Use Start-Stop-Keep reviews to drive continuous improvement
Regularly ask what the team should start, stop, and keep doing — and act on the answers.
Key takeaways
- What it is: Regularly ask what the team should start, stop, and keep doing — and act on the answers.
- Why it works: Performance improvement requires more than adding new practices; it also requires removing practices that have outlived their usefulness. Start-Stop-Keep reviews make both the addition and subtraction explicit and team-sourced, surfacing operational improvements the leader may not see from above. The discipline of actually stopping things is what creates capacity to start new ones.
- Evidence: Backed by observational / correlational evidence.
- Avoid: Generating start and stop lists without actually implementing them — the review becomes a ritual of generating ideas rather than a mechanism for organizational learning.
Why it works
Performance improvement requires more than adding new practices; it also requires removing practices that have outlived their usefulness. Start-Stop-Keep reviews make both the addition and subtraction explicit and team-sourced, surfacing operational improvements the leader may not see from above. The discipline of actually stopping things is what creates capacity to start new ones.
How to do it
- 1Conduct Start-Stop-Keep reviews at team level quarterly and at leadership team level annually.
- 2Make the "Stop" list as important as the "Start" list — commit to removing at least one practice before adding one.
- 3Act on the output publicly so the team sees that feedback leads to change.
- 4Distinguish "stop because it’s not working" from "stop because we’ve grown past it" — different conversations.
What the evidence says
ObservationalAfter-action review research in military and organizational settings consistently finds that structured reflection on what worked and what didn’t accelerates learning and performance improvement compared to unstructured review.
Honest caveat: Start-Stop-Keep is a specific practitioner format; the broader AAR and debriefing research is the empirical anchor. Effectiveness depends heavily on psychological safety within the team.
- — Tannenbaum & Cerasoli (2013), do team and individual debriefs enhance performance? Human Factors
Common mistake
Generating start and stop lists without actually implementing them — the review becomes a ritual of generating ideas rather than a mechanism for organizational learning.
IX Coach conducts periodic Start-Stop-Keep reviews with you personally — what practices in your development are working, what to stop, and what to continue — keeping your approach current rather than habitual.
Practice this with IX Coach →