Meeting Review using WWW/AFI

Meeting review - orb showing two armed weighing scales

About meeting reviews

Meeting Reviews are a simple and grossly under-utilised technique for understanding how well a meeting worked, and what can be learned from the experience.
Consisting of a simple sheet of flipchart paper (or a blank whiteboard in a virtual meeting) split into two columns headed WWW (What went well?) and AFI (Areas for improvement?) it captures suggestions from the team, and provides useful input for ensuring meetings maintain a standard and continue to improve.
Basically, it is a quick and simple way of reviewing a meeting with a group, recognising the good things that happened, and learning from the things that didn’t work so well.

How to conduct a meeting review

  1. At the end of the meeting simply draw a line down through the centre of a (virtual) whiteboard or flipchart and write WWW as a heading on one side, and AFI as a heading on the other. Or simply click on the template below.
  2. Then ask the meeting to quietly reflect upon  “To what extent have we fulfilled the objectives we set for this meeting?”
  3. Ask the group “So what do we feel we did well in this meeting?”, and write the responses as a list down the left hand side. (Or better still, get the group to add these as sticky notes themselves.)
  4. If people raise criticisms before the WWWs are finished, ask them to focus for the moment on the positives, and that there will be time in a minute or two to shift our minds to a negative perspective.
  5. Once the WWWs have dried up (or filled the space allocated), ask people to reflect back on what might have been improved in the meeting, and list these on the right hand side. Typically you will end up with 10 to 20 things on each side.
  6. If there are actions out of the list, make sure that there are given an owner (even if it is you)
  7. Bring the list (link) back to the start of the next meeting to remind the group on what we did well last time, and what we are going to do differently this time.

Tips

A couple of tips to overcome problems you might encounter over time:
  • If it is clear that only a few people are participating and the rest are simply ‘letting them do it’, ask everybody individually to write down two things that went well and two things they would like to see improved – then wait until everyone has written something before you ask them to submit them to the chart. You will find the result is much more balanced and free-flowing.
  • If you feel that the list contains a number of things that most people don’t agree with, offer people two green dots each to mark (with the highighter tool) beside the items they personally feel are the most important to take forward, and one red dot if there is anything they feel should not be up there.

Resources

Clicking the instant template below will open up as a live interactive tool in your browser. Simply copy its URL from the address bar on the page that opens and share it through your meeting chat with your team. They will instantly be able to participate with you by: adding their thoughts via sticky notes; seeing all that’s going on, and moving things around. For more on instant templates, click here.
Track your progress to ensure the efficacy of this strategy.

2 thoughts on “Meeting Review using WWW/AFI”

  1. Always better to start with AFI and finish the meeting with WWW so finish on a high and positive tone.

  2. Suggest the sticky notes regardless, and have each person affix their post-it note to a designated wall. Leader can then read them, or a selection (in the order Dilip suggests above!) and that way the leader can gather all captured thoughts, even if not all discussed.

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