Agree. I am obligated to run those retrospectives and the SNR is very poor.

It is nice though (as long as there isn't anyone in there that the team is afraid to be honest in front of), when people can vent about something that has been pissing them off, so that I as their manager know how they feel. But that happens only about 15-20% of the time. The rest is meaningless tripe like "Glad Project X is done" and "$TECHNOLOGY sucks" and "Good job to Bob and Susan for resolving the issue with the Acme account"