Time for a Lockdown Retrospective

As June draws to a close people are not only marvelling at the arrival of July but eagerly anticipating the further loosening of lockdown on 06 July. More businesses are opening their doors, more people are returning to work and, as families and friends are reconnected, I think we're all wondering where the time went. What happened to our plans to learn a new skill, to read the books that Amazon dutifully delivered, to redecorate the house?

Even as growing news of businesses in crisis and closure hits our feeds, there are still plenty of positive things to come out of lockdown. It's time to review what we have learned and to decide what we take forward into our new ways of working.

Taking forward the positive and interesting with an Agile retrospective

Back in May I talked about lockdown accelerating digital transformation and Agile ways of working, so what better time to utilise one of the key Agile tools - the Retrospective - to identify the elements of your collective change journey to take forward? An Agile retrospective is a 'lessons learned' session in which a team reflects on how everything went and then decides what changes they want to make in the next iteration.

Ask yourself:

• How has three months of lockdown worked for us? In a typical retrospective, you 1) set the stage, 2) gather data, 3) generate insights, 4) decide what to do and 5) close the retrospective: taking forward your learning into the next iteration.
• What are the positive things we'll take forward? Proposed by Dr. Edward de Bono as a creative, non-traditional brainstorming exercise, a three minute PMI (plus, minus, interesting) can be incorporated into your Agile retrospective; encouraging lateral thinking about the positive and the negative (minus) elements of the iteration, and what was interesting about it.

"Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand."
Norman Kerth

Turning accelerated transformation into something built to last

In previous Making Sense of Change articles I've talked about topics ranging from getting the most of our collaboration tools and tapping into learning opportunities in lockdown, to the importance of maintaining motivation and reinforcing vision in difficult times. Now is the time to evaluate how we can turn positive progress borne of panic into long-term benefits.

Ask yourself:

• How can we embed best practice in our remote working routines and leverage the full benefit of collaboration tools?
• How can I apply the new skills I've acquired and the things I've learned to enhance my career and business performance?
• How has my motivation shifted? How will I know what?s changed, and what can I do to keep my energy levels high?
• Has our strategic vision changed, and how does the company or programme vision now fit with my personal goals?

Shaking off embedded behaviours that were harming our health

Lockdown certainly brought into sharp focus the stress and toxicity in our working lives before the pandemic. And, for many, the hiatus has introduced new, healthier habits into daily routines such as more exercise, more time with family, more empathy and compassion and better work/life balance. The opportunity we have now is to retain and embed these new ways of being into our working lives for good. But how? Neuroscientist and psychiatric doctor, Tara Swart, refers to the 'entrenched neural pathways' that get in the way of this kind of growth mindset. To establish mental resilience and peak brain performance we need to create new neural pathways and rid ourselves of unwanted behaviours.

Ask yourself:

• What are the positive, new behaviours to take forward from lockdown?
• How can we embed these new ways of being for the long-term?
• What tools, tips and habits for behaviour change can help?*

* Dr Swart's book "The Source" is well worth a read here.

Shifting the leadership paradigm

"Leaders will be remembered for how they treat employees during this time."

During the opening session of this week's Women in IT Summit President of techUK, Jacqueline de Rojas, talked about how leadership has been tested and, in many cases, proven during the pandemic. New qualities and soft skills that have been essential to reassuring, engaging and motivating teams, such as empathy, compassion and communication, all need to carry forward into an era of more visible, accessible, committed, authentic leadership and teamwork.

Ask yourself:

• What is my leadership shadow? How do I show up with colleagues? Personality and motivational profiling can work well here - on an individual and group basis.

• How well does the team work together? What can we do to better understand each others? traits and characteristics, learn what motivates and pushes each others? buttons? Explore this in a virtual team workshop, which can be just as effective as face-to-face ones.

• How can we use better self-knowledge to become better leaders and colleagues? Make time to invest in self-work, now more than ever, before the pace of life picks up again and washes away all the lockdown learning and good intentions.

We may have been locked down for three months but crisis has accelerated personal, professional and corporate transformation, bringing us to the cusp of a new world of opportunity. As we return, and the economy restarts, let's make sure every one of those locked down days counts and brings lasting, meaningful benefits.

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