When Retrospectives Turn into Blamefests: III

Because retrospectives are such effective tools for fostering organizational learning, avoiding them altogether as a means of preventing blamefests is a sacrifice few organizations can afford. In the past two posts, I offered guidelines for conducting retrospectives more safely, and for preparing participants to approach the exercise more confidently. In this post I offer three suggestions for steps to take after retrospectives to make future retrospectives less likely to degenerate into blamefests.

Measures that we can deploy following the retrospective

Rename the retrospective

Because some of the problem comes from past bad experiences, it's possible that the name retrospective (or lessons-learned, or retro, or review, whatever) is part of the problem. Past blamefests or other unpleasant experiences have attached themselves to the name of the event. Only repeated successful experiences with the form can relieve it of this baggage.

As with many verbal associations, "If you want to tame it, you must name it." Acknowledge that you're setting aside the association of the word retrospective (or lessons-learned, or retro, or review, whatever) with the kind of blame-focused exercise you conducted in the past. Acknowledge this by using a different name.

Address causes of diminished psychological safety

Blaming is rarely the problem. More often,
it's a symptom of the real problem, which
is a low level of psychological safety.

Some participants who blame other participants for having caused some kind of undesirable outcome are doing so either in retaliation for having been blamed, or at least, for what they perceive as having been blamed. Others do so preemptively, because they believe they are about to be blamed. Environments in which people engage with each other in this way have at least one thing in common — people working in such environments feel that they are in danger. That is, people feel psychologically unsafe.

In such environments, blaming is rarely the problem. More often, blaming is a symptom of the real problem, which is a low level of psychological safety. I've written in previous posts about indicators of low levels of psychological safety. [Brenner 2023] Assess your organization to determine whether this is an issue.

Attribute outcomes more to the behavior of groups and less to individuals

In organizations in which leaders attribute outcomes to the actions of individuals, there is a risk of inducing fear of blame even when no blaming has occurred. People then bring this fear of blame with them when they join the retrospective session. They adopt defensive attitudes, and some engage in preemptive blaming as part of their defense strategies.

But attributing failures or successes to the actions of individuals isn't merely risky. In most organizations it's also wrong. It's wrong because very little of the work of modern organizations is attributable to the actions of individuals. Nearly every outcome is the result of actions of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people.

Last words

Most important, conduct a retrospective about recent retrospectives. Identify those members of the family of retrospective disorders that were actually observable in recent retrospectives. For example, describe incidents of blaming in ways that protect the identities of blamers. A second example: with a view toward understanding why past "lessons learned" weren't learned, list any "lessons learned" from previous retrospectives that the organization evidently did not learn. Applying what we know about retrospectives to learn how to conduct more effective retrospectives seems only sensible.   First issue in this series   Top    Next Issue

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Footnotes

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When Retrospectives Turn into Blamefests: I

An interactive group exercise known as a retrospective is widely recognized as a reliable tool for fostering organizational learning. But it can degenerate into blaming and retaliation if not conducted so as to manage the risk of toxic conflict.

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Although the Dunning-Kruger Effect is widely recognized, people describe it — and understand it — in many different ways. Some of these expressions are misleading. Proceed with caution. Available here and by RSS on July 30.

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