for this conversation.

Peter, appreciate it. It's been fun as always.

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