Level-Up Your Retrospective With Strategy Knotworking

Are you tired of yet another “start-stop-change” Retrospective? 😴

Sure, it might only take 30 minutes, but what’s the point if it doesn’t add value and only leads to frustrated team members because they lost many hours of focus? 🤷‍♀️

Why don’t you schedule 90 minutes for the next Retrospective using a format that allows you to identify meaningful improvements? A format based on “Strategy Knotworking.” It offers a set of questions to develop strategies for tough challenges and triggers in-depth double-loop learning instead of superficial single-loop learning.

Strategy Knotworking

Strategy Knotworking is a coherent set of Liberating Structures that aims to involve and engage everyone in developing and evolving sustainable strategies. It’s an approach for shared sense-making and strategizing, and it helps groups of any size build the skills they need to adapt to sudden change. With Strategy Knotworking, everyone is involved in making sense of their environment, identifying the most pressing challenges, establishing the baseline starting position, developing promising ideas for dealing with their challenges, and defining the first steps for getting started.

For a detailed description of Strategy Knotworking, check the article “Develop And Evolve Sustainable Strategies With Strategy Knotworking” and this paper by Keith McCandless and Johannes Schartau.

Single — And Double Loop Learning

A consequence of the “start-stop-change” Retrospective is that you’ll probably only scratch the surface of the team's challenges. This also impacts the meaningfulness of the improvements. They might seem helpful, but do they change something? This is an example of single-loop learning.

Single-loop learning focuses on solving a problem within an existing system defined by sets of beliefs, structures, roles, procedures, and norms. Double-loop learning challenges the system and underlying beliefs. Although both types of learning are essential for continuous improvement, double-loop learning is vital, particularly for complex work where teams must constantly challenge how and why they do the work.

Teams tend to limit themselves to single-loop learning. They can’t benefit from double-loop learning because their existing beliefs about management, products, people management, and risk management remain unchallenged.

Learn more about single- and double-loop learning in this article.

The Six Core Questions

The strength of Strategy Knotworking is that it triggers double-loop learning. It helps teams create a strategic narrative that includes in-depth analyses of the current state, challenges, and necessary actions. Keep things simple for your Retrospective. Print the template with the questions or upload it into a digital workspace. In turn, have a conversation about the questions. Ideally, make it interactive via rounds of 1–2–4-ALL.

1️. Purpose

What is the fundamental purpose of our work? 🎯

Why do we exist as a team? A purpose is the main reason for working together; it’s the inexhaustible reason for a team to exist. A clear purpose helps teams align toward a shared goal and, as a result, gives meaning to all the other steps.

2. Baseline

Where are we starting, honestly? 🤷‍♀️

Explore the state of your team. Discuss team dynamics, the activities you do as a team, the state of the product you’re developing, how you collaborate with stakeholders, the support you receive from management, etc.

Make a connection with Columinity for the baseline.

3. Context

What is happening around us that demands creative change? 🧐

What has changed in the other teams? What is happening in the broader organization? What are the market circumstances that might influence you?

4. Challenges

What critical uncertainties and paradoxical challenges must we face to make progress? ❌ ✅

“How can we find a good balance between innovation and maintenance?”
“How can we increase our autonomy and remain aligned with the corporate strategy?”
“How can we work closely with our stakeholders/customers/users and keep focus to solve complex problems?”

5. Ambition

Based on what we discovered, what is now made possible? 😃

Generate ambitious and actionable plans by reflecting on your purpose and what is possible. How can we make progress on the challenges we face?

6. Action & Evaluation

What are our next steps, and how will we know we are making progress? 🤔

What are we going to do in the next iteration? What steps can we take without needing approval or resources from others that are entirely within your discretion to act?

Closing

Strategy Knotworking taps into everyone’s experience, intelligence, and creativity while continuously (re)answering the six core questions. You can turn it into a 2-day company-wide workshop and keep it simple by only answering the six questions with your team. Why don’t you give it a try? Chances are, it will become a valuable and meaningful retrospective!