Of Post Mortems and Retrospectives

 Of Post Mortems and Retrospectives

Yeheyyy, happy weekend !  How time flies, indeed.  It used to be, when we wrongly hit something, we paused and would go back to what got hit.  When we committed a faux pas, we will pause and ponder how did we end up with that mess.  Problem is, these days, the surface is hardly scratched when it comes to post mortems & retrospectives.

In the old school, once you commit slip-ups, you will be berated no end by your boss, sometimes to your chagrin, in front your colleagues and peers.  That doesn't work these days with millennials.  With the millennials and Gen Z, things will surely boomerang on you, frankly.

To quote Francis Kong, learning from 'a mistake is MORE IMPORTANT than the mistake itself'.  BUT are we really learning from our mistakes ?  I'm afraid not.  WHY?  Probably we veered away just because we are all in a 'rat race'?  That continuing the fastbreak after a bad pass is the only tempo to go ?  But that's in a hoop's game.

But hey, even in a fast-paced hoops game, the coach won't waste time for a time-out after a recent boo-boo and to recoup from that, the coach will plot a countermeasure to estop the opposing team's momentum.  So, whether it's your own life or you're in a team play [at work], never lay by the wayside the value of these quick timeouts.

So what do we need ?  hmmmp, do paste these post-it-notes within your eye-view no less because you gotta take a balance relook at things, both the right things and the not-so-right things you did and ask yourself, how could you do this right because either the game is not yet over or this may recur in the future.

Oh, this pic may look sooo boring but bear with me because we just need to improve our retrospectives.  BTW, you don't initiate a retrospective a year after the game is over.  In fact, agile retrospective tells us that we should initiate this even for what's ongoing, to tweak things even things are going right but who knows we can further improve our efficiency or productivity ?

What tools do we need then to initiate a post-mortem or a retrospective ?  Nothing as in NADA.  WHY ?  Because by then you have all the data, all the hard facts as to what made you reach where you're standing now.  So, c'mon, let's not be too tied up with the 'up tempo' pace in our lives because what matters most is not just reaching the finish line but reaching it way ahead of the competition ✅✅✅