Quite by accident, I discovered a bit of magic to running a 2-hour retrospective meeting. Halfway in, between the brainstorming part and the planning part, I needed to find a resource on my laptop that was eluding me (a file I had misplaced). So, I called for a 5-min break. I left the conference call phone bridge up and told the distributed team members to just set down their phones and come back in five.

What I discovered is that a few people hung out during the break and started to chat socially across the phone bridge — on the subject of marathons and bike races, in this case. I realized that it was a rare occasion for the distributed team to bond on something other than work. So, I let the conversation continue for a good 10 minutes after the break. I also realized that when we eventually got back into the task of turning our brainstorms into action items, it was with a clean slate and a slightly elevated outlook. I’m positive that the decisions we made during the second half of the meeting were better than they would have been had we gone straight from brainstorming to acting. For one thing, the break allowed everyone to unhook themselves from their particular brainstorm contributions and come back at the whole list with a wider view.

So, from now on, I’m going to find any excuse to take a break, and I’ll be sure to specifically prompt everyone to “chat amongst yourselves while I’m busy doing X.”