my scrum master keeps changing the format of retro and it works worse every time. We're at the 2.5 hour mark right now. It is aggressively hot and humid in the office. Everyone is asleep.

I don't think there's a way to explain to him that the purpose of a retro is not to magically fix things within the format but to financially commit to the preference for conversation, from which the hidden work of resolving conflicts can be billed.

we're not a startup but a small business still, so there's a sort of expectation that things get done efficiently. The idea that some things can only be solved via obscene waste of time and money because of the dynamics of negotiation and our prejudices against emotional labour is a tough sell.

Just to cheer you up I can say that short retros can feel kinda useless.

We always keep a strict time limit, 1h, and the goal of the retro is to avoid fixing things during it - we just create actions for later.

But this can be annoying. After everyone has presented their issues and ideas we find ourselves rushing towards the end where we're supposed to vote on the top 3 things to discuss a bit further and create action-points for. But we end up having to cut the interesting discussions short and it feels like we just got to vent but not really get to the heart of the matter.

To some extent I feel like over a years time our retros just end up being 90% venting and we never get to go in depth.

So once in a while I would kinda prefer a long discussion.

In the next Retro, you should bring up the topic of changing Scrum Master to Scrum Main.