Everything is awesome, everything is cool when you are part of a team!
The LEGO Movie
Even if a lot of people would genuinely like to think that way, not everything is awesome when you are part of a team. The great thing about this is that it leaves room for improvements which a regular retrospective will help you find as a team.
In 2015, the LEGO Movie song: “Everything is Awesome” was nominated for the best song at the Academy Awards (The Oscars). The Directors of the movie ordered the artist Nathan Sawaya to create 20 Lego statuettes to be given while the song was played.
During the winter break, my (young adult) kids and I assemble quite a lot of Legos with the younger ones. That reminded me of the happy face of people during the 2015 Oscar ceremony when they were given the statuettes and of one retrospective format created by my amazing wife Isabel.
I decided that the next retrospective for my team will be a Team Awards Retrospective and that I will give away two Oscar statuettes made of LEGO! I ordered the bricks online and built the statuettes thanks to that article.
How did it work?
We intended to do a quick retrospective at the beginning of our face to face meeting to examine the last period. Our team is widely distributed, so when we have some time with each other, we invest that time for high-bandwidth collaboration.
I asked the team members to consider the last period as a movie.
Using two sticky notes, they had to nominate for two awards:
- The best failure for the team
- The best contribution from a team member
All the team members gathered around the whiteboard to display their sticky notes in the dedicated boxes for each award.
Starting with the team award, they took the time to read what was on the notes and then asked clarifying questions. The conversation was focused on what we learned from those failures. I then proposed a silent reordering of the notes as a way of voting. The session was not really silent, but still, they quickly agreed on what should be at the top.
The conversation went on what we learned and what we should adjust in the way our teamwork. The award went to the new team member who proposed the failure.
We moved then to the team member award with the same approach, and in the end, the award went to the other new team member whose mission is to lead our actions to get to more diverse and inclusive teams. The discussion focused on how to best support the mission.
The retrospective was fun and short. We focused on consolidating our culture. And we welcomed our new team members with awards!
They were maybe not as expressive as Oprah but I feel that they were really happy 🙂