While skimming through some old files in my office the other day, I came upon a reprint of a Harvard Business Review article from January 1999, titled, “Organizing for Empowerment: An Interview with AES's Roger Sant and Dennis Bakke”. Sant and Bakke ran AES, a global power company. The article discusses the unusual way the two men viewed their business (Sant has since retired and Bakke has opened a consulting firm).
In the article, a number of Sant’s remarks relate to retrospectives, empowered work and agile projects. Two of my favorites:
“People always say they don’t have time to celebrate because they’re too busy, but stopping and remembering is really important. What is work if you don’t see the meaning in it? You have to celebrate the meaning in it.”
In retrospectives the team should celebrate the work just completed, as they reflect. Understanding the meaning of what you've done feeds the next piece of work.
“The good news about owning up to your mistakes right away is that it is so much easier to move quickly to find a creative solution. You don’t sit around wasting time trying to figure out who to blame.”
Sounds like an iteration retrospective to me. :-)