Tag Archives: lessons learned

The future cannot be known, it can only be imagined.

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Little did I know when I wrote this title how accurate it would prove.

Having “put pen to paper” on my final client report and recommendation mid January, I was hit by the devastating event of my mother passing.

The following weeks have proved traumatic to say the least and taken me time to recover!

Drop everything, we need you!

It’s mid October and I get a message from a former client requesting my help to lead the Lessons Learned component of the inaugural UK Caribbean Infrastructure Fund (UKCIF) conference:

… I would like to ask if you might still have availability and interest. The event is Nov 20 to 24!

UK Caribbean Infrastructure Fund (UKCIF), which provided funding for the Conference, is a £350 million grant-funded programme from the UK Government to build climate-resilient, inclusive infrastructure and boost economic growth in the Caribbean.

Having stepped back from consulting to focus on an expanding business interest I wasn’t initially enthused. The timetable was absurdly tight. I had less than a month to develop an agenda to cover the first couple of days for a disparate group of stakeholders. And, I would have to get the 60+ representatives from 13 countries to prepare the story of their project in advance then to create an environment that promulgated the sharing and adoption of lessons from major infrastructure projects in the Caribbean. Here’s the initial brief:

“The Lessons Learned Workshops are designed to provide a platform for participants from diverse sectors and countries to share and extract valuable insights from the implementation of their projects. The primary objective is to facilitate effective knowledge exchange at sector, country, project, and cross-cutting thematic levels.
Additionally, the workshops aim to equip participants with the skills to independently conduct lessons learned sessions within their respective teams upon returning to the execution of the project.”

Additionally, I would have to do all of this under the watchful eye of the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), the sponsors.

BUT!

I love the Caribbean, I’d never been to St Vincent (host country), I liked and trusted the person I’d be working most closely with, and it felt like the ultimate challenge; an opportunity to leave a legacy footprint drawing on 50 years of international assignments.

So, I said yes and sent off a provisional outline agenda / proposal in response to their terms of reference.

Agreeing the agenda

This was never going to be easy; getting everyone on the same page in 3 weeks while creating materials for the event, developing pre event ‘homework’ tasks and producing a short “welcome to the event” video for the delegates.

Ahead of the video production we gathered virtually for a stakeholder briefing. I began by asking each to identify what a successful event might look like. I find it important (assuming everyone is willing to work colllaboratively) to get an understanding of the motivations of those who have most to gain/lose from an intervention. And if there are widely differing opinions then that too is informative.

Flights booked, hotel reserved and taxi sorted for journey to LHR I set about the task of creating an agenda and the pre event ‘homework’. Here’s what I asked the delegates to do:

Getting started

My challenge: to strike an effective balance between experiential learning and data collection. I wanted delegates to take away a set of tools “Knowledge Products” that they might use to improve the way they undertake major infrastructure projects while concurrently identifying a set of tangible lessons that could be applied from day one.

Our Day One objective:

Today is about surfacing learnings already identified, arriving at a shared understanding of the term lessons learned, the importance of conducting Lessons Learned processes and developing a general understanding of what critical knowledge looks like for each project.

Day One takeaways

Having encouraged the delegates to reflect on what struck them during the day this stood out:

And these keywords emerged:

Dress: Elegantly Casual

At events such as these it’s often the post activitiy discussions that lay the foundations for future collaboration. St Vincent proved to be an excellent host with the Prime Minister / UK High Commissioner’s reception a particular highlight.

On previous visits to the Caribbean I’ve always admired how people dress for formal gatherings and this was no exception aided no doubt by the suggested dress code on the invitation.

And an impromptu evening at a local fish bar spawned new friendships; what’s not to like about these offerings?

Keeping the momentum going

After a short recap, I set out our aims for Day Two:

As Day One surfaced several lessons while providing a good theoretical underpinning, so Day Two will focus on practical application, capacity
building and the use of different tools for capturing and incorporating lessons, based on Active UKCIF projects.

We used a variety of techniques to identify and make use of the lessons that emerged during the day.

The Peer Assist session was enthusiastically adopted and a raft of excellent suggestions surfaced.

Here’s what the various projects said about the discussions:

“The support was overwhelming, one point, verify the condition of the equipment being provided by the contractor before engaging with them”

“Issues were around implementation. The conversation was amazing; it came up with a number of things we needed to focus on including the establishment of a technical committee the project team might reach out to for advice”

“We had a very productive discussion. Three areas; Develop a negotiation strategy and team ahead of the award; negotiate on big tickets items and consider scope reduction to deliver cost savings; look at methods that are more familiar to contractors to ensure bids are lower.”

“Issue was around set up and procurement of resources. One suggestion, to look at what can be done by the client to mitigate the lack of resources”

And finally

The event underpinned the power of story. Here’s a powerful example from the Day One project presentations:

Port Project: Anticipating the unexpected!

It was anticipated that local aggregates would be used for the project, but local materials did not meet the requirements when tested. So, the decision was taken to import aggregates, but the source country was known to have these African Giant snails. The decision-making around this issue took many months and resulted in a delay, but it was necessary to have the Biosecurity plans to prevent, eradicate or contain any invasive species.

I could not have chosen a better location or group for a swansong event. There is a warmth and generosity of spirit among the people of the Caribbean (the climate and environment help) and humour plays an important role in establishing the right environment for people to share.

We surfaced a number of themes to work on when undertaking major infrastructure projects.

Thank you St Vincent and CDB.

What Turkish steps and an Iranian wrestler can teach us about learning during and learning after.

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Its 00.15 on Monday morning and Turkish Airlines flight TK0898 from Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport has arrived on stand 20 minutes late in swirling snow at Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport. To be fair the journey which started at London Gatwick at 11.55 on Sunday has been very good but with a busy day ahead, and a 60 Turkish Air Stepsminute drive to Hotel Niloo, the chances of being in bed much before 2am are receeding.  Then events take a turn for the worse!

The steps to dissembark have a fault and it will be a further 20 minutes before an alternative is delivered to offload a plane load of very grumpy passengers many of whom are Europeans on the first visit to Iran.

Fortunately I am at the front of the plane so able to converse with the Cabin Cheif.  She is looking at the manual of useful information to give passengers during the flight and there is no entry to cover this situation. So she declines to make a comment while passengers fulminate. It could have all been so different!

I am a great fan of checklists believing them to be knowledge enabled documents which should be, if they are regularly updated, the best practices of an organisation. And as I was to suggest during my client visit the best way to bring about a change in checklists often starts with an After Action Review (AAR) or a Learning Review.

I know organisations where after an event (like the end of a flight) the team would have held a quick debrief using the AAR template:

  • What was supposed to happen;
  • What did happen;
  • Why was there a difference:
  • What can we learn from this;
  • What can we do better next time;
  • What actions should we take; and
  • Can we celebrate success?

The AAR session would have surfaced all the issues about the lack of communication and (maybe) occasioned a change in operating procedures and their checklist – encouraging the cabin staff to keep people updated when things go wrong!

This is where the true value of tools such as AAR come in, they are precursors to a change in procedures or checklists. Many organisations’ Knowledge Management (KM) activity culmiates in the share and reuse step. I have come to realise while working alongside Ron Young and Knowledge Associates that the true value of KM comes from the step of Harvesting which involves turning what has been collected into learning’s and proposed process improvements which the process owner and subject matter experts review and accept or reject.  Checklists then get updated (or not) at that point and the organisation learns from doing!

Lessons Learned when ‘my knowledge is my soul’

For the Harvesting step to work effectively though there has to be an environment that recognises and values the process of capturing and building on learning’s from such tools as AAR. Too often this process throws up dozens of action points few of which get actioned. If you can’t count the actions on the fingers of one hand its unlikely anything will happen as a result.

A few years ago in Khartoum I was to discover that knowledge has a more spiritual feel/meaning in the Arabic and Farsi speaking world. ‘My knowledge is my soul’ is a good indicator of how personal knowledge is viewed and this (taken from a corporate Code of Ethics booklet) reinforces the view that a purely Western approach to the use of tools such as After Action Reviews, Lessons Learned Workshops and Pause & Reflect sessions will not work:

We believe the ethical confrontation with failures should be through awareness, consultation giving the subordinates the opportunity to rectify and compensate for mistakes and applicaton of regulations fairly,,,

So what will? Perhaps this gives an insight.

The Wrestler’s story

During my recent trip to Iran I was taken to the landmark Milad Tower. Around the viewing gallery are a collection of silicon ‘wax’ works of some of Iran’s most famous and loved figures.  There are many poets, writers, a few politicians and one sportsman:

Iran Wrestler

Gholamreza Takhti

Gholamreza Takhti is one of the most, if not the most, loved sportsman in Iran. Here’s why: Takhti tended to act fairly when competing against rivals during his career, something which originated from traditional values of Zurkhaneh, a kind of heroic behaviour that epitomizes chivalrous qualities known as Javanmardi.

For instance, once he had a match with Russian wrestler Alexander Medved who had an injured right knee. When Takhti found out that Medved was injured, he avoided touching the injured leg and tried to attack the other leg instead. He lost the match, but showed that he valued honorable behavior more than reaching victory.

This act of chivalry and exceptional sportsmanship is seen as the desired way to behave and permeates a lot of business dealings.

And finally

Effective Knowledge Management relies on effective Personal Knowledge Management.  Appealing to the corporate good and the team ethic is not going to win supporters or make people feel individually empowered.

Addressing the  ‘What’s in it for me?’ question is vital: this is not purely about money but also recognition, self esteem and personal development.  It’s one reason why many senior corporate positions are filled by academics and people value certification as a way of demonstrating knowledge and expertise.

On the downside it can breed a culture of learning but not necessarily doing: ‘if I am to be punished for making a mistake then why would I try to do it in the first place and I certainly won’t acknowledge it afterwards.’

While we in the West think its quite natural to have an open and frank dialogue about what we could do better next time, its not always the case elsewhere. Our challenge is to find a way to surface learning’s and build them back into process while recognising its counter culture in a personal risk averse environment.