🔌💡 European Power Outage Crisis
Experience the challenges of a continent-wide power loss as we analyze our project's energy flows. Identify areas to recharge, prevent overloads, and ensure consistent power to keep everything running smoothly.
Template Columns
⚡ Powering Up
Share ideas that could bring positive energy and start new initiatives in our workflow.
Base column: Start🚫 Cut the Power
Identify inefficiencies or obstacles draining our resources, and decide what to disconnect.
Base column: Stop🔋 Energy Reserves
Highlight actions or habits that kept things charged and should be maintained for future stability.
Base column: ContinueAbout this template
Analyze and optimize your team's 'energy flows' by identifying areas to recharge, prevent overloads, and maintain consistency with this creatively-themed retrospective.
When to use this template
Use this template when the team feels exhausted or inefficient and needs a strategic session to identify what needs to be boosted, stopped, or maintained.
How to facilitate
Begin with a thematic introduction, setting the stage as though your team is managing a distributed power network.
Explain each column's purpose, ensuring participants understand the metaphor: energizing new ideas, cutting inefficiencies, and sustaining resilience.
Allow participants about 10 minutes to reflect and populate sticky notes in each column with their insights, all individually and quietly.
Invite the team to review the notes, starting with ⚡ Powering Up, discussing ideas and prioritizing the ones that seem impactful.
Proceed to 🚫 Cut the Power, asking what inefficiencies stand out and confirming actions to reduce them as a team.
Conclude with 🔋 Energy Reserves, highlighting effective habits or setups and collectively reinforcing their importance.
Summarize findings and establish key takeaways or direct actions, assuring the conversation transitions smoothly into concrete planning steps.
Pro Tips
Use creative prompts such as 'Imagine each task as needing its power line' to inspire engagement with the metaphor.
Encourage balance—ensuring not all focus lies in one column—to fully energize discussions.
Visualize energy distribution across the team's larger project roadmap for added context.
Remind participants that cutting power (removing inefficiencies) is as valuable as fostering energy.
Follow directly with an action plan based on discussion outcomes to keep momentum.
FAQ
How do I introduce this template to gain team buy-in?
Frame it creatively: compare each member's contributions to a regional power grid, sparking curiosity and engagement.
What if there are too many ideas in the ⚡ Powering Up column?
Cluster similar suggestions, prioritize impactful ideas collectively, and note lower-priority items for review later.
How to maintain focus on the energy metaphor?
Use analogies, remind participants about the power grid, and incorporate visuals like energy flow diagrams if possible.
At a glance
- Duration
45-60 min
- Team Size
4-12 people
- Columns
3 columns
- Base Format
Start, Stop, Continue
Tags
Ready to get started?
Use this template to run your next retrospective