Lessons Learned System Start

After Knowing What's Possible

Reevaluate Your Needs and Goals

Potentially, every employee in your organization could benefit from a lesson learned created by someone else somewhere in your company. Given this reality, whom would you share lessons with around your organization? What groups of people should have the lessons flowing to them? Unfortunately, the answers to these questions are as much affected by logistic issues as need.

The answers also must take into account the fact that there are different levels of informational needs around your organization. Supervisors need to know what are the trends of problems associated with the processes and personnel in their area of responsibility. The maintenance man on the shop floor could really use the solutions and lessons that a sister plant somewhere else learned six months ago concerning the preventive maintenance on the machinery that he is working on today. The executive in the boardroom needs quick access to bird's-eye-views of the trends and patterns that are emerging and currently present within the whole organization in order to understand what trends are affecting corporate goals, strategies and problems.

Different people with different jobs have different informational needs. Yet they all need the answers quickly and concisely if they are to really use the information (lesson) to make a bottom line difference to the company.

The first step in putting in a Lesson Learned system is to determine what it is that you want to achieve with your Lessons Learned initiative. Only then, can you take the next step to determine who it is that you need to involve, what informational needs will be served, and how these lessons will best be delivered in order to be useful.

Most organizations have a clear understanding of what they want to accomplish with their program, but often do not know what capabilities must be provided within the program in order to accomplish their goals. Sometimes organizations are not aware of the latest advancements in the field of lessons learned and do not understand what is possible. A pilot is a great way to view the possibilities and to demonstrate that the program will accomplish the goals you have set.

After a pilot, your team will know how to tailor the scope of your Lesson Learned program and how to best include representation from all groups that will be the users and consumers of the lessons. They will know how it needs to be designed to meet your particular needs. They also will understand better the cost-benefit associated with the program and will thus be able to make business case decisions that will best serve your organizations needs.

Lessons Learned is a quality initiative, it is a safety initiative, it is a cultural initiative. Whether it is in the boardroom or on the shop floor – REASON® Lessons Learned is an initiative that provides a cornerstone process and infrastructure to maximize the benefit from your problem solving activities and to support the sharing of the vital knowledge gained from solving your operations problems.