Being Swayed by Bad and Losing Sight of the Problem──Considering What 'Challenges' Should Be Addressed in Retrospectives

Nice to meet you. I’m Kato from the Digital Strategy Support Division.

Have you ever experienced a retrospective where you weren’t really clear on what the problem was, yet you’d already started thinking about “Let’s do this next” (Try)?

In many work or everyday situations, you might find yourself ending the discussion after proposing improvements without fully understanding the underlying reasons. I’m sure many of you can relate.

This time, through an incident I experienced at the gym, I’d like to take another look at the question: “What was the real challenge (Problem)?”

I first exchanged words with Mr./Ms. A (pseudonym) about six months after I started going to the gym. In the locker room, I had forgotten my facial cleanser, and A called out to me, “Is this yours?”

The next time A spoke to me was also in the same locker room. It wasn’t mine that time either, but A noticed someone had left something behind and called out.

“Speaking of which, you helped me out before too, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah. You hate noticing it later and feeling disappointed, right?”

“Thank you again for that time. My eyesight is bad, so I can’t see very well. You really helped me.”

I have a bad habit of tacking on unnecessary remarks, but this time it seemed to pay off. In that moment, the Antoinette in my head whispered to me:

“If you can’t see, why not just wear glasses?”

Since then, I’ve made it a point to put on my glasses whenever I gather my things.

Moreover, every time I ran into A at the gym, we’d chat, and as we parted ways A would ask, “Got everything? You’re all set?”

Before I knew it, I had completely stopped forgetting things.

At this point, let me introduce the “KPT” framework, which is often used in retrospectives.

KPT is a simple, versatile method for reflecting on things from three perspectives: Keep (what you want to continue), Problem (challenges), and Try (what to try next).

It’s widely used not only in agile development environments like Scrum, but also across project activities, daily operations, and even individual retrospectives.

This time, I want to look at my gym incident by focusing on the Problem aspect of KPT.

So, what was the Problem in this incident?

For example, if you consider “forgetting the facial cleanser” as the Problem, you then think, “How can I prevent forgetting it?” as your Try. That tends to lead to the idea, “Let’s make a checklist.”

Indeed, a checklist might prevent you from forgetting your facial cleanser. However, what if you forget something else next time? The checklist items keep piling up, and eventually you might even forget to check the checklist itself. Ultimately, you could end up adding “Did you check the checklist?” as an item… It could become a never-ending spiral.

In the first place, is “forgetting the facial cleanser” really a Problem?

In fact, for me it was just a “Bad”-level incident.

Here, I define “Bad” as something akin to drawing a bad fortune in an omikuji. It’s certainly a bit unpleasant, but not something worth digging into deeply.

I had forgotten a facial cleanser that cost only a few hundred yen and was almost used up anyway. Losing it was no real loss.

On the other hand, a “Problem” is something like being told at a health checkup that you’re overweight—if you leave it unaddressed, it could worsen, and it requires action for improvement.

In other words, the essential Problem here was “poor eyesight preventing me from noticing forgotten items,” because that could lead to various forgotten items in the future.

For that, you can derive the Try: “If you can’t see, just wear glasses.” Simply putting on glasses drastically reduces the risk of forgetting things.

Also, what if what I’d forgotten wasn’t the facial cleanser but a stack of gym multi-passes? That could mean losing several thousand yen, which would count as a Problem.

At that point, the Antoinette in my head whispered again:

“If it’s something you’d be in trouble losing, then you shouldn’t bring it in the first place.”

Indeed, if you’re only going to use one pass at a time, there’s no need to bring the whole stack. And for the facial cleanser, you could use a travel-size version. Since you’re just going to work out and then head home, you might not even need a wallet.

In this way, I arrived at the Try of “Don’t carry things you’d be troubled by losing.”

As a result, my belongings were pared down to the bare minimum, I worried less about forgetting things, and I felt lighter.

In retrospectives as well, you need the ability to determine whether such a “Bad” should be elevated to a “Problem.”

In a Scrum team context, when events (Bads) like “we made a mistake” or “we were delayed” occur, it’s dangerous to immediately jump to “let’s add more items to the checklist.”

The essential Problem lies in digging into questions like “Why did that mistake happen?” and “If it happens again, will it affect the team’s productivity or morale?”

Sometimes you need the courage to conclude, “This was just bad luck”—a Bad you don’t need to worry about.

Conversely, if you feel, “This could become serious if it accumulates,” you should quickly identify it as a Problem and think about a Try.

Now then, why did we manage to avoid the “checklist hell” this time?

Because A kept speaking to me, I was able to share my true feelings: “Actually, my eyesight is bad…” If not for that one comment, I would have continued only repeating the Bad of “forgetting the facial cleanser” and never noticed the root Problem.

The same thing can happen in retrospectives.

The surface-level Bads come out immediately.

But true Problems like “I actually didn’t understand the design” or “I wasn’t convinced” won’t surface without trust and careful questioning.

For that, you need not only the team’s trust but also the ability of facilitators and members to keep asking, “What is truly causing us trouble?”

To become a team that can dig into the “Why in the first place?” rather than just saying “Let’s add more checklist items,” it’s important to build up small prompts and casual conversations.

I believe that retrospectives truly become a place to identify Problems and lead to kaizen only in teams where people can speak their true feelings.

Before I knew it, I was entering my third year of going to the gym.

Thanks to A, I’m now able to continue it enjoyably, and I’ve been able to pare down my belongings to the minimum.

…However, it seems I still haven’t managed to trim away the excess on my physique.

I may need to seriously conduct a “retrospective” on that soon, too.