📝 Workbook · Business · Unit 5

Workbook · 5B — Lessons learned

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Exercise 1

Exercise 1 — Retro vocabulary

Complete each sentence with ONE phrase from the box.

Word bank — drag or tap, then tap a gap
  1. In  drop , we should have talked to five customers before locking the scope.
  2. The surface problem was the outage; the  drop  was that the on-call runbook hadn't been updated in 18 months.
  3. Big  drop  to Priya — she rebuilt the pipeline over the weekend without being asked.
  4. Every genuine  drop  requires a named owner and a deadline, or it is merely an aspiration.
  5. The surest way to rebuild trust is to  drop  the mistake publicly, without deflecting.
  6. We're running a blameless  drop  on the failed launch on Friday.
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Exercise 2

Exercise 2 — Wish / if only

Put the verbs in brackets in the correct form (wish + past perfect / wish + past simple / wish + would).

  1. (Regret about April launch) I wish we ___ (test) the payment flow one more time.
  2. (About present bandwidth) I wish I ___ (have) more time this quarter.
  3. (Someone else's habit) I wish you ___ ___ (stop) replying-all on internal threads.
  4. (Regret about not saying it) I wish I ___ ___ (push back) on the deadline in week one.
  5. (About my own habit) I wish I ___ (be) better at protecting focus time.
  6. (Regret about the email) I wish I ___ ___ (send) that email at 11pm.
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Exercise 3

Exercise 3 — -ed or -ing?

Choose the correct adjective form.

  1. That re-org announcement was completely (confusing / confused).

  2. I was (frustrating / frustrated) that we weren't asked before the decision.

  3. The Q3 result was (disappointing / disappointed) — we came in 14% below plan.

  4. By December I was completely (exhausting / exhausted).

  5. The onboarding I got was (surprising / surprised) — in a good way.

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Exercise 4

Exercise 4 — Rewrite the excuse as a regret

Rewrite each excuse into a regret that owns the mistake (I wish / if only + past perfect).

  1. 'Marketing didn't brief us — that's why we shipped late.'
  2. 'The client kept changing scope, so of course we missed it.'
  3. 'The engineer left, so we couldn't ship.'
  4. 'The market shifted — nobody could have predicted that.'
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Exercise 5

Exercise 5 — Three retros, one failed launch

You'll hear three team leads run a 60-second retro on the same failed launch. You're picking one to lead the company-wide post-mortem.

🎙️ Three retros, one failed launch — multi-voice

  1. Which lead wins the slot?
  2. Which lead spends the retro blaming other teams?
  3. Which lead is warm and inspiring but leaves no actual lesson?
Show transcript

Anya (Jonas):Honestly, if only marketing had briefed us properly, none of this would have happened. And if only sales had qualified better, we wouldn't have been chasing that segment. The team did everything we could.

Andre (Marta):OK, honest post-mortem. That's on me — I chaired the kick-off and I let the scope through without customer input. I wish we'd talked to five customers in early March, before we locked scope in April. The learning is no scope lock without five customer conversations. Action item: Rafa updates the launch checklist by end of day Friday, I'll re-share it in Monday's all-hands.

Sofia (Chichi):Team, what a journey — I'm so proud of everyone. Failure is fuel, we grew so much, we learned so many lessons. In six months we're going to look back on this and smile.

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Exercise 6

Exercise 6 — Write your 3-sentence retro

Pick one real project from the last year that didn't land the way you wanted. Write the retro in 3 sentences (max 60 words). Sentence 1: 'I wish we had…' with a specific date. Sentence 2: the ONE portable learning as a rule ('From now on, we never / always…'). Sentence 3: action item — who does what, by when.

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Exercise 7

Exercise 7 — Case study reflection: Northwind Payments

Think about the Northwind case (the 12 downgraded reviews, 4 resignations, #review-support channel). Answer the questions.

  1. You have to open the all-hands. Draft the ONE opening sentence. You cannot start with 'clean slate'.

  2. The CEO wants to skip saying 'I'm sorry'. What do you say to her?

  3. Write the ONE-line policy change you'd pin above every future review.

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