Try these 3 things to optimise your lessons learned

Last Thursday we welcomed leaders from all over the world to our monthly mastermind where we discussed how "lessons learned can grow your business". I'm always amazed at the gems of knowledge shared in these sessions - the network is incredible. To that end, I felt it would be good to share one of the moments with you. 

Lessons learned tend to have a bad wrap in my view. They are the thing that is done at the end of a project, and designed (in most cases) to pick up all the things that we “don’t want to do again”.

Sadly, too many times, these lessons get put into a weighty report, added to someone’s reading list for "when there’s time",  and subsequently life moves on - without the lessons ever being read, internalized or embedded.

You might be thinking this sounds extreme but the numbers tell the truth. In just the Fortune 500 companies, $35Bn is left on the table from lessons not being learned or communicated effectively. Add to that all of the other businesses in the world and you can detect there may be some upside from doing this more effectively.

We pinned it down to 3 simple things that can be improved:

1 - have a better process for uncovering lessons learned- both positive and negative in a short, impactful time period. Ask what went well as well as what didn’t? This will uncover the things you want to do more of. Then plan will you do next with this information and what might get in the way? If you are interested in the format we use with teams, book a call and I can talk/walk you through it and

2 - get team members to embed and internalize the lessons that have been learned. Ask them how they are going to personally change behaviors and processes to make sure these lessons are capitalized upon. Too often emailing a report of lessons bounces off people’s psyche and they don’t embed it.

3 - create a process of checking that the internalization has taken place. Most teams who do complete lessons learned, have great intentions to make changes and they might adopt new ways of doing things for a few weeks, but when the pressure is on and people are stressed, the old ways have a habit of creeping back in. I have seen this happen so many times. Create a follow-up process. Equally, this process can surface more lessons or refinements to further boost performance.

There are lots of other best practices that could be shared but honestly, these are the three that make the most difference to most teams. Why not give it a try in your next meeting?

Speak soon,

Jimmy

If you enjoyed this blog, here are a few ways we can connect:

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