How to organize the annual departmental meeting

How to organize an annual departmental post-mortem meeting in a company
The purpose of the post-mortem meeting is to take stock of the good and bad of the past year, and to learn from it for the coming year.
The first phase inorganizing a meeting begins with preparation: all participants are invited to reflect, in the weeks leading up to the meeting, on the strengths and weaknesses they have observed, both at their own level and that of their team. If the participants are managers, it’s a good idea for them to do the exercise with their own employees.

Organizing the annual departmental meeting

At the opening of the meeting, the Vice-Chairman reminds everyone of the objectives of the meeting, and the basic rules: no personal criticism is tolerated, and there is no question of settling accounts or going off the rails in a “bitching” session. The points raised must relate to processes and be made in a constructive manner.
Management begins by presenting the year’s results in key areas: productivity, quality of execution, internal and external customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction. This presentation is compared with the participants’ perceptions and comments.
The participants are then divided into sub-groups, taking care to mix them up. It is essential to avoid “cliques” getting together, as they would simply be repeating what we already know. On the contrary, try to break down the silos.
Sub-groups of around 4 or 5 people then reflect on the year’s strengths and weaknesses. These points should be ranked in descending order.
When presenting the results of the brainstorming, it’s a good idea to group together the strong points and the areas for improvement. Then, it’s possible to see which points come up most often in the groups, and to summarize and prioritize them. Then, each group chooses a point for improvement on which it will work.
Each group then works on an action plan to improve the chosen point. A real action plan must include: the actions to be taken, the people who are to carry them out, and the completion date. Each group, and therefore each of its members, must take responsibility for this action plan during the year.
The presentation of the action plans will be subject to constructive criticism by the whole team and approval by management. If everything stopped here, it would be too simple. In fact, the work has only just begun.
In order to give all participants greater motivation to carry out their action plan, it will be included in their annual objectives, on which it will be evaluated.
On the other hand, it’s up to the vice-president to provide his employees with all the means they need, by offering them free problem-solving training which will give them specific techniques and tools. Better still, during this training, they can take advantage of these days to solve the case they need to solve. The training is also an opportunity to resolve customer complaints in concrete terms. By analyzing these complaints, everyone is made aware of the importance they play in the chain of work that goes into satisfying the end customer.
Finally, to close the loop, each monthly meeting is an opportunity to monitor actions carried out in relation to the planned schedule, and to make any necessary adjustments.
How does the post-mortem meeting fit in with the strategic planning meeting? Well, they complement each other; the strategic meeting aims to achieve the year’s objectives, while the post-mortem meeting aims to improve work processes. The actions decided upon following the post-mortem meeting are therefore integrated into the strategic planning meeting, and the monthly meeting will enable the planned actions to be followed up.
The departmental post-mortem meeting differs from the project management post-mortem meeting in that it has the extraordinary feature of involving all participants towards a common goal, which is to improve the team’s efficiency.

Jean-Pierre Mercier
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