Hi everyone, it’s summer solstice today 21st of June so I thought I’d share a retrospective tool and game, The Retrospective Wheel.
A good time of year for us to look back on our year so far and then at the rest of the year ahead.
This is a really nice little tool for using for personal reflection or also in business as a team game or as an individual. We’re going to have a look at a couple of examples today so that you can get an idea of how to play.
So I was first introduced to this tool by a colleague Will on a personal coaching level and so it was around when i was a bit of a workaholic at the time and it was helping me to address and develop a better work-life balance.
It really worked well in that sense that I still use it as a reflection tool and use it in different aspects as well so business as well as life.
So the idea is you just really easily built draw yourself kind of a star on the page and this is our retrospective wheel and then in each spoke of our wheel we’ve got an area of life, so we’ve got home, family, social, work, security, myself, and hobbies, health and home so each area I’ve labelled, now you can put your own labels on these different areas that you want to focus on.
This is a general one just following life in in general really.
Then here you can see what I’ve done is score out of 10, so we’ve got zero down here and ten at the top on each of these, where do we score each one of these areas?
So here we’ve got the retrospective wheel of life, we’ve got eight out ten for our home and family and for work, security, for me, seven for health, hobbies, here is a nine so that’s up there I’ve got a new pony and we’ve got a horsebox so we’ve been doing lots of outings but my social life here is suffering a little bit so it’s down here at four and that’s because i’m really focused on these areas of home and family health hobbies and balancing that work and so actually consequently this has come down a little bit
so it’s really interesting to look at that because often we do end up focusing on one particular area of our life and it’s really nice to kind of remind ourselves that there is more to life than just one aspect and while one area might not be going so well another area could be going very very well.
We can often think that you know getting a 10 out of 10 across the board is the aim of the game but actually it’s not because that’s you know it’s perfection it’s not realistic and what we really want to achieve is this nice kind of balance across the board and say that we’re kind of those five six seven eights out of ten across the board are really really good it shows we’ve got a nice balance.
Here on mine you can see my hobby is nine out of ten and there’s consequence of other parts of my life are suffering social life as it has come down there and so what i like to do is once i’ve scaled these and i’ve kind of thought about where they are on there and that’s given me a little bit of a visual is then i’ll start to add some notes to it. So i’ll often on the inside here of the retrospective wheel on the actual wheel i’ll put things that are what’s made it nine out of ten what’s made it seven was made of eight what are the things going on that’s that’s that’s got me those those those scores.
Then on the outside i’ll think about you know things that i could do to really increase and improve or sustain so i might look at you know how can i do more socializing while we go to beach more the sun’s shining at the moment and and i can be a bit more social at shows as well so now i’ve kind of got into the gist of going to the shows i can start to relax and start to get chatty and start to talk to people and and and have that social element as well.
It’s a really nice positive way and also we can think about how can i turn that four into a five, how could i turn that six into a seven round trying to take that four to a ten which is unrealistic and we’ll unbalance something else on our wheel actually what could we do just to add once we take that agile approach a lot small incremental little changes and improvements to help us keep our wheel balanced.
I hope you found that useful and it’s something that you can you can play it’s quite nice just an evening sit down and play. We are aiming for this kind of green zone this comfort zone where you know five six sevens maybe eights out of tens where things are good and they are stable and comfortable and then how i think about it is like when things get to like maybe a nine that actually that’s a little amber it’s a bit of a like warning say a signal and equal if they drop down perhaps below a four that’s a bit of a warning signal for me that i need to just focus on that aspect of my life am i doing too much in that area am i doing not enough in that area is that okay or you know is that just a phase and that’s okay or does it need you know more attention because ideally i don’t want to slip into those kind of ones and twos at 10 um or even tens.
But you know we can have big events that really throw us down so you know it really makes us feel like that area is a one out of ten and that’s okay too you know that’s what happens in life and and we can reassure ourselves that we’ve got other areas of our wheel that are okay and also we can just look at how can we just have that plus one what could we do what have we got what is there in our life that we can be grateful for that actually helps to make that one or two or that two or three and really help to kind of put us in a more solution focused and thinking about how we can we can improve and and and do better you know because with the benefit of hindsight we can look back and we can look at ways that we can we can improve areas and maintain areas and right size and sometimes too if we’re getting a bit carried away
We can use this in business as well, so just a couple of examples here and this is where i’ve taken a bit of a mix there’s almost a bit of a mix of models here just in terms of the areas so i’ve got things like my new online hub that i’m developing so you can see here i’ve initially created my my diagram i’ve labelled each spoken my wheel and i’ve added on these numbers so again you know really good say just as an example this is very good in delivery and existing clients at the moment but you can see that marketing is a little bit low new clients are starting to be a bit low and techs and channels so these ones might be a little long as i’m focusing here on my existing clients and delivery need to make sure that we’re bringing three new clients through marketing through channels and and actually technology and the hub is improving because it’s it’s it’s developing this which is helping with those new clients and different developments so again i would start to add to these and add little notes on each one so what are the new clients that have represented that five and what other potential new clients new markets am i looking at you know why is that hub scoring a five how can i make that a six how can i expand my reach and expand my channels and say youtube is a good example of that i guess it’s my new youtube channel so do subscribe if you’re watching this this was great to to know that that people are watching um so yeah so this again is you know this is i’ve run a small business so this is a really nice kind of these are the key things that are on my mind at the moment where am i with those things what can i do what’s going well and what can i do better so you know what’s what’s making this a four and then how can i make it a five so it’s a really positive kind of forward-thinking reflection as well.
So that’s the retrospective wheel, I hope you found it useful do play it i think it is a powerful one and quite an easy one if you just sat down on an evening and grab a bit of paper or back of an envelope and draw your wheel and make some notes and it’s a really nice thinking tool really nice reflection.
i’ve been Belinda from Being Agile I hope you’ve liked this if you do please do give me a like give me a subscribe and connect and get in touch and always really happy to hear from people and talk more about being agile and thanks very much best wishes happy summer solstice.
