Learning from Lessons Learned

In a recent post I had mentioned how lessons learned would become visibly useful when it became possible to substantiate the impact of lessons learned.  Where knowledge is closely integrated to business operations, it becomes easier to track the use of such knowledge and the impact it has had on the business – either in terms of improvement in business performance measures, a positive impact on process measures, or measurable impact on people metrics.  However, the challenge usually lies in the fact that lessons learned are seldom directly linked to performance measures.  More often than not, they remain as lessons identified in the knowledge repository, with no measurable or tangible evidence of such lessons actually being put in use.

With the proliferation of enterprise social collaboration, does it make the task of tracking the dissemination of lessons learned any easier?  Is there any way of finding out if the lesson learned from a previous project or experience has been implemented elsewhere?  Or has some similar work been carried out in any other part of the organization which is quite similar to the experience based on which this lesson was learned?  A community of practice is probably the first place one is likely to check for such instances.  When groups of people with similar interests share a platform in which discussions happen, it is quite likely that such topics are discussed, and more evidence can be gathered about such lessons.  Evidence of a lesson learned elsewhere which crops up in discussions in a community of practice is one of the first signals that a lesson is being taken seriously, and is likely to find implementation elsewhere in the organization. 

Tracking the network of people associated with a particular community of practice can provide pointers to how well the information has been dispersed across the organization.  Where formal learning structures are integrated as part of the enterprise social network, it is also possible to associate these lessons learned to the formal learning structures.  For example, a simple survey or a quiz usually evokes a lot of interest among the community; and the response can be an indicator of how well this lesson has been picked up across the network.  Further, a link to the lesson where the answers are incorrect, or even providing that as a reference is likely to increase the people who will get to read this.  However, this does not necessarily guarantee implementation of a lesson learned.  All we can inference from such statistics is that there has been sufficient dispersion of this message across the network.

The package of practice is the other likely place one can possibly evidence the impact of lessons learned.  Where a process or a procedure has been changed, being able to trace it to the influence of the community, and to the set of lessons learned that caused the change in process or procedure is not hard to trace.  More often than not, where there is sufficient automation of processes or where processes are executed through standard software, it is quite easy to track the change request and be able to associate it with the appropriate lessons learned.  In such cases, we have far more solid evidence that a particular change in the process or procedure was initiated because of the lessons learned.  The actual implementation is itself traceable.  A word of caution: since we haven’t linked it to actual business performance, we still don’t know whether this finally did result in some positive improvement to the business result.  Nevertheless, we are still ahead of the game in terms of at least being able to quantify the impact of lessons learned to process improvement and / or people improvement.

At the end of the day, the ability to influence a large section of the network is itself going to result in the creation of the tipping point where positive impact will automatically start to flow.  The key then remains as to how enterprise social collaboration can be made an effective tool of engagement such that it brings in more people to contribute and share knowledge.

Would love to hear about actual experiences in organizations where impact of social collaboration has had a positive impact on the business, and how it has been measured.

Putting Lessons Learned into Action

Acronyms and jargon have a wonderful way of locomotion - especially around my being.  They manage to enter the ear and leave through the mouth, silently, stealthily without a trace.  And as I continue to struggle with AAR, LLR, RCA and the like, I came across yet another term - A3.  Fortunately, this time around it was not an acronym, but just a hook to hang a process on.  A3 is a process followed by Toyota to record process improvements, and the name is derived from the paper size they originally used to write these reports - they probably still do!

So, the topic is about how organizations learn from their mistakes, and ensure that these lessons stay with the organization.  Most quality programs statute an improvement process which usually starts with something called the Lessons Learned. This is usually a stand-alone document or gets associated with a Project Legacy Report or something similar.  The intention, of course, is to record the lessons learned during the execution of a project, or in the process of identification and resolution of a problem or issue the organization was faced with.  However, in most cases, this gets recorded more as a matter of following due process and usually gets stored in some remote location, never to be retrieved again.

In a "social enterprise" - one where people in an organization are networked, have easy access to each other, are able to have conversations on ideas, insights and issues and knowledge is easily transferred through people or content - making the switch from tacit to explicit rather effortlessly - it ought to be easier to make lessons learned available across a larger cross-section of people.  However, what is more important is to ensure that this lesson is put in action, institutionalized - either through a process improvement or a skill improvement program and results in tangible benefits to the organization.  This can happen only when knowledge (or rather the use of knowledge) can be measured.

Lesson Learned Reports also have a rather tedious method of being static and inhibiting exchange of ideas - even after the report has been prepared.  This can be avoided by making the report preparation itself a dynamic process - one which happens as the problem identification occurs and the solution is identified.  And when such a process becomes interactive, and happens in a collaborative environment, chances are that there are a lot more people following the progress, and therefore stickiness or ability to recall the lesson is higher.  Also, in the process of tracking progress, there are other teams of people who are simultaneously experimenting with the solution and coming up with modifications and suggestions.  The dynamic nature of such a solution has the ability to impact a practice (or a process) making the institutionalization of such a change much quicker.  The impact of such a change is also quickly shared across the organization and becomes measurable.

How are lessons learned (LLR) or After-Action-Reviews (AAR) conducted in your organization? Share your feedback on how good this tool is in causing business improvements.