What is Lessons Learned?

Lessons Learned or Lessons Not Learned? At this moment, at several levels in various  disciplines, there are discussions and debates going on about Lessons Learned. The concern is the question, at what point do Lessons become Lessons Learned? It is a question that has the attention of business leaders, PhDs, schools of management, blogsters, and students alike. Often, conspicuously absent from these dialogues, is the question of the validity of the lessons themselves- the quality of the initial data itself. Typically, a lesson is intended to communicate the source of the problem and the solutions available for application in similar situations. More realistically important is that the lesson be a valid one, and that learned means that something is going to be done, or has already been done to recognize and deal with its causal origins. It means that we have learned our lesson, understand why we needed to change . . . and have changed.

That’s our definition of lessons learned. Using REASON we have always dealt with Lessons Learned, in terms of the REASON root cause analysis process itself. That is, the REASON RCA creates and documents the learned Lesson and then the lesson flows into both a corrective action path and a Lessons Learned path. As a foundation for Lessons Learned, the REASON process generates data that are validated as being accurate and objective. In REASON 9, lessons learned becomes an interactive knowledge base that we call the organizational intelligence center. Instead of considering Lessons Learned to be the end and only value to the organization, we have taken the knowledge and raised it several levels to serve as a resource for supervisors and managers. Let me give you an example of how you as a manager might use REASON 9 in this mode: It is the beginning of your day. You access REASON 9 Lessons Learned from the web. There displayed is a graphic dashboard presenting the loss events for the previous day, month, quarter and year. The dashboard shows how many events have occurred, where they occurred and, importantly, the percentage of cases that are controllable at the management, supervisor and employee level. A red flag would be a high rate of events that were supposed to be controlled at the management level. With REASON 9, you drill down to the details of each appropriate case to see where the lack of controls existed and what is being done about it. With REASON Lessons Learned, you soon begin to see the control effectiveness of each department; What policies are not achieving the results you want and why. If you find yourself getting excited about the new web-access REASON 9 root cause analysis tool and web-access training, we understand. Please contact us to arrange a personal web demonstration . Contact us at info@rootcause.com