Have you ever used or heard the expression, "In hindsight,
knowing what we know today, we would surely have done
things differently"? That's usually a good indicator that
there were unanticipated events or circumstances that came
back to bite, haunt, or baffle the participants of a
particular project or undertaking.
Although the situation might have been problematic at the
time, the good news is that astute observers can
retrospectively extract valuable gems of wisdom from the
experience, which they can then use to their greatest
advantage going forward.
20:20 Hindsight = "Lessons Learned"
"Lessons learned" are the perfect 20:20 hindsight that we
frequently have after completing a project or endeavor.
This hindsight is worth its weight in gold if we mine its
special value, but it's absolutely worthless if we don't
make use of what it has to offer.
When capturing lessons learned, we want to identify what
went well, what didn't go well, and why. At this point, you
might be thinking, "What kind of reason can I give to my
team that we should be doing this? It sounds like a bunch
of bureaucratic overhead and more things to do. When the
project's over, we're anxious to move on!"
The value lies in paving the way for future projects, so
they will experience fewer headaches and setbacks. You
don't, however, need to wait until the entire project
finishes. You could capture 20:20 hindsight incrementally
throughout the project, or very soon after it's over, while
the issues are still fresh.
What Lessons Should You Capture?
For any problems that went largely unresolved, for
instance, consider preventative measures that could help
people work through or avoid the problems in the future.
Those measures might involve tools to speed up the work,
checklists to make sure people don't skip important steps,
and solutions for thorny problems. Examples:
-- If people were stymied by complex document formats, try
preparing and pre-testing some document templates that will
be much easier to use next time.
-- If quality was a issue because people didn't do thorough
testing, try creating step-by-step checklists to guide
people through the process next time.
-- If you found components that were supposed to work
together but didn't, and someone found a solution or a
workaround, record that information to help people prevent
or solve similar dilemmas in the future.
Lessons learned can have many possible uses. You can use
your repository of lessons learned to help your customer
service or technical support personnel solve problems in a
just-in-time fashion, for example. If your staff or
colleagues need to address complex issues on the fly, or
troubleshoot technical issues quickly over the telephone,
they would need fast access to solutions for similar
situations that were addressed in the past.
20:20 Foresight = "Best Practices"
After capturing a series of lessons learned, the next step
is to derive what's called "best practices." What is a best
practice? It's a procedure or method that over time has
proven itself to be better than any other procedures or
methods that you were using to do the same thing. You could
say that it's the very best way that you, your group, or
your organization has found of doing something.
Why do they matter? Best practices are invaluable because
they're the intellectual assets -- the "secret sauce" --
that can help organizations remain highly competitive. It's
ideal to institutionalize best practices so that everyone
follows them. You could incorporate them into policies,
procedures, and/or online task support systems.
One idea is to design a best practice repository that other
people can access easily. You don't want that valuable
information to be buried in a file cabinet that no one
knows anything about. The repository could be on a Web
site, in a database, on an intranet, or another highly
visible location.
Best practice repositories can substantially reduce the
negative effects of attrition on the company's intellectual
assets, which can be devastating. When people leave because
they quit, retire, are laid off, or were simply temporary
contractors to begin with, the company's "brain trust"
completely vanishes out the door with them unless their
knowledge is being captured and made available to others.
In conclusion, by capturing 20:20 hindsight incrementally
and turning it into 20:20 foresight, you will achieve far
greater long-term success than by blissfully ignoring or
forgetting problems, or by simply moving on when a project
or endeavor ends.
----------------------------------------------------
Adele Sommers, Ph.D. is the author of the award-winning
"Straight Talk on Boosting Business Performance" program.
She helps people "discover and recover" the profits their
businesses may be losing every day through overlooked
performance potential. To sign up for more free tips, visit
her site at http://LearnShareProsper.com
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