Experience is unparalleled to build competency. Yet there is nothing obvious in learning from failures and successes and, quite often, the same mistakes are made again. How to better build from experience?
Turn learning into a routine
Each situation, however insignificant, is rich in teaching.
-
Perform post mortems in a systematic manner after failures as well as successes. Acknowledge that a success doesn’t mean everything was perfect. Similarly, don’t dismiss everything when experiencing failure…
-
Analyze experience from both personal and team perspectives, e.g. Following a successful launch, organize a meeting to discuss how the team performed.
Implement a strong methodology
The perception of our experiences is often blurred by over enthusiasm when successful or total pessimism in case of failure.
-
Build your analysis on facts. You need to clearly distinguish between what is the result of your decisions and what is caused by external factors.
-
Take a step back, e.g. Ask for a third-party’s opinion, question yourself.
-
Ensure every experience gained leads to a new action plan.
Take action
Formalize each week’s learnings (15 min)
Living an experience is not enough to avoid repeating the same mistakes. You must still fully integrate what you have learned!
At the end of the week, set aside a 15 minute slot to make an assessment of what you have learned, without fixing specific objectives or being excessively ambitious. E.g.: best practice observed in a colleague or a supplier, return of experience from a presentation, exchange with a customer, error to avoid in the future…
Were you aware that you had learned so much? What could you do to capitalize on this learning? E.g.: set up a weekly routine, start a “learning booklet” that you can read from time to time, develop a structured file, etc.
Perform a Return Of Experience following a success (30 min)
A return of experience is not only useful to analyze mistakes, but also to capitalize on successes.
Identify a recent success with your team, even if a modest one: a project milestone that has been met, a conclusive customer visit, a successful presentation…
Think together around three questions: What enabled the success of this particular action? What should we keep and continue doing going forward? If we were to start over, what would we do differently?
Ask a team member to take notes that will be accessible to all through meeting minutes in a shared folder.
Run a Return Of Experience meeting adopting a consultative manner (30 min)
Considering the experience lived from the outside helps learning the lessons from within it.
Choose a real-life event that the team has shared and organize a short meeting to learn the lessons from it.
Propose to change the usual return of experience methodology and adopt an external posture. Ask two questions: – Were we to advise another team in the same situation, what advice could we give them? – Had an external consultant advised us, what advice would we have liked to receive?
Keep a written record of this thinking process. How does it differ from the teachings of a standard internal analysis?
Practical Tips
> Learn from your successes as well as your failures
> Facilitate collective feedback
Find out more
© Managéris