A Thanksgiving Retro Retrospective

What is this activity?

Where does the Thanksgiving Retrospective come into play? In America, as children, we would do a project in school where we would assemble a paper cartoon turkey. We would color it, decorate it, then present it to our parents. They would honor us by sticking it to the refrigerator for the remainder of the season. This retrospective explores the idea of the team creating their own virtual cartoon turkey. This retrospective is a variation on the classic What Went Well and What didn’t go Well format. All it really does is focus the language around being thankful and the concepts of being weighed down vs. being lifted up. We hope it provides a fun, refreshing format that inspires the creative side of your brain. Whether it is American Thanksgiving, Canadian Thanksgiving, or any other Giving Thanks celebration, We truly hope you take the day to think about what you are thankful for with those around you.

Template created by: The Agile Mind Org - Template has been used 46 times

A Thanksgiving Retro Template

The Body

What is weighing us down? What are we not thankful on the team?

The Feathers

What is lifting us up? What are we thankful for on the team?

How to conduct this activity

The Body: Ask your team to populate the body of the turkey with things that are weighing us down. What is keeping us from really flying? Things we are not thankful for in how we work. Add all their cards in this column. The Feathers: Ask everyone to populate the feathers with what they are thankful for on the team? What are things that are holding us up? Things that can help us fly? These can be the people around them, parts of the process that they find useful, tools that help them do their job, etc? Once they have all the feathers written, group these together. Identify ones that the team would like to make into habits. Energize them with what makes working on the team and at the company awesome! Then place those feathers all around the body of the turkey column. When you have gathered data for both the body and the feathers, it is time to decide what to do and prioritize the improvements. Make sure you remind them not to try to “take on more than they can chew”.

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