Internal Comms & Meetings

How to run a team retrospective as Professional Services Founders

Internal Comms & MeetingsFor Professional Services Founders3 apps10 steps~20 min to set up

You run a 12-person consultancy and your retrospectives happen once a quarter — if they happen at all. When they do, someone screen-shares a blank Miro board and you spend 40 minutes trying to remember what went sideways on the Henderson account in February. Action items from the last retro? Buried in a Notion page nobody bookmarked. Nobody can find last quarter's decisions, half the team forgets what was committed to, and the senior who was supposed to follow up on client escalation processes never got a written reminder. You walk out with Post-it energy and zero accountability. A week later, everything reverts.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Internal Comms & MeetingsFor Professional Services Founders3 apps10 steps~20 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A searchable archive of every retrospective — decisions, action items, owners, and dates — so 'didn't we discuss this last quarter?' has an actual answer

Auto-extracted action items assigned to named team members, with due dates, tracked in your project board so nothing lives only in someone's memory

A repeatable retrospective structure your team actually runs the same way each time, with pre-filled context pulled from Notion, Slack, and past meeting notes

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Meeting Notes Knowledge Management Project Management

Data sources & config

Meeting Notes captures and transcribes the live retrospective session. Starch connects directly to Notion (scheduled-sync provider) so prior retrospective pages and project notes are available as context when building the Knowledge Management archive. Project Management tracks action items and assignees. Slack is connected from Starch's integration catalog, queried live to surface relevant threads from the quarter when building the retro brief.

Prompts to copy

Transcribe today's Q2 retrospective and generate a summary with key decisions, what went well, what to improve, and every action item with the person responsible and a suggested due date.

Create a Knowledge Management page titled 'Q2 2026 Retrospective' with the summary, decisions log, and action items, and tag it under the Retrospectives section so the team can find it in one search.

Create tasks for each action item from the Q2 retro: assign to the right team member, set priority, and link back to the retrospective page in Knowledge Management.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Two days before the retro, open Starch and prompt: 'Pull together a pre-retro brief from our last 90 days — Notion project pages, any Slack threads tagged #client-feedback, and the action items from the previous retro — so the team has context before we meet.' Starch queries Notion via scheduled sync and Slack via the integration catalog to draft a one-page brief you send to the team.

2 Open the Meeting Notes app at the start of the retro call. It transcribes in real time so you and your senior consultants can stay in the conversation instead of typing notes into a shared doc.

3 When the call ends, Meeting Notes automatically generates a summary with a 'What went well / What to improve / Decisions made' structure and extracts every action item with the person who spoke it assigned as owner.

4 Review the auto-extracted action items — takes about three minutes to confirm owners and add due dates where the team was vague. This is the only manual step.

5 Prompt Starch: 'Create a Knowledge Management page titled Q2 2026 Retrospective with the full summary, decisions log, and action item table, nested under the Retrospectives section.' The page is live and searchable by the whole team within seconds.

6 Prompt Starch: 'Create a project task for each action item from the Q2 retro — assign to the right person, set priority based on urgency discussed, and link to the Knowledge Management page.' Tasks appear in the Project Management board immediately.

7 Each task owner gets their assignment in the Project Management board. No separate email. No 'did you get my Slack?' The board is the source of truth.

8 At the start of the following week, prompt: 'Show me which action items from the Q2 retro are still open, who owns them, and whether any are overdue.' Starch surfaces the list from Project Management so you can follow up in your Monday standup without manually scanning a Notion table.

9 Four weeks out, prompt: 'Check the Q2 retro action items — mark completed ones as done and flag anything still open for the Q3 pre-retro brief.' Starch closes the loop without requiring you to chase anyone.

10 When someone on the team asks 'what did we decide about the client check-in cadence last quarter?' they search Knowledge Management and find the exact meeting summary, decision, and the name of the person it was assigned to — in under 30 seconds.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

Try it on Starch →

Worked example

Q2 2026 Retrospective — 12-Person Consultancy, June 2026

Sample numbers from a real run

Action items generated from retro	11
Action items with a named owner after Starch extraction	11
Action items tracked to completion by Q3 retro	9
Minutes to produce searchable archive page	4
Retrospectives previously findable in Notion (before Starch)	1

In the June 2026 retro, your team surfaces three recurring issues: the Henderson account almost churned because nobody saw the mid-project scope creep building; two proposals went out late because the deck assembly process still depends on whoever has the old template saved locally; and junior staff don't know the firm's standard escalation path when a client goes quiet. Meeting Notes captures all 67 minutes. After the call, Starch extracts 11 action items: Maya owns a new proposal template in Google Drive by June 30, Raj documents the escalation process in Knowledge Management by July 7, and you personally schedule a monthly scope check-in with any client past the halfway mark. All 11 are created as tasks in Project Management with owners and due dates. The retro summary — with the exact quote about the Henderson account and the decision to standardize escalations — lives in Knowledge Management under Retrospectives. When you run the Q3 pre-retro brief three months later, Starch pulls the Q2 page automatically. Nine of the 11 items are closed. The two open ones are the first agenda items for Q3.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Action item completion rate retro-to-retro (target: 80%+ closed before next retro)

Time from retro call end to searchable archive page being live (target: under 10 minutes)

Number of recurring issues appearing in back-to-back retros (a flat or rising number means decisions aren't sticking)

Senior time spent on retro prep and note-taking (target: under 30 minutes per cycle)

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Notion + manual notes + Asana

You already have this stack — the problem is nobody keeps all three in sync after the retro ends, and searching across them for a decision made six months ago takes longer than just asking someone who was in the room.

Miro or FigJam retro boards

Good for the sticky-note energy during the session; produces zero searchable artifact afterward, and action items live in a screenshot nobody looks at again.

Otter.ai or Fireflies for transcription only

Handles the transcript well, but you still manually move action items to a task tracker and archive the summary yourself — the integration work is still on you.

Kantata / Projector (enterprise PSA)

Built for 200-person firms with a dedicated ops team; priced and scoped accordingly — a quarter to implement, a headcount to maintain, and you still need a separate tool for the actual retrospective workflow.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — meeting notes, knowledge management, project management all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

We use Google Meet for our retros. Can Meeting Notes transcribe from that?

Yes. Meeting Notes works with your existing video call setup. You don't need to switch platforms.

We already have Notion for documentation. Does Starch replace it or work alongside it?

Alongside it. Starch syncs your Notion data on a schedule, so the Knowledge Management app can reference your existing Notion pages when building the retro archive. Your Notion stays intact; Starch makes it easier to find and act on what's already there.

What if someone on the team doesn't use the Project Management board and prefers Asana or Linear?

Asana and Linear are both reachable from Starch's integration catalog, queried live when your apps run. You can prompt Starch to create action items in your existing tool instead of the built-in Project Management board. Describe the setup and Starch builds around your current workflow.

Is Starch SOC 2 Type II certified? We have enterprise clients who will ask.

Not yet. Starch is not currently SOC 2 Type II certified. If that's a hard requirement for your client contracts, it's worth flagging — it's on the roadmap, but we won't claim it before it's done.

How far back can Starch pull Slack threads for the pre-retro brief?

Slack is connected from Starch's integration catalog and queried live. The depth of history available depends on your Slack plan — Slack's own search limits apply. For most small consultancies on a paid Slack plan, 90 days of context is readily accessible.

What happens to action items that nobody completes before the next retro?

They stay open in Project Management and show as overdue. When you run the pre-retro brief prompt before the next session, Starch surfaces them explicitly so they become the first agenda items rather than getting buried or forgotten. The goal is that nothing falls through without at least being named.