Lessons Learned and Not Learned

A start up takes many expediencies. As it starts to grow and especially when it brings in new people in management, product management and operations roles there will be need for change. I have seen many companies review operations and tabulate lessons learned. In theory this is a good exercise but there are several pitfalls.

Some Constructive Ideas for High Level Corporate/Departmental Reviews

Lessons learned are often symptoms. This is one of the biggest pitfalls. Patching symptoms can be very tedious and expensive because they tend to pop up everywhere. Make sure that your lessons learned are the right lessons. Try to understand the root causes of perceived problems. Addressing one root cause will likely address many symptomatic problems. Avoid the pitfall of essential lessons NOT learned.

Be respectful to the people that got you to where you are today. They are the doers. Be careful when introspecting not to demoralize and demotivate the people that actually know how to get things done. Don't talk about the current state and past actions negatively. If you believe that your problem is competency you need to fix that before doing any kind of reviews or post mortems.

Consider that the lessons learned might be wishful thinking. Don't encourage wishful thinking and whining. Don't legitimize it. A good sign that your lessons learned are whining is that they are symptomatic of some underlying issue, like limited resources.

Don't get stuck in this introspective, critical mode. I've seen companies perpetually talking about lessons learned. For years. If you embark on self analysis, give it a specific time frame and make specific conclusions and actions and then stop.

Don't make a laundry list. If you have more than 5 lessons learned there is something wrong. You might notice many issues but filter that down to no more than a handful of lessons.

Don't undermine your strengths. What some people consider a weakness might be the result of a very important strength. Fixing a minor weakness might have serious side effects. Be careful not to lose the spark that got you where you are today.

Be wary of solutions. Every solution makes the environment more complicated. Every complication adds new problems. Especially be wary of adding controls and processes. They are often more difficult to do well than they appear.

Be wary of silver bullets. Real world problems rarely have trivial solutions.

Be balanced. Post mortems are often top down - managers, department heads. Nearly all of these people have the same perspective. Often your engineers know the root causes and best practices to address the real problems that you face. If your lessons learned are all processes, controls, etc. then there is a good chance that your analysis is one sided.