Lessons learned is not a new \nconcept and has provided many benefits for organisations over the years.\n There are numerous reasons why so often attempts at lessons learned end\n in failure – is one of these that it suffers from an image problem. Is \nit now time to rebrand and improve the lessons learned experience?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Author: Emma Dufty<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Lessons\n learned have been around a long time, the concept has great potential \nand if implemented correctly can give your business a competitive \nadvantage, yet so many attempts at lessons learned end in failure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So why is this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\n name itself \u201clessons learned\u201d seems to imply negativity. While this is\n not normally the intention of a lessons learned event try telling a \ngroup of people you are scheduling a lessons learned meeting and their \nreaction will tell you otherwise! People don\u2019t want to dwell on the \npast and in the modern business environment we often move on to the next\n project without taking time to reflect and review. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Is\n it time to change the wording and make learning a positive experience? \n Is it the word \u2018lessons\u2019 that acts as a trigger to start people \nthinking in a particular way, does this word imply we are teaching \npeople lessons rather than create environments that enable people to \nshare and learn? As Chris Collinson highlights, lessons learned is a \nnoun. Learning is a verb. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There\n are many alternatives to the term lessons learned, the US Army term use\n After Action Review (AAR), in projects they now have retrospectives \n(although many will say these are different from lessons learned as they\n are ongoing throughout a project, a subject for another time maybe), \nNASA uses Pause and Learn (PAL), others pause and reflect or learn from \nexperience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At\n the end of the day it is only a label and it is the process that is \nimportant. The process should be reflective, not just focussing on the \nnegative but also recognising and rewarding what went well. The \nlearning element should be about building positively upon this, it \nshould not been seen as a chore but as something that improves \u201cthe way \nwe do things round here\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately\n I believe the term lessons learned has become tarnished, the process \ncurrently is seen as a chore, a tick box exercise to complete a \nproject. Lessons learned needs an image makeover, it needs to be seen \nas a positive action, something that begins at the start of the project \nwith learning from experience and a process that continues throughout. \n A name change itself can\u2019t alter anything on its own, but if it can act\n as a catalyst to change the process to create a positive learning \nenvironment and add value then it is certainly worth a rebrand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lessons learned is not a new concept and has provided many benefits for organisations over the years. There are numerous reasons why so often attempts at lessons learned end in failure – is one of these that it suffers from an image problem. Is it now time to rebrand and improve the lessons learned experience? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":161,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":202,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions\/202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}