This is an excellent exercise for capturing valuable information that will help you be a better manager.  See Institutional Memory Alert!

And it’s one of many great ways to put holiday adrenalin to work.

You can include this exercise as a 20-30 minute segment of your next staff meeting.  Or you could expand it into a  1/2 daymeeting of it’s own.  

Needed:

• a white board or flip chart
• markers
• bottle(s) of bubbly (with alcohol or not, whatever is appropriate and allowed in your organization)
• cups

In advance:  For best results, send an e-mail asking each person come prepared to share the 5 things listed below.

1.  What was the best of 2009?

2. What was the worst of 2009?
3. What’s the best lemons to lemonade story?

4.  What would you do differently?

5.  What would you do the same?

Step by step plan:

If you’ve chosen to make this a 20-30 minute meeting segment, you will need to move quickly even if you have a small group.   If you move faster when someone else records the notes on the board, ask someone else to do this for you.

1.  Ask each person to share “the best”.  Go round the room.  Real quick.  No long stories.  Just make a fun celebration list on the board.

2.  Ask each person to share “the worst”.  Go round the room.  Real quick.  No long stories.    Record responses on the board.

3. Ask who was able to come up with a lemons to lemonade story.  Ask that person to share a brief version of the story.  Continue to record notes.

a.  Ask the group:  “What can we learn from this?”

b.  “Does anyone else have a lemonade story?”  If so, ask him/her to tell a brief version of  it.

4.  “What do you wish you or we had done differently?”   Change things up a bit here and instead of going round the room for responses, ask people to call things out.  Go quickly.  This is not intended to be a gripe,  a finger pointing or problem solving session.  You may need to do some of the latter later, but not today.  Today the goal is simply to capture the “wish done differently” list.

5.  Now to end on a positive note, ask:  “What would you do the same?”    Let people call things out.  Go quickly.  But let there be lots of cheers and laughter.  The goal is to have fun making a VERY LONG list of all the things that went well.

6.  Congratulate and thank everyone for a good (or great) year.  Tell them you think it deserves a celebration and carefully open the bottle.  Pour with fun and flair.

7.  Get the notes typed up.  Add some artwork if you can.  Post results for #1, 3 and #5 on your internal website or on bulletin board.  Review #2 and #4 and decide next steps needed for each item.

If you’ve chosen to make this a  longer meeting:

• do the same steps at a more leisurely pace.
• if your group is larger than 5 people, consider dividing them into small groups for #3 to allow for and encourage more individual participation.   Bring everyone back together to discuss results for #3.
• go back to small groups to discuss #4.  Being in small groups makes it safer to discuss.  Bring everyone back together to discuss results for #4.
• finish the discussion by doing #5 as a big group.
• do #6 and #7

It was a difficult year for most, be sure to celebrate ALL the good!

copyright 2009 – Business Class Inc