Darcy Lemon, Senior Proj Manager at American Productivity & Quality Centre is shared their findings on how to units of the US Army and Credit Suisse manage their lessons learned at KMWorld 2009.  She started by looking at the challenges many organizations have in managing lessons learned including:

- management really doesn’t support capturing or using lessons learned

- people don’t want to admit mistakes

- it’s extra work that no one uses again anyway

You know the list.  But she moved quickly beyond these challenges to describe how the US Army’s Center for Lessons Learned, and the Army’s ARDEC units, as well as Credit Suisse are successfully using their lessons learned.  This includes:

1. they clarify the strategic objective for the lessons learned initiative — articulating & getting buy-in into how this initiative advances organizational goals both near-term & long-term

2. they set up governance – wow! – clarifying the roles & skills for all those involved in capturing lessons learned; this was interesting after having heard Dave Snowden talk yesterday about an organization that has KM managers go sit with people for 15 mins/day to help them blog their insights & learnings — this organization has learned that ppl are much more willing to record their ideas & understanding if someone can help them write these up into a blog quickly.  Seems that this may apply to lessons learned too.  Just a bit more about what APQC found in their work with the Army & Credit Suisse, is

Continue reading Projects have teachable moments