Lessons Learned System PlanB

New Insights to Lessons Learned

Before you make any decisions concerning your lessons learned initiative, we respectfully suggest that you take a step back for a moment and revisit your thoughts about what you expect from your lessons learned system. Your level of expectations will govern your requirements, your design criteria, the value that you receive from your investment of resources, and ultimately the perceived level of success of your lessons learned system.

Traditionally, over the years the term lessons learned has been applied to the information gained by an organization from its problem solving activity. The label of lessons learned to most individuals means that from a negative occurrence we have learned and recorded what to do to avoid recurrence. Typically, the areas of safety and health as well as operations quality have been associated with the formal concept of lessons learned in organizations. Attention to the activity and the results have tended to be operational views by operations managers. In the past, when the concept of lessons learned was discussed, and praised or criticized by managers it was on the premise that a price had been paid for the valuable prevention information, but that acting upon and communicating the information would tend to produce projected cost savings for the future. It was and still is a valid premise. However, today many equally significant facts about lessons learned capabilities often go unrecognized, facts that can be crucial to executive managers. Our goal is to help you set your expectations to the level that best serves your organization’s goals.

Today we know that the counter-quality events and conditions within the operations of an organization provide convenient and tangible data resources and the mechanism to early detect internal change. This capability enables us to recognize developing systemic patterns and trends, to monitor the control efficiency of critical operations, to discover the need for early course corrections, and to provide a reliable warning system that will early detect failing strategies, as-well-as the impacts upon the fundamental goals of the organization. Lessons learned can give you the practical capability to perceive developing trends and to meaningfully predict the developing and future internal needs of the organization for your executive strategic planning. Benefits can go far beyond finding a remedy for a problem. Our message is that your lessons learned initiative has significant implications for your operations improvement, risk management, change management, knowledge management, and IT activity, as-well-as your highest level monitoring and strategic planning. This understanding speaks to the level of expectations that you bring to your decision.

At the most basic level, traditional lessons learned systems hold stories about major events in computer databases. Typically someone prepares a document telling the story and drawing lessons from the facts, then submits the story to the data base. Word searches provide the only access to the information. Unfortunately, when only word searches are employed, it is like searching the Web: the more extensive and valuable the data resource, the longer the list of word hits produced by your search. Soon, it is impractical, if not impossible, to review all of the data; and soon your investment in lessons learned becomes academic because the persons who are supposed to benefit from the lessons simply cannot take the time away from their job responsibilities to read and evaluate all of the documents from the lists of word hits that extend beyond the horizon, hoping that one of the hits will relate to some immediate problem. REASON overcomes the three primary obstacles to practical use of computerized lessons learned: 1) it provides an automatic input of information to eliminate much of the manpower overhead of maintaining the system. 2) it automatically scans incoming data and instantly communicates data only to the targeted persons who need the data in order to head off developing problems, and 3) it orders data into situations - not words, so that when employees access the system for needed information, every hit is a direct hit that is relevant to the persons situation. With REASON, your expectations for the traditional operations benefits from lessons learned are met and sustained as your data grows. Your investment remains cost-effective into the future.

Beyond the traditional operations benefits are many capabilities that directly apply to the responsibilities of executive managers. These new benefits are a result of the way in which REASON is able to nail down causal facts and record them in a uniform manner that depicts the exact process that produced the problem within the particular environment. Accuracy and consistency of data within REASON’s logic structure enables internal data to be linked directly to the tangible counter-quality results of internal systems. The result is a classic example of how existing data can interact to transmute into a higher level of knowledge from which new and more comprehensive understanding can be derived. In this case, counter-quality events serve as an avenue to executive management decision support and planning. The success goals of the organization and the strategies that have been devised to accomplish those corporate goals can be monitored, analyzed, trended and engineered with the support of the new knowledge provided by REASON Lessons Learned data.

The premise for this new data linkage and the knowledge is fundamental: corporate goals are set in and accomplished through application of strategies which are achieved through deployment of policies. When we are able to make these direct links between counter-quality events and the policies that form the organization’s business processes, a foundation of knowledge is created that provides the capabilities to monitor our success in new, real-time ways that go beyond after-the-fact tallies and reports. REASON Lessons Learned Data provides a moment-to-moment pulse of the internal dynamics that are impacting operations. With REASON data you can establish a daily view of what internal problems are most impacting your corporate goals, early detect developing trends, determine which processes and facilities need your increased attention, and validate your existing strategies. For managing operations, REASON Lessons Learned provides new and immediate visibility of activity. Instead of only quarterly and annual after-the-fact reports and totals, REASON provides a view of your organization’s efficiency and effectiveness of controls in terms upon which you can act proactively to stay ahead of the curve. In short, REASON provides a new source of information and knowledge that directly supports solid decisions and planning from the shop floor to the executive board room.

All of the advanced capabilities and benefits that are a part of the REASON System are a natural product of the methodology itself, and the manner in which it logically orders the REASON data for analysis. The advanced capabilities of REASON are bonus benefits beyond the normal value of traditional lessons learned, and they come to you without additional cost.

We encourage you to find out how these decision support functions and capabilities are possible, and how you can immediately apply the benefits to improve your operations. Please call us at (903) 236 9973. We have mentioned many advanced capabilities . . . but have only touched upon the benefits and value that REASON brings to your organization.