Retrospectives
A retrospective is the session that converts a finished cycle into knowledge the next cycle can use: what we believed, what happened, what we now think, and the one or two things we will change because of it.
The obvious bit
You will run the next cycle whether or not you read the last one. The only question is whether you start it knowing more.
Most companies do not. The quarter closes, the numbers get reported, and the reasoning that produced them evaporates. Then the same argument gets had again in nine months, from scratch, by people who were in the room the first time.
What we actually ask
Four questions, in this order, and the order matters.
What did we believe? Go back to the narrative under each goal. This is only possible if the belief was written down when the goal was set, which is why writing it down is not optional.
What actually happened? The outcome, plainly, with the grade rather than a computed percentage.
What do we now think? The interesting question. Was the bet wrong, or the execution, or the timing? A goal that missed because the belief was wrong is a cheap and valuable finding. A goal that missed because nobody had the capacity is a different finding entirely, and it points at you rather than the market.
What will we change? One or two things, named, owned, with a date. Not a list of twelve.
The two things people skip
The goals that succeeded. A win is as informative as a miss and gets a fraction of the attention. If you only retrospect on failures, the lesson people take is that scrutiny follows bad news, and you will get less bad news.
The goals that were stopped. A goal stopped deliberately, with the reasons kept, is often the most useful entry in the record. Skip it and you will repeat the attempt in two years, blind.
The failure modes
The blameless retro that is not. Everyone says it is about the system, then spends forty minutes on one team. People read the room, not the ground rules.
The retro with no artefact. If nothing is written and kept, you have had a conversation, not built a memory. This is exactly how organisational amnesia happens: not from forgetting facts, but from never recording reasoning.
The retro at the wrong time. Held two weeks after the cycle closed, when the next one has already been set, so nothing it produces can be used.
The retro that produces twelve actions. Twelve actions is zero actions with extra admin.
Our opinion
The retrospective is the single highest-leverage hour in the cycle and the first thing dropped when the calendar is tight. That is not a coincidence: its value is deferred, and deferred value loses every argument with a deadline.
So we protect it structurally rather than asking people to be disciplined about it. It happens before the next cycle is set, it produces a written record, and it names one or two changes. That is the whole practice.
One line to keep: a retrospective that does not change something is a meeting about feelings, and everyone can tell.
How is a retrospective different from a quarterly review? +
A review reports what happened, largely outward and upward. A retrospective asks what it taught and changes something. Running them as one session usually means the reporting wins and the learning gets ten minutes at the end.
When should it happen? +
Before the next cycle is set, not after. A retrospective whose findings arrive too late to shape the next set of goals has no route into practice.
What should come out of it? +
A short written record of what you believed, what happened, and what you now think, plus one or two named changes with owners. Anything more than that does not survive contact with a busy quarter.
From the ZOKRI OKR Handbook, the methodology we install and maintain. Written by Matt Roberts.
A UK-based strategy and OKR consultant and two-time SaaS founder with a venture-backed exit, Matt turns strategy into execution for teams scaling from tens to thousands. He co-founded ZOKRI in 2018, having previously co-founded Linkdex, a venture-backed enterprise SaaS platform he led to a trade sale. He writes the methodology behind these notes.
We run the first two retrospectives with you, then hand them over. The aim is a session your team would keep running if we never came back.