With retrospectives, we generally have specific formats that we follow, rather than just pulling people together and expecting them to talk. This feels very counter-intuitive for many; surely we don’t need rules or formats to get people to come up with creative ideas. Yet doing that will dramatically improve the results we get.
Have you ever brought a group together and just said “come up with a bunch of ideas”? How did that work for you?
It might work once, however it doesn’t work reliably or consistently. If we want creativity, we need to create the right context to bring that out, and one of many things we can try is to apply some constraints.
A 2022 paper (Tromp & Baer) took a look at this. If we give someone a blank piece of paper and the instructions to “draw something”, they’ll have a much harder time coming up with a creative idea than if we apply some constraints first, such as “draw a cat on a table”.
Interestingly, we tend to feel more creative when we have no constraints, but we are more creative when the constraints are in place.
There is, of course, a point at which too many constraints can then hamper creativity again, but this isn’t usually our problem, in a retrospective.
So apply some constraints to the approach you use in your retrospectives. Even if it’s simple category based groupings like “mad / sad / glad” or “working well / needs improvement”. These constraints will help.
Constraints aren’t limited to the simple groupings in those examples. For example, Edward Debono’s Six Thinking hats makes for a great retrospective by applying constraints in the form of different lens to see the world. When wearing the white hat, we are constrained by only considering data. With the red, we only consider feelings. One lens at a time.
If you want more creativity, try applying some constraints and see what happens.