The plan arrives in the same meeting as the bad news, so the team leaves knowing what happens next. After a missed goal, a group can spend a whole hour on how it happened. A draft on the table gives people something to react to. Most of us edit a plan faster than we write one, and the conversation moves to this week’s work.

A tool that supports it

Recovery Stewardship is a way of acting, and several tools can back it up. A good one is the “After Action Review,” a method the U.S. Army uses after training exercises. Teams far from the military have picked it up since.

It runs on four questions, asked in order. The first two are “What did we expect to happen?” and “What actually happened?” Then come “What went well, and why?” and “What can be improved, and how?” There’s one ground rule, which is no blame, so the review stays on the work.

For this Practice, the first two questions take a few minutes and put the facts in front of everyone. The last one is where the recovery plan comes from. You bring your own answer to it as a draft, and the team finishes it with you.

When to use it

Use it when the team misses a goal it had committed to, like a monthly number or a launch date. The first meeting after the result is known is the right one, while there’s still time to recover.

It fits goals that belong to the team. When the miss is one person’s small mistake, owning it in a sentence is enough and nobody needs a plan.

How to use it

  1. Before the meeting, write down two numbers: the target and the result.
  2. Draft the plan. Three steps is plenty, each with an owner and a date.
  3. Open with the miss, said plainly. Then go through the first two questions fast.
  4. Show the draft and ask what’s wrong with it. Change it in front of everyone. Letting the team rewrite your draft is the hard part.
  5. Ask for approval before the meeting ends, and say when you’ll check progress together.

Example

On Monday, a support team looks at September. Its goal was to answer 90% of tickets within a day, and it reached 74%.

Before the meeting, the team lead answers the four questions on her own. What did we expect? 90%. What happened? 74%, and most of the late tickets had arrived between 8 and 10 AM. What went well? Tickets opened in the afternoon were answered on time. What can be improved? The morning hours need more people. That last answer becomes her draft.

The usual way “September was rough. Let’s all try to do better in October.”
The Practice “We aimed for 90% and hit 74. Most of the late tickets came in between 8 and 10 AM. I drafted three steps to get back to 90 by the end of October. The first is two of us covering those two hours every morning. Can we go through them and approve a plan today?”

With the Practice, the team argues about step two and leaves with owners and dates.

Phrases you can use

  • “We missed the target. Here’s a draft of how we get back, and I want you to change it.”
  • “We set a goal and came in under it. What did we expect that didn’t happen?”
  • “What’s the first step we can finish this week?”
  • “Who owns each step, and by when?”
  • “Can we approve this plan before we leave the room?”
  • For a leader, when someone does it: “Good, there’s a plan on the table. What do you need from me for step one?”

How to know it worked

The meeting ends with a plan the team approved, and every step has a name and a date next to it. Two weeks later, the check you promised happens. Over time, someone else on the team shows up with the draft after a miss.

In a Skill Deck Track on Accountability, a person can choose this Practice, and the meetings they already have show when they use it.

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