Take a deep breath and exhale. You’ve completed your project, turned over the keys to the customer and closed out all the remaining items on your project checklist. You can now loosen that tie and let your hair down. It’s time to celebrate yet another successful project that you timidly chalk up to years of experience, a solid foundation, invisible guardrails and most importantly, sheer luck that everything just happened to fall into place. Paying homage to the gods of project management always helps. But before you throw back that bottle of beer, there’s just one more step to really make that beer worthwhile and that’s partaking in the post-project retrospect, also known as lessons learned, also known as the infamous post mortem.

‘Post Mortem’ is my favorite verbiage to describe this so-called ‘retrospect’, since it sounds like there was a death in the project. But it really doesn’t matter what you call it. The fact is, no matter how you spin it, there is always a stigma that goes with discussing or hashing out the aftermath. It’s likely that this finger-pointing stigma that breeds fear, resistance, relief and closure sometimes points to better beginnings; however, in my experience, I’ve found it leads to cringe-worthy behavior, an ongoing ‘blame game’ battle and visible scars and battle wounds.

Image Source: Atlassian – The Four L’s

While it’s inevitable that we need to address mishaps and casualties within a project to yield better results the next go around, there are ways we can make this process a little less daunting and formidable. When conducting a retrospect with your project team, consider these five practices to minimize the effect of the finger-pointing stigma:

Create a targeted agenda. Revisiting sensitive topics that might have shaken up the team during the project is likely to stir emotions, elicit stress and put team members on the defense. To help capture everyone’s topics, have your team submit their agenda items to the facilitator, so he can put everything out there on the table for discussion. When your team knows what to expect, they can be prepared to provide thoughtful responses and participate in the dialogue.

Have a facilitator lead the meeting. You and your team were heavily involved in the planning and execution that carried your project to the state of completion. Participating in a retrospect requires careful afterthought, consideration for each other and an open mind to overcome the nitty gritty details. You should bring on board a facilitator who is not actively involved in the project to guide and mediate the discussion helping the team tie their comments and feedback back to the big picture so they can move forward.

Set the ground rules to create a safe environment. When creating a forum for your team to provide open, honest and most importantly, candid feedback, you need to create an environment that’s safe and reassuring to the the team. The first step in creating a safe environment is by communicating the rules of the game, letting the team members know the ins and outs, and making sure they can collectively bring their ideas to the table without any negative repercussions or consequence.  Putting in place a ‘suggestion box’ will also allow them to speak their mind and preserve anonymity. And channeling this through a facilitator will encourage a more direct discussion.

Use “We” versus “You”. A simple way to modulate the direction and tone of a meeting is to adjust your language and embrace the words “We” versus “You”. The success of a project is based on the team working together collectively and functioning as one unit. If there is a challenge or a lapse in judgment, it’s the team’s responsibility to partner, work their way through the problem and solve it together.

Envision the end result and what you want the team to take away. If you have a hard time visualizing a successful outcome, then chances are your plan might not be as sound as you’d like it to be. When you devise a plan, you should not only consider the logistics such as the goals, objectives and next steps, but you should also have a solid understanding of your audience in the room and the human factors that come along with how you’d like to team to act, respond and follow through after the meeting. When you are in touch with the feelings and emotions that come along with the project, you’ll be able to tailor the communications to match the preferred style of your team and have a better chance at arriving at a mutually respected outcome.