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04Precedent · how it went for them

The situation“The retrospective keeps producing the same three actions and nothing changes.”

Leaders who made the same call — what each did, and how it went.

WorkedShouldn’t have been tried

Worked · Sara Blakely, Spanx, 2000 onwards

When Sara Blakely founded Spanx in 2000 with roughly $5,000 of her own savings, the ritual she brought into the company had been formed at her family dinner table.

Worked · The After Action Review, US Army and corporate adaptation, 1990s onwards

The Army developed the After Action Review as a response to a specific problem: traditional military post-mortems had become demoralising rituals in which junior officers apologised, senior officers identified who was to blame, and nothing about the underlying system changed.

Shouldn’t have been tried · Cap Watkins, Formspring, 2009–2013

Formspring launched as an anonymous Q&A platform and grew vertically for about eighteen months.