Lfe: the Learning Manual

Draft 4 - JAN03 Learning from Experience The Manual

February 2003

BAA

Draft 4 - JAN03 “I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand” (Confucius, Chinese sage, 551-479 BC)

“Our ability to apply the best available knowledge is a key point of difference for us in the marketplace” (Bovis Lend Lease)

“That was the most productive meeting we’ve had in 3 years of partnering” (a Director of Partnerships First, after a Hindsight workshop)

“Truth springs from arguments amongst friends” (David Hume, Scottish philosopher, 1711-76)

“If it’s that easy, why aren’t we doing it already?” (a Transco engineer, after a Hindsight workshop)

Acknowledgments The Learning Toolkit was developed by David Bartholomew Associates and Gardiner & Theobald in collaboration with: • Amicus Group • BAA plc • The BP-Bovis Lend Lease Global Alliance • Buro Happold • SecondSite Property plc (previously Lattice Property) • Transco plc (now National Grid Transco)

We are grateful for their invaluable input. The work was supported by the Department of Trade and Industry through the Partners in Innovation programme. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Department. Learning from Experience Contents

Contents

1 Why learn from experience? ...... 2

2 Learning basics ...... 4 Introduction ...... 4 Principles...... 5

3 Planning a learning programme ...... 6 Making the business case ...... 6 Making it happen: learning as a project ...... 6 Creating a programme framework...... 6 Launching a learning programme...... 8

4 Workshops and interviews ...... 9 Introduction ...... 9 Planning considerations...... 10 Preparing for a workshop ...... 10 Insight and Hindsight ...... 11 Leader skills ...... 13 Foresight ...... 14

5 Creating knowledge ...... 16

6 Sharing knowledge...... 17

7 Further reading...... 18

For further information about the project or for consultancy on learning methods contact:

• David Bartholomew of DBA at [email protected], or • Marion Weatherhead of Gardiner & Theobald at [email protected]

1 Draft 5nf - JAN03 Learning from Experience Why learn from experience?

Why learn from experience?

Box 1: Data, Information and Knowledge We live in a knowledge-driven economy in the information age of a globalised world. Knowledge has become recognised as one of the keys to You’ve just moved from London to Poole and you decide to realise an business success, and it is written about, managed and valued as never old ambition and take up dinghy sailing. You’ve never bought a boat before. But what exactly is it? Where does it come from? And what is it really before so you go to the Boat Show, but the range on offer is bewildering. worth? Which one would be good to learn in, fun for the family, and give you the chance to race? Would it be better to buy one that would go on The knowledge industry likes to blur the distinctions between knowledge, top of the Volvo, or something a bit bigger? And how much is it information and data. They do overlap, but the differences matter. Data is to really worth paying? You collect a bag full of brochures, but there’s information is to knowledge as brick is to wall is to building: data and too much data to take in. So at Waterloo you look at the magazines information have only limited value until they are brought together in in WH Smith and find one with a comparative review of six models. somebody’s head and transformed into knowledge that can inform action That contains information you can understand — all the key data (see box 1). Most ‘knowledge management’ (KM) systems are really just data in tables for easy comparison, and opinions from experts. You narrow or document management systems (see box 2). KM systems can do a great the choice down to two. But which would be best? On the train deal to make relevant information more accessible, but it still takes human back home a man notices you’re making notes from the magazine intelligence to turn it into knowledge and act on it. and offers some personal knowledge. There’s a friendly sailing club at Poole that specialises in Mirror dinghys. They organise regular We acquire knowledge in three ways: by study, experience or being taught. one-design races, and they have trained instructors and a couple of As a society we invest heavily in learning by study and being taught, but we club boats which can be hired by the day. You could try one without leave learning from the practical experience of doing a job largely to chance, commitment, and if you decided to buy your own could probably get unconsidered and unresourced. Learning has become increasingly a good second-hand boat for half the price of a new one. synonymous with being taught as lecture rooms have replaced apprenticeship. And yet the most highly regarded knowledge is experiential: chief executives, market traders and footballers are paid for Box 2: Learning and Knowledge Management their experience, not their university degrees — because that is what creates the most business value. Learning programmes and knowledge management systems are complementary: learning programmes create knowledge, It is not perverse to invest in conventional education, but it is perverse to knowledge management systems share it. leave learning from experience to chance. The ‘experience’ that is so highly valued is not just acquired by living through events, but by learning actively Learning programmes aim to reveal the know-how that is locked from them. One of the hallmarks of the most successful people and up in the heads of people and teams (tacit and team knowledge) organisations is their ability to learn from everything they do. This is not just and use it to solve problems and improve business performance. a matter of innate ability: it is a learnable process. Technique and organisation pay dividends, just as they do in teaching. Knowledge management (KM) aims to make all the recorded (explicit) knowledge of an organisation easily, quickly and reliably Teaching and study usually are the best ways to learn when knowledge can available to everyone, wherever it is and wherever they are. be ‘codified’ — that is, when it can be reduced to formulae and sets of rules, and stored in a textbook or a hard disk. This is ‘explicit’ knowledge. A knowledge management system is a combination of: Management judgement and football skills have to be learned from experience because they can only be codified to a limited degree. This is culture: a habit of sharing rather than hoarding information ‘tacit’ (or ‘implicit’) knowledge, which exists only in heads. Some is conscious IT: an organisation-wide electronic storage and access system, (we know we have it, and we could codify it if we tried); much more is typically including a structured filing system (for access to specific unconscious — we may (or may not) use it, but we could certainly not codify documents), full-text indexing and searching (for finding documents it. Do you really know how you swim? Could you write it down well enough which include specific words, phrases or concepts), financial and so that a non-swimmer could read it and start swimming immediately? The staff record databases, and a common interface for viewing all kinds more complex the task, and the more it depends on a stream of minute-by- of documents minute judgements, the more tacit knowledge outvalues explicit knowledge. procedures: to ensure that all information which may be useful gets into the system, and ensure its integrity. Typically, they cover It is no accident that so much management training is based on role-playing routine scanning and OCRing of incoming mail, filing of project and team activities — learning from experience in artificial, designed documents and web downloads, recording of contact and market situations — rather than classroom teaching, or that Harvard Business School intelligence information, and updating of a directory of expertise. teaches its MBAs almost entirely through intensive discussion of case studies. Even knowledge that is available in books is often better learned from Software alone is not a knowledge management system (whatever it experience: as Confucius said, “I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do says on the box). and I understand”.

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Explicit knowledge The members of a team can collectively possess knowledge of which none Conscious of them is individually aware — team knowledge, spread around in pieces tacit that mean nothing until they are put together. Historically it may have been knowledge enough for people to learn for themselves, but it no longer is in industries like construction where achievement depends on the combined efforts of Individual Unconscious project teams. tacit Team knowledge When learning from experience is left to individuals and to chance in a

Harder to access, higher value to access, Harder modern industry only a fraction of it is ever turned to business value. In a competitive world, that is letting one of your best assets go to waste.

The knowledge iceberg With the right tools, the waste can be stopped. As the US Army, BP Amoco and many others have already found (see box 3), a well designed, strongly backed learning programme can transform performance by:

Box 3: The business value of learning • putting together the jigsaw pieces of team knowledge and turning it to business value BP credit their learning programme, supported by their ‘Virtual Team • helping capture and interpret tacit knowledge, so that it can be made Network’ (an intranet where people and teams post useful explicit and shared information to share with everyone else), with enormous • making people aware of unconscious knowledge, and able to use it productivity gains and cost savings. better.

In two years, they cut the average time needed to drill a deepwater And, after initial pump-priming, it will pay for itself many times over. well from 100 to 42 days by using the US Army’s After Action Review technique before, during and after every well to examine and share The construction industry has more to gain than most from following the BP experience with their project partners and asking “What did we example. As Rethinking Construction says, “. . . continuous learning [is] not learn? How can we do it better next time?” part of construction’s current vocabulary . . . The key premise behind the integrated project process is that teams of designers, constructors and In 1998, they challenged their Alliance partnership with Bovis Lend suppliers work together through a series of projects, continuously Lease to reduce the build cost of retail petrol stations in Europe by developing the product and the supply chain, eliminating waste, innovating 10%. Using the same review techniques, the Alliance delivered $74 and learning from experience.” A learning programme can be one of the million of savings within a year and cut costs by 26% in two years. best ways to address the Egan agenda. It can help:

Oil refineries require major refurbishments — ‘Turnarounds’ — • reduce cost which cost tens of millions of dollars every 4-5 years. In 1998, BP • reduce risk started a worldwide programme with the aim of becoming the • reduce re-work industry leader in Turnarounds, and set up a structured programme of • reduce waste learning reviews and knowledge sharing. Three of the first four • increase customer satisfaction Turnarounds in the programme achieved savings averaging $1 • improve quality million each. The fourth saved nearly $10 million, beating its previous • fix problems time by 9 days, cutting costs by 20% and increased the interval to • increase capability the next one by 6 months. • innovate • spread best practice BP find the same techniques work in everything they do. They have • empower staff used them in business restructuring, improving chemical plant • build trust reliability and entry into new retail markets as well as in drilling wells, • improve teamwork building petrol stations and refinery Turnarounds. And they have • promote culture change found that learning and knowledge sharing do not just help make • support partnering incremental improvements: they generate ‘breakthrough thinking’ • improve sustainability that delivers step changes in business efficiency. • increase profit.

Overall, CEO Lord Browne estimated in 1997 that systematic learning This Toolkit shows how to do it. It has been tested on real projects by Amicus and knowledge sharing had generated $4 billion worth of Group, BAA, the BP-Bovis Lend Lease Global Aliance, Buro Happold, permanent improvements in the previous 5 years. SecondSite Property and National Grid Transco. These methods work.

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Learning basics

Learning Histories Introduction

The Learning History process was developed by MIT’s Center for The approach to learning described in this Toolkit was developed jointly by Organizational Learning in the late 1980s from previous research on David Bartholomew Associates, Gardiner & Theobald, and 6 client organisations, organisational learning, in collaboration with the Ford Motor Co, designers and contractors — Amicus, BAA, BP-Bovis Lend Lease Global Alliance, Hewlett Packard, National Semiconductor, AT&T, Federal Express and Buro Happold, SecondSite Property and Transco — who tested it on real projects. others. The process was designed principally for use in one-off studies of major corporate events involving hundreds of people over It is based on two proven techniques: several years: the case studies which have been published in most detail are the development of a new model car and a major • the After Action Review, originally developed by the US Army and since corporate change programme in an international oil company. The adopted (with variations) by BP Amoco and many other successful MIT team had carried out over 15 Learning History projects by 1997, companies in a variety of sectors, and and the process is increasingly used by commercial management • the Learning History, developed by the Sloan School of Management at consultants. MIT with input from the Ford Motor Company, Hewlett Packard, AT&T, Federal Express and others Learning Histories probe more deeply than the AAR process and can be a better tool for learning from very complex, multi-party which we have adapted to meet the special needs of UK construction. collaborations involving large numbers of people. They are normally carried out by a team with both ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ members, It is a toolkit, not a rule kit: it just offers tools and a recipe for getting started. It whose different familiarity with the company culture bring can be used in many ways and circumstances, by organisations big or small. complementary perspectives. Information is collected mostly in individual interviews, recorded verbatim. Interview records — The techniques are most useful where similar situations are expected to recur, supplemented by documentary information from company records and when the organisation running the learning programme has the authority — are then analysed to identify significant events during the project to bring all the parties involved in a project into the process. But there are under study, issues and opportunities for improvement. The results enough common threads running through every organisation’s work, however are documented in a specially-designed, two column format, diverse it appears to be on the surface, to make them valuable anywhere, and juxtaposing telling quotations from interviewees and the Learning useful lessons can be learned even when they are used solely in-house. Historian’s commentary. Results are disseminated through workshops where this ‘Learning History’ is discussed by key members Learning and knowledge management (KM) are complementary. A learning of its target audience, and by circulating it more widely. Inevitably, programme can be run on its own, or as part of a broader knowledge strategy. Learning History exercises can be expensive — MIT have found that In a small company, lessons learned can be shared effectively by personal a large corporate-wide project can involve 150 interviews, take 30- contact, and the value added by a KM system may be small. But the larger and 60 person-days to conduct them, distill them and present the results more geographically-dispersed the organisation, the more a KM system can in a Learning History report and workshops, and cost up to $500,000 multiply the value of a learning programme by disseminating lessons learned to — but the process can also be used on a much smaller scale, a wider audience. At the same time, there is more opportunity in a large involving 2 or 3 days of interviews and a relatively short report. organisation for learning to become an important source of content for the KM system as dispersed groups of people with a common interest use the system Key references: to share ideas and lessons learned and create active ‘communities of practice’. Learning Histories: A new tool for turning organisational experience into action by Art Kleiner and George Roth — a pre-publication The Toolkit explains all the learning processes, and it should be enough to start version of an article for Harvard Business Review which explains the an effective programme. But running learning exercises is a skill in itself. They philosophy, the history and the process can benefit greatly from wider knowledge of learning processes, and from Car Launch: the human side of managing change by George Roth and personal skills such as workshop facilitation and interviewing. Further reading Art Kleiner — a detailed case history, with a ‘how to’ guide in the and coaching or help from skilled consultants can often be worthwhile, back especially when starting a learning programme for the first time.

Full bibliographic details of all key references are given in Further As BP’s experience shows, the rewards from a learning programme can come Reading, page 16. quickly, but they are not immediate. Learning skills take time to develop, and unless a knowledge-sharing culture already exists it is likely to take even more time for the process to become second nature. Learning programmes always require pump-priming investment, and they need the active backing and involvement of top management, perseverence, and a culture which positively values learning in order to realise their full potential. Ultimately, how much an organisation gets from learning depends on how much everyone values it.

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PROJECTS Principles Apply AARs, Learning Histories and the techniques in this manual provide frameworks knowledge for reflective review of recent events and sharing of the knowledge gained. Plan There are five basic steps in every every learning review: learning Share • plan • gather information — from review workshops, interviews, project knowledge Gather records and other sources • create knowledge — by reflection, discussion and analysis, during a information review workshop or as a separate process Create • share knowledge — to a limited circle during a review workshop, to others knowledge through knowledge-sharing workshops, and to others again in reports • apply knowledge. The learning review cycle A learning programme can be:

The After Action Review • a one-off (or occasional) review, typically looking at a very big project in great depth (as MIT’s own Learning Histories have usually done) The After Action Review process has its roots in US Army experiments • a finite series of reviews with systematic learning in the early 1970s. By the mid 1980s AARs • a routine part of management (as they are in the US Army and BP), or had become a standard feature of Army training at at all levels from • any combination. the platoon upwards, and the Centre for Army Lessons Learned had been established to disseminate the lessons learned throughout the Individual learning reviews can vary in scale from a one-hour meeting of Army. In the following decade, it was recognised that the value of the half a dozen key people — which combines information collection, AAR process extended far beyond training. The habit of conducting knowledge creation and knowledge sharing in one event — to a study AARs after significant events spread into all levels of Army extending over several months carried out by a full-time learning team, management, and ‘before action’ reviews began. Former Chief of Staff interviewing dozens of people, writing a book-sized report, and holding Gordon Sullivan called the AAR “the key to turning the corner and a series of dissemination workshops to share the lessons learned with institutionalising organisational learning”. His book Hope is not a hundreds of staff. But a review that large would be exceptional: a method — what business leaders can learn from America’s Army typical learning exercise involves a day or so’s preparation, a half day became a best seller, and in the past five years the process has been workshop, and another couple of days analysis and reporting. taken up widely in American industry and, in this country, by BP Amoco and the BP-Bovis Alliance. Learning reviews can be held:

The AAR is an ‘all-in-one’ approach designed to support quick • before projects start, to ensure that planning makes best use of learning by project participants. Most AARs are based on meeting of experience gained in previous projects — Foresight reviews participants — from the most junior to the most senior — as • while projects are underway, typically on completion of significant steps immediately as possible after event. A leader guides discussion — Insight reviews through review of what actually happened (as seen from the diverse • after projects have finished — Hindsight reviews. perspectives of the various participants) to establish ‘ground truth’ and into comparison with doctrine, procedures and objectives, to lead Whichever and however the tools are used, one factor is crucial. Effective to insights into how things could have been done better. Reviews of learning requires a willingness to share experience and ideas freely across all the largest events — such as the actions in Kosovo — are more levels and between all participants in the process, however embarrassing. formal, with extensive preparation and fewer of the participants involved. Learning exercises assess projects, not people — and participants must believe that. When relationships are difficult, information can be collected in Key references: individual interviews and sources identified only by function, but that is a A Leader’s Guide to After Action Reviews — the US Army training last resort. An outstanding characteristic of the most successful learning manual organisations, such as the US Army and BP, is their culture of mutual trust. Hope is not a Method: what business leaders can learn from America’s Sometimes this was pre-existing, and sometimes it has been consciously Army by Gordon Sullivan and Michael Harper — the AAR discussed engineered to facilitate learning. It is always reinforced by making learning as part of the US Army’s post-Vietnam and post-cold war change bring personal as well as corporate benefits. This is one part of the process programmes which cannot be delegated: a culture of trust must start at the top.

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Planning a learning programme

Box 1: Is yours already a Learning Organisation? Making the business case The evidence from organisations like BP is strongly persuasive that a systematic BP and Bovis Lend Lease are ‘learning organisations’ : they approach to learning from experience pays off handsomely. But if it is not understand how learning can lead to business advantage, and how persuasive enough, a more calculated approach can help make the case for a to make it happen. Does yours? Answering five simple ‘litmus test’ learning programme. A simple audit using the questions in box 1 can reveal questions will tell you, and help identify its strengths and weaknesses: specific areas of weakness in learning, and quantifying potential benefits, however roughly, can help in deciding how much it is worth investing in a Does the organisation have a defined learning • programme, and what to focus on. Quantifiable benefits include: agenda? Learning organisations understand what kinds of information and knowledge contribute to their business success change value: how much would a 10% reduction in man hours, build — on customers, competitors, technologies or production • time, defects or construction waste save in project cost? BP often starts processes, for example — and they have a clear picture of what with an apparently arbitrary target like this — and it is often beaten. they need to learn and how best to learn it. A learning agenda opportunity value: how much would a lower cost base, more typically includes a structured approach to learning from • predictable build times or lower defect rates be worth in extra business? experience, together with a mixture of other tools such as market What would it be worth to have staff gain expertise twice as fast? surveys, external courses and benchmarking exercises. avoided cost: how much would it cost to hire and train replacements Is the organisation open to challenging ideas? Change • • for staff whose tacit knowledge you rely on? and improvement are extremely difficult in an organisation avoided liability: how much would it be worth to reduce the chance of which shoots the messenger who brings bad news. When there • overlooking an avoidable risk by 50%? are topics which are off limits for discussion messages from the grass roots get filtered and watered down and it becomes However, it is always difficult to hard to estimate business benefit, and with little impossible for senior management to learn — and they are the up-front investment needed it is rarely worth the effort. With such a strong only people with the authority to drive radical change. qualitative case for systematic learning it is better just to make a leap of faith. • Does the organisation avoid repeated mistakes? Repeating mistakes — often because causes are concealed, Making it happen: learning as a project knowing that they will be punished instead of seen as Once they discover the value of a systematic approach to learning most opportunities for learning — is a key symptom of failure to learn organisations make it a routine part of management. When reviews become from experience. routine all but the largest can be financed within normal project budgets and Does the organisation lose critical skills when key • left to local managers to carry through. But setting up a successful programme people leave? It is commonplace for organisations to find requires a pump-priming investment in staff time and other resources: it needs that the loss of a key person has an unexpectedly large effect on to be treated as a project in its own right, with a dedicated team, clear objectives capability — quality or customer relations suffer, or a formerly and a budget proportionate to its expected value. BP spent $12 million piloting routine task becomes nearly impossible. This is a sign that its Virtual Team Network — and estimates it produced $30 million value in its crucial knowledge was tacit, locked in the head of a single first year. In a small company, the team might only be one senior manager person. Learning organisations avoid this by recognising, working on the learning project a couple of hours a week for six months, helped codifying and sharing essential knowledge, building it into by a mid-career professional one day a week. Most will be in between. values, norms and operating practices, and making it common property. To implement an ongoing programme, the Learning Team need to: • Does the organisation act on what it knows? It is not enough for knowledge to exist: it has to be used to create create a framework to kick start, guide and give continuing support to business value. To do this, it has to be shared, and everyone has • learning reviews to understand what it can do for the business. • launch the programme assist and observe the first few reviews in representative projects Key reference: • monitor and publicise corporate and individual benefits to build belief Learning in action: a guide to putting the Learing Organisation to work • in the value of the programme and a feeling of ownership of it. by David Garvin — an accessible introduction to the principles and practice of learning in organisations, illustrated with case studies Creating a programme framework from a variety of leading American companies. The details of a programme will depend on the corporate context, but all Learning Teams need to address the same core set of issues:

• scale: should there to be learning reviews in every project, or only in some? Frequent reviews can help build a learning culture, but when projects are small they may generate too little new knowledge to sustain interest, making reviews degenerate into sterile ritual.

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• timing: should there be Foresight, Insight or Hindsight reviews, or a combination? Hindsight reviews based on workshops can give immediate results because they combine elements of information gathering, anslysis and knowledge sharing in one process. Foresight and Insight reviews become increasingly valuable with the size and complexity of projects, and as information accumulates from previous learning. • flexibility: should similar techniques be used in all reviews, or should review leaders be free to choose according to the nature and size of the project? • information gathering: what information gathering techniques should be used — workshops, interviews or a combination? How much effort should be put into reviewing project records?

BAA • knowledge creation: how should usable knowledge be developed — during workshops, or in a separate process of analysis and discusssion? • knowledge sharing: how widely should knowledge be shared, and by what means — just within the project team during workshops, to a wider audience (such as teams working on similar projects) in dissemination workshops, in written reports, or how? Should it be left to review leaders Box 2: What Amicus, Buro Happold, the BP-Bovis Lend to choose what to disseminate and how, and to write any reports, or Lease Global Alliance and Lattice Property are doing should it (at least in part) be done centrally, for example by library staff? • review leaders: should learning reviews be led by project staff alone, Amicus and their partner housing associations in the Amphion by independent people from other projects or from personnel or Consortium have made Hindsight reviews based on workshops a key knowledge management teams, by external consultants, or by mixed project milestone in all their development projects. Amphion staff, teams? Mixed teams are perhaps ideal. Project staff have valuable inside external consultants, contractors and key suppliers all participate in knowledge, but it is difficult for them to step outside their normal roles the workshops. and give the detached leadership needed for effective learning. And few have the interviewing, workshop leading (‘facilitation’), knowledge Buro Happold have started a programme of Hindsight reviews, creation and report writing skills which are crucial to successful reviews. based on interviews with practice staff. Results are being analysed Detachment and specialist skills can add much value, and it is false economy and documented in ‘Learning History’ format and circulated to to make do with staff who are too involved or lack appropriate skills. partners. At the moment they are considered too sensitive to share • training: if project staff are to lead reviews they will need training. more widely, but summary results will form part of the practice’s new Should training be based on a short taught course, a self-teaching package, project database, alongside factual information, where they will be or mentoring? Should training materials be produced by internal staff or available to all staff through an intranet. Buro Happold have also consultants? Note that when the programme matures, observing commissioned an independent consultant to interview clients. workshops and interviews can become a valuable part of training. • staffing: if independent in-house staff are to lead, should they be project The BP-Bovis Lend Lease Global Alliance see Foresight reviews staff on secondment or others, such as human resources or knowledge and worldwide knowledge sharing as keys to their ability to drive management staff? Project staff can lead from a position of greater down costs and improve quality year after year. Their reviews involve understanding, but HR or KM staff are more likely to see the skills required a series of workshops, starting with a session in which the team as relevant to their professional interests. reviews information from past projects and develops criteria for • participation: should reviews involve only in-house staff, or business evaluating proposals for change, and progressing through sessions partners, contractors and clients too? Reviews can be much more devoted to clarifying functional requirements and brainstorming productive when all parties participate, but geographic dispersal, competing alternative solutions to a final session at which proposals are interests and relationship difficulties may make workshops impracticable. presented and evaluated. The Alliance’s whole culture is designed to Appropriate provision in contracts and partnering agreements can help. encourage learning from experience and knowledge sharing, with • resources: should routine reviews be resourced from project budgets both corporate and individual remuneration linked to international or separately, and how should resources be controlled? Learning performance against targets measured on a balanced scorecard. programmes more than pay for themselves overall, but more benefits may accrue to following projects than to the project being reviewed. It Lattice Property have started to use Hindsight reviews based on is vital to avoid disincentives to learning. workshops. They are developing a new Knowledge Management • incentives: what incentives should be used to encourage staff and system, and investigating ways to link the two initiatives together. project partners to make the most of learning? In some contexts, for example, challenging improvement targets and incentives based on There is more information about these and other learning benefit-sharing can make a big difference to the value generated. In others, programmes in the Case Studies. it will be enough to make learning activity a factor in performance appraisal.

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Box 1: Obstacles The framework for an ongoing learning programme should include:

Learning exercises can encounter resistance when they are first • staff or consultant appointments, if review teams are to include introduced. Some people still see hoarded knowledge as a source of independent members personal power, fear they will lose recognition when achievement is • a training programme for in-house team and workshop leaders, including credited to teams as much as to individuals, fear loss of status for teaching and/or self-learning materials and/or consultant appointments admitting to mistakes, feel they have no incentive or time to share • a Learning Manual for project managers, explaining how learning knowledge, identify only with their own specialism’s goals and ignore reviews are to be carrried out, when and by whom the wider business picture, and simply suffer from the ‘not invented • a Review Leader’s Manual explaining how to lead review and here’ syndrome. Attitudes like these have to be broken down and dissemination workshops, conduct interviews, use project records, create replaced by a wider vision, trust, generosity, openness and a habit of knowledge from information collected, and write and disseminate reflection for learning programmes to work at their best. Learning reports on lessons learned programmes alone cannot do this, but provided they are reinforced • an incentive regime, including specimen clauses for partnering by incentive structures which relate rewards to team achievement agreements and contracts where appropriate. they can help by: • providing visible evidence that learning pays dividends, for The framework for a finite programme can be simpler. The main differences individuals as well as the company are that: • putting people in workshop environments where senior people share their knowledge on the same basis as everybody else. • the programme should normally be planned and carried through by a Well-led learning workshops can work in much the same way as the single Learning Team leadership courses which aim to develop habits of trust and active • the balance of advantage tips further towards using consultants because co-operation through role-playing and physical challenge. training internal staff is likely to be a disproportionate overhead, inexperienced staff would inevitably be less effective even with training, and with consultants Learning or Review Leader’s manuals become superfluous. • it is more important to choose projects for review which maximise opportunities for useful learning. Pointers include the likelihood of similar work being commercially important in the future, above average competitive pressure, project size or complexity, and a history of problems or exceptional success. Success and failure are equally good teachers. • it is more important to document the lessons learned and disseminate them effectively — there will be fewer opportunities to re-learn them later.

Launching a Learning Programme Learning programmes can meet resistance (see Box 1), and it is important to launch them with reviews which motivate everyone by generating visibly valuable lessons and showing the way to clear personal and business benefits. The projects for review should be selected with care. Even if external consultants are not used in formal training or later reviews, it can be well worth employing them alongside the in-house staff in the pilots to ensure that they are conducted as well as possible, set a good example, and have the best possible chances of success. It also gives the in-house team useful informal training. Global Alliance Top management needs to give the programme strong and visible endorse- ment (as BP’s CEO does) and set the tone for the whole process. They should appear at launch events and in programme publicity, and take part as ordinary participants in pilot reviews, contributing on the same terms as everyone else.

As a separate process from the normal documentation of lessons learnt, it can be helpful to write short case studies on the most fruitful pilots for the house news-letter or intranet to give staff who were not involved an insight into how reviews work and show them the benefits. Pilot reviews can be video taped and discussions documented verbatim to use in future training. Hindsight reviews should be held on the pilots themselves so that lessons can be

Global Alliance Global learned to improve planning and technique.

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Workshops and interviews

Introduction All Insight and Hindsight reviews start with information gathering. To learn from experience, we first have to understand what our experience was — to • review workshop establish what the US Army calls ‘ground truth’. Ground truth has two parts: • interviews objective facts which provide a common point of reference, and the subjective • project records experience of individual participants — their understanding and thinking Plan learning Plan • previous review reports during the events under review — which often differs widely from person to person. It is the juxtaposition, comparison and analysis of these various Gather information truths which creates new knowledge. The objective facts (so far as they exist) usually have to be gathered from project records, interpreted with due • review workshop caution; construction projects rarely have US Army luxuries like learning team analysis independent observers and video tape. Subjective truth can only be Project • gathered from reflective dialogue in workshops or individual interviews.

Workshops can be used for information gathering alone, or for knowledge Create knowledge creation and knowledge sharing as well. Interviews are mainly for information collection. They follow similar lines to workshops, but they can probe more • review workshop deeply. Project participants can reveal much more in an hour-long interview • dissemination workshops than in a three hour workshop shared with a dozen others, they are less likely to • written report be diverted from lines of thought, and as the undivided focus of attention they can be prompted more thoughtfully. They may also be less inhibited — but they will not have their thoughts sparked by other participants’ contributions. Share knowledge

Apply knowledge MIT have found that it is helpful for interviewers to work in pairs, with an internal interviewer able to recognise and ferret out critical details and an external interviewer free to ask naive questions and raise ‘undiscussable’ issues that the insider might avoid; this also eases the note-taking load and gives interviewers more time to think. Interviews are generally a more powerful technique than workshops for information gathering, but in practice Learning techniques immediacy often makes all-in-one workshops a better choice, especially when reviews are held frequently; if necessary, they can be supplemented with selected interviews. Neither workshops nor interviews have a clear cost advantage. Box 2 shows some of the factors which can help choose.

The guidelines in this section focus on workshops, but the basic principles of planning, preparation and conduct apply equally (with obvious exceptions) to interviews.

Box 2: Workshop or interviews? Look at each pair of statements below in turn and mark the one which more accurately describes your situation: A This review is a one-off learning opportunity B Reviews are routine in all projects A It would be difficult to get the project team together for a workshop B It would be easy to get the project team together for a workshop A More than twenty people/groups played distinct roles in the project B Fewer than twenty people/groups played distinct roles in the project A The significant people/groups involved in the project do not all trust each other B The significant people/groups involved in the project all trust each other A The significant people/groups have comparable backgrounds and status B The significant people/groups all have very different backgrounds or status A The project was technically or managerially complex B The proejct was technically and managerially straightforward A Learning from this project has large potential business benefits B Learning from this project has relatively small potential business benefits A There is no particular time pressure B The review needs to be completed quickly The number of As suggests which tools are likely to be more appropriate: 6 or more As: Individual interviews 4 or 5 As: A mixture of individual interviews and workshops 3 or fewer As: Workshops

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The pilot trials Planning considerations Insight and Hindsight reviews should be held as soon as possible after the The pilot trials of the Learning Toolkit — described in the case events under review, before memories and interest fade and (for Hindsight studies — tested a variety of options, in a wide variety of contexts: reviews) before the project team has dispersed to other work. Foresight reviews should be normally held before any decisions are made on a project which could foreclose options.

Routine workshops can be scheduled in to the project plan. Others may need a lead time of 2-4 weeks. To be productive, all workshops need careful Foresight Hindsight Workshop Interviews In-house staff only Housing Airport check-in Museum station Petrol remediation Site Infrastructure preparation, typically taking between 2 hours and 2 days depending on the Amicus formality and depth of the review. The workshops themselves can take as little as an hour for a routine Insight workshop, or as much as a couple of days BAA for a Hindsight workshop at the end of a large project; 2-3 hours was typical Buro Happold in our pilot trials. Follow-up can take anything from 2 hours to a month (elapsed time), depending on the lessons learned and the dissemination methods used. BP-Bovis Alliance Overall, a review leader and supporting staff are likely to spend between 1 and SecondSite Property 10 person-days on a workshop, spread over 1 to 4 weeks; 3 days is typical. In- depth, interview-based reviews take more of the review team’s time, but less National Grid Transco of other participants’.

A workshop can be run by one person, but all but the shortest and least formal benefit from having two: a workshop leader (to steer the discussion) and a recorder (to take notes, control audio or video recorders, and manage housekeeping issues). As in interviews, it is helpful to have an external as well as an internal leader; they may be able to share the recording task between them.

Box 1: Points to consider Normally, only people actually involved in a project should participate in Hindsight and Insight workshops. Outsiders such as senior managers • Set aside adequate time for both workshops and interviews. unconnected with the project tend to inhibit discussion and should normally The US Army has found that if time is short, discussion can fail be excluded. Exceptionally, key members of a team working on a similar project to get below surface ‘measurables’ and into the ‘unmeasurables’ may be present as listeners. Unless the workshop has a consciously narrow where the most valuable learning takes place. People may be focus (to address a local problem, for example) every significant group involved reluctant to programme in workshops or interviews, but in the project should be represented — client, designers, consultants, experience in our pilot trials shows that once the process starts contractors and subcontractors — and at all levels. The more participants that most are eager to talk. are present, the richer and more complete a picture of ground truth can be • Avoid simplistic assumptions about who knows what: the key to constructed. However, it becomes increasingly difficult to lead and record understanding can be held by someone entirely unexpected, workshops as numbers rise above 10, and 20 is a practical limit for a single event. and the only way to ensure it is found is to involve everyone If that precludes adequately wide representation, hold two or more workshops. possible in the learning process. • Senior management can gain enormously from exposure to the Foresight workshops need a different mix of participants, selected for their raw truth that is usually missing from conventional prior experience and knowledge. It is usually only appropriate to involve in- management meetings and reports. house staff and people from partner organisations who share the same • Junior staff can gain too, both from being heard and from business objectives. hearing their seniors in frank discussion. • Successes and failures can be equally valuable learning Preparing for a workshop opportunities. Insight and Hindsight reviews both involve the same basic steps, but the • It is the unexpected results from reviews which are often the details can vary widely depending on whether they are routine or one-offs, most valuable. the degree of formality and depth, the number of participants, and their familiarity with the process. The basic steps are:

• appoint a workshop leader and a recorder. Ideally, leaders should be independent from the project under review (it is difficult to be detached about your own work), familiar with the project and its business context, and experienced in leading workshops. If necessary, give leaders

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training, or commission external consultants and arrange for them to familiarise themselves with the project. • decide who should to invite to participate • brief any participants unfamiliar with review workshops on what workshops aim to do and how they work, including the ‘rules of procedure’ • arrange a time and venue which suits as many of the key participants as possible. If it is impossible to get all the key people together, consider interviewing those who cannot attend, preferably before the workshop Box 2: Review workshops aren’t management meetings so that the leader can inject their viewpoint into the discusssion arrange necessary facilities, such as audio recording, flip charts and catering Review workshops: • • collect factual material on project objectives and history to date, and • take place ‘offline’ to encourage reflective discussion, in calculate KPIs if appropriate protected space and time free from interruptions • establish the theme, focus and aims for the workshop. This will involve • take no decisions, give no instructions reviewing project records to identify critical issues such as notable cost or • focus first on understanding the past, and only then on the time over-runs and staffing, supply or technical problems, and may future involve contacting key people to help identify significant events and • focus on significant events and issues — routine progress is issues. KPIs can be helpful here. ignored • develop a plan for the discussion based on chronology and/or notable • have no hierarchy: all participants are equal events, and summarise them on slides or flip charts as a visible reference. • are ego-free zones: they are about truth as participants see it, not about making a good impression Insight and Hindsight • there is no criticism, no blame Review workshops are quite different from conventional project management meetings or project reviews (Box 2). Unless everyone is already familiar with them, the workshop leader should start by reminding participants of their purpose, structure and rules of procedure (Box 3). It is important that participants should understand that: Box 2: Workshop Rules of Procedure • a review workshop is a candid, non-judgemental discussion of what went • Nobody is required to speak, but everyone is strongly well and what went less well in the project, intended to help everyone encouraged to do so present — and other colleagues — do better in the future. Contributions • All participants have equal status during the workshop will not be individually attributed in any report, and nothing anybody • Everybody speaks only about their personal experience in the says will be held against them in the future. information gathering phase • everybody’s contribution is equally welcome and potentially valuable; • Everyone recognises that subjective truth can differ from person everybody is encouraged to contribute, but nobody is obliged to do so to person • contributions should focus on personal knowledge. Objective facts, • Nobody criticises anyone else — the focus is on past truth and personal perceptions of events (even if subsequently found to be wrong) future improvement and the thinking behind decisions are all equally important. Nobody • Management guarantees no recriminations should speak on another’s behalf, and speculation about other people’s perceptions should be avoided. • it is normal for people’s views of events to differ: the differences often reveal where performance could be improved. There should be no attempt to find out ‘who was right’: normally, all views were legitimate in 1 What happened? 25% the context of their place and time. • criticism must be avoided; equally, everyone should wear a ‘tough skin’ and avoid interpreting perspectives which conflict with their own as criticism. 2 Why did it happen? 25% This should only be a reminder, repeating information sent out with invitations: it should not be relied on as the only way of familiarising participants with 3 How can we do better? 50% the rules of the game. The main business of Insight and Hindsight workshops is to discuss three questions in turn: What happened? Why did it happen? How can we do better? The US Army has found that it is best to devote about a quarter of Insight and Hindsight workshops: focus and timing the time to the first question, a quarter to the second, and half to the third.

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Discussion can be structured in several ways, such as:

• chronologically through the project • around measurable aspects of performance, such as KPIs • around significant events and issues identified before the workshop.

When preparation is thorough and discusssion time limited, immediate focus on significant events and issues can be the most productive approach. However, this does risk missing important points which might have emerged in a more open-ended dialogue: there is a limit to how thorough preparation can be without reducing the workshop to a mere addendum to

Amicus Group Amicus previous interviews. When time allows it is better to start with discussion structured chronologically or around performance metrics, and introduce Amicus Group pilot trial — Hoystings Close, significant issues identified previously only if they fail to emerge Canterbury spontaneously. A chronological structure is probably easiest to lead, and for Salient features: participants to adhere to. But the structure should never be too rigid: like all research managers, workshop leaders should remain open-minded and be Amicus were acting as developers at Hoystings Close • prepared to respond flexibly as findings emerge. • housing development difficult project history • What happened? Hindsight review, based on a workshop • The first part of the discussion provides the raw materials for the later client, contractor, project management consultant and • dialogue in the workshop. legal adviser all participated followed Learning Manual techniques closely • The first objective is to establish ground truth — what was supposed to happen, review process since adopted as recommended • and what did happen — and to identify ‘significant issues’ and ‘significant practice in Amicus and 16 other housing associations. events’ which appear to merit more detailed review. These are areas where the project has failed to meet (or has exceeded) its objectives, or performance has fallen short (or excelled) in some other way — budget variances, time variances, re-work, accidents, defects, relations within the construction team or between the team and client, unreasonable pressures on staff — or where an improvement in an already good performance appears possible.

The second objective is to give participants a clear, shared view of the interaction of people and events in critical parts of the project, and greater mutual understanding.

Facts from the project record should be used to provide the organising thread either of chronology, performance metrics or significant issues

Buro Happold Buro identified previously, and related objectives. The workshop leader should guide discussion along this thread, and invite participants to describe their Buro Happold pilot trial — Darwin perception of events at each ‘stopping point’, explaining the considerations Centre, Natural History Museum which influenced their actions. Salient features: As the dialogue develops, one person’s memories will trigger others to offer Buro Happold were structure, fire and services • contrasting perspectives and a rich, 360o view of subjective and objective engineers for the Darwin Centre events will develop. It can be helpful to record the highlights on a new museum building • whiteboard, or sticky notes arranged alongside a basic time-line or list of technically challenging (houses 22 million specimens • metrics, to help participants keep everyone’s perspective in mind. As far as in 450,000 glass jars of inflammable alcohol) possible, discussion should focus on specifics such as identifiable events and Hindsight review, using interviews • quantifiable performance standards: for example, ‘quality’ is too vague and only Buro Happold staff participated • complex to focus constructive dialogue: ‘number of defects in steelwork’ or documented in Learning History format • ‘documented customer complaints’ is much better. Throughout, the followed Learning Manual techniques closely • workshop leader should be alert to the developing picture and prompt six more reviews carried out since pilot. • participants for missing details.

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Why did it happen? The objective in the second part of the workshop is to discover why significant events happened as they did — why problems arose, why objectives were missed, how successes happened, what was critical to them. This involves tracing underperformance to specific factors such as lack of information, inadequate preparation, misunderstanding, late deliveries, defects in bought- in components, staff absence, unrealistic scheduling, theft, errors of judgement and unpredictable externalities. And, equally, it means spotting opportunities to improve on good performance in things like unnecessarily large contingencies, sequential work which could be carried out in parallel, and underemployed staff who could take on extra tasks. In the process, people discover what they

Lattice Property Lattice did right and what they did wrong, and — most important — how their interactions as a team led to good or bad consequences. SecondSite Property pilot trial — former gasworks, Portsmouth How can we do better? Salient features: This part of the workshop is where lessons are learned. The dialogue should build on the results from the preceding discussions to identify where SecondSite Property was the client • improvement can be made, and if possible suggest how. The aim is not to site remediation • work out the detail of new ways of working but to provide a clear basis for technically novel — used bio-remediation • working them out after the workshop, in the course of routine mangement Hindsight review, based on a workshop • or in follow-up studies. For example, lack of information and misunderstandings client, contractor and specialist consultants all • can be cured by more site investigation and better communication, late participated deliveries by earlier ordering or more tightly-defined supply contracts, errors followed Learning Manual techniques closely • of judgement by better training. • review process likely to become routine for projects with special technical or other interest. Closure The leader should close the workshop with thanks to the participants and a brief summary of what significant events and issues have been identified and what ways have been found to improve performance in future, and explain how the workshop will be followed up — for example, by further investigation of significant events and wider dissemination of lessons learned.

Leader skills It is not easy to lead a review workshop well. Like riding a bicycle, the principles are easy to understand, but it takes time for the practice to become automatic.

Workshop leaders should steer the dialogue with a light touch, intervening only to the extent needed to keep the focus on salient issues and on clearly identifying lessons for the future. This can be done by summarising at frequent intervals and by posing open-ended and leading questions, either to individual participants or to the whole group. Neutral questions like ‘how could we have done . . . better?’ should always be used, and loaded questions Box 1: Leader responsibilities like ‘wouldn’t it have been better to . . .?’ avoided.

• Introduce the topic It is important to keep the focus clearly on learning from actual experience in • Move the dialogue from each question to the next the project, and not let discussion drift into general issues, such as management • Keep dialogue focused on important issues style or company structure. It is important, too, to avoid jumping to • Pace the dialogue to stay on schedule conclusions, and to ensure that conclusions are supported by as much • Listen factual evidence as possible; sometimes, it will be appropriate to seek further • Encourage evidence from project records or interviews after the workshop. Discussion • Prompt of notable successes can be worthwhile if lessons can be learned from them • Summarise to improve performance in other projects, but it is generally more productive • Enforce the Rules of Procedure to focus on performance shortcomings, and on areas where there appear to • Set the tone be opportunities to improve performance which is already good.

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Inevitably, productive discussion will sometimes require focus on participants’ mistakes. This should not be avoided. A good leader can guide the discussion so that it is frank without being unduly embarrasing to the person who made the mistake. Nobody makes mistakes deliberately; they usually arise from lack of critical information or knowledge, undue time pressure, incorrect assessment of conflicting factors, or an unfortunate outcome from a finely- balanced decision which might equally well have led to success. The lessons are more often for others — to allocate budgets differently, improve information flow, put staff under less pressure or give better training, for example.

BAA Leaders need to be conscious of how things are being said and by whom, as well as what is being said. They should always be alert for infringements of BAA pilot trial — new check-in at Gatwick the rules of procedure, and bring the discussion back on track when Salient features: necessary. They should actively encourage contributions from quiet • BAA were the client for the development participants, and constrain the unproductively verbose. • new check-in facility, part newbuild, part adaptation of existing space Finally, it is the leader’s responsibility to ensure that as many participants as • demanding timescale, completion after being possible leave believing that learning workshops really are opportunities for brought into use candid discussion of experience, and that the process is capable of generating • Hindsight review based on interviews insights which lead to real improvements in performance. Disillusion can be • used Learning Manual techniques infectious, compromising the prospects for future learning exercises. • lessons learnt disseminated to other BAA staff in a Experience in trials of the Toolkit is that participants in well-run reviews are knowledge-sharing workshop. nearly always enthusiastic and want more — itself a sign of their value.

There is more advice on leading workshops in the LfE Workshop Leader’s Guide.

Foresight Foresight workshops differ from Insight and Hindsight workshops in several obvious ways, but most of the basic principles still apply.

The key questions are:

1 Who’s done this before? • who has done this before, is currently working on something similar, or knows something about it? 2How? • how was it done last time, and what else do we know that is relevant? • how can we do better?

— in other words, how do we learn from past experience and not only avoid 3 How can we do better? re-inventing the wheel, but make the next one better?

This changes the dynamics of the discussion. There may be two rather different groups of people involved: those with prior experience, and those seeking to learn from them. But the basic framework is still hindsight, focused now Foresight workshops: key questions by the circumstances of the new project alongside those of the old.

Where Hindsight reviews have already been done on prior projects the review reports make a good starting point for all participants, enabling the dialogue to start from a higher base of understanding.

Workshops like this, which bring together people from different parts of an organisation who share common interests, can be a valuable stimulus for building ‘communities of practice’, networks of people who continue to share information and give mutual help through the company intranet, email and occasional meetings.

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Bovis Lend Lease have made learning and knowledge management a core business philosophy and developed Foresight processes to a fine art.

Through their Global Alliance partnership with BP, they are responsible for the management of BP’s retail capital investment programme and the maintenance of its service station network across Europe from Portugal to Austria, and in the USA. Bovis Lend Lease’s income from the partnership each year is linked to the Alliance’s international performance measured against agreed benchmarks on a balanced scorecard, and personal incentives for UK employees are linked to pan-European weighted average performance. In its

Global Alliance first two years the Alliance cut the cost of service stations by 26%, and it continues to drive costs down. In 2002, the UK team was set a target of BP-Bovis Lend Lease Global Alliance pilot reducing total costs by a further 25%. They achieved 30%, by Foresight. trial — service station cost reduction Salient features: The Global Alliance approach combines value engineering and Foresight • the Global Alliance are responsible for building and techniques in a three-stage workshop process: maintaining BP service stations worldwide under a partnering agreement 1 Review functional requirements and information on cost and • 2002 challenge: reduce total costs by 25% performance in previous projects, identify focus areas where there • Foresight review, based on workshops appears to be scope for savings, and develop criteria for evaluating • only Global Alliance staff participated solutions. The Alliance brings information and expertise from all its teams • used techniques the Global Alliance has developed worldwide into the process: in 2002, for example, their eventual solution over several years, based on BP methods included the use of a Portuguese company to supply and install the • the process is standard practice and has been furniture and equipment in service station shops, with extensive consistently successful in enabling radical prefabrication. improvements. 2 Look more closely at the functional requirements of focus areas and brainstorm alternatives. In 2002, the Alliance team used two workshops for this. After the second, members of the team took on responsibility for working up detailed solutions for their various areas of speciality based on the ideas they liked best. 3 Review the worked-up solutions and evaluate them on the criteria set in stage 1.

By 2002 all the easy cost saving measures had already been taken, so the team looked for radical alternatives to the implementation of whole systems, such as the electric system. The Alliance stress the importance of focusing on functionality — what the system needs to do — rather than its physical nature as a way of detaching thinking from past solutions and enabling creativity and radical change.

They also stress the necessity for the underlying conditions identified earlier in the Manual as vital for all learning: a culture of learning and knowledge Shop 37% Buildings sharing supported by visible commitment from management, appropriate 15% 35% Canopy cladding incentives, and good processes. In Bovis Lend Lease, for example, the knowledge sharing processes include a Communities of Practice programme which pools the expertise of groups of experts in specific areas from around 25% Car wash 36% Jet wash the globe, iKnow, a database of research, written reports and knowledge networks across the organisation, and iKonnect, a service which uses facilitators based in London, Sydney and New York to find answers to 30% Signware Tank 12% Civils questions by putting people in touch with expertise elsewhere in the company. 20% farms Global Alliance Bovis Lend Lease have developed a sophisticated system and invest heavily in it, but the basic elements of their approach could be used equally well in Cost savings in BP service stations 1996-98 companies and projects of any scale.

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Creating knowledge

The ladder of inference Creating knowledge is the most crucial step in learning from experience. A record of past events is just a history; the value comes from understanding MIT use the concept of a ‘ladder of inference’ in their learning reviews. what those events tell us about the way the world works and how we can act This was designed to show people how much understanding we can more effectively in future. And that comes from seeing causal connections and miss when we jump straight from data to conclusions with little patterns, and linking them up with existing knowledge. intermediate thought (as we often do). An observation like ‘Tom yawned’ can lead straight to an assumption like ‘Tom is bored’ and a As individuals, we do this instinctively all the time — it is what happens when conclusion like ‘Tom doesn’t care about the project’ — and that can long division stops being a sequence of rote-learned steps which mysteriously influence what we do in future. Perhaps Tom was just woken at 3am give the answer and becomes a meaningful process, and when we realise how by a crying baby. MIT have found that keeping the ladder in mind to tell whether it is a good time to talk to the boss. The creation of knowledge in during reviews makes discussion more productive by encouraging our heads is what turns mere reading, listening or remembering into learning. people to remember and articulate the thoughts and feelings behind For an individual, knowledge creation and learning are the same thing. But their actions — often crucial to understanding why things happen organisations have no instincts: their knowledge has to be created consciously. the way they do. Many of the most valuable lessons in learning reviews come from recognising the importance of unspoken factors Learning reviews create knowledge in several ways, and the learning team’s skill such as a lack of trust, conflicting goals and ‘sacred cows’ of can make a big difference to the number, quality and ultimate business value of procedure, and bringing them out into the open where they can be the lessons learnt. confronted and solutions found. During review workshops, participants learn individually as they listen, Actions contribute and think about the events being reviewed. Workshop leaders can (based on beliefs) increase learning by doing their homework with project records, keeping the discussion structured, focused and well paced, prompting for clarification and explanations of underlying thinking, being alert themselves for connections and Beliefs patterns, and summarising well. Research suggests that we learn more from our (about the world) experience if we examine not just our past actions but the subconscious reasoning behind them — the deeply ingrained assumptions, generalisations and habitual ways of thinking that shape our behaviour. Little of this emerges in Conclusions routine business meetings, but a skilled workshop leader can bring it out. The leader’s final skill is to make a good record of the discussion: this is crucial to creating additional knowledge and sharing lessons with non-participants later. Assumptions There is less opportunity for individual learning in interviews because the (based on the meanings) juxtaposition of different people’s perceptions and interpretations of events is missing. The unconscious, collective knowledge of teams is often the most Meanings valuable of all. This means that when information for a learning review is (cultural and personal) gathered by interview most of the knowledge creation has to take place later when the interview records are put together and analysed. The interviewer’s skill in preparing, focussing the dialogue, recognising key points, Data prompting and recording is crucial. (observations) Post-interview analysis is essentially a process of proxy learning. The analyst’s job is to learn all they can from the collected project and interview records, creating knowledge which can be documented and passed on to the people who can use it productively. Post-workshop analysis can be valuable too: the Experience: what we see, hear constraints of the workshop itself inevitably mean that some connections and do and patterns are missed at the time.

Knowledge created during workshops, interviews and post-event analysis is initially tacit, existing only in the heads of the people involved. In most contexts it is vital to document the review process and lessons learnt and create explicit knowledge which can be shared with others and adds to the knowledge assets of the business. And even this is not the end of the process: business benefits only arise when people learn from reports. The form and quality of review reports have a big effect on the amount people learn from them.

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Sharing knowledge

The Learning History is organised in ‘chapters’ Learning only turns into business benefit when the results are used to improve recounting particular episodes, each divided into performance. Sharing lessons learnt to get them into the heads of people who ‘segments’ focussing on particular dilemmas, are in a position to use them is as important as learning them in the first place. questions or anecdotes The appropriate technique depends on: The single-column prologue is based on notable facts and events that everyone agrees happened, • the scale of the learning exercise and explains the business significance of the • the nature of the lessons segment • their expected business value, and • the number and location of the people who are in a position to use them.

Lessons learnt in a Hindsight or Insight workshop are automatically shared by all the participants, and they spread as staff move on to other projects, or participate in Foresight events. But it is nearly always worth sharing them more widely. This can be done through knowledge-sharing workshops where key results are discussed by a larger and wider audience, or through reports which can be circulated and remain accessible on paper or (more effectively) on

company intranets, such as Bovis Lend Lease’s iKnow system. Reports turn

○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ ○○○○○○○○○○○○○ the personal knowledge gained from the learning exercise into a corporate asset which is much easier to share widely and cannot be forgotton, lost when people leave the company or simply change job, or be inaccessible because the expert is out of the country. Lessons learned from interviews can, of course, only be spread through knowledge-sharing workshops and reports.

MIT has found that dedicated knowledge-sharing workshops are the most ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ ○○○○ effective way to convey lessons learned. They give participants an opportunity to engage actively with the lessons and the experience which gave rise to ○○○○○○○ them, and to make them their own in a way that reading a report on their own or (even worse) listening passively to a presentation usually fails to do. However, they are expensive unless the target audience is relatively small and geographically compact. They need to be backed up by at least a simple report in a durably accessible medium (such as a company intranet), to avoid undue reliance on memory and to pass messages on to new staff. The left-hand column gives the learning historians’ commentary, insights, questions, It helps to make reports more vivid if they juxtapose lessons learnt with selected reflections and perspective to provoke readers into quotations and challenging questions which encourage readers to think and to deeper thoughts find additional meanings of their own. Research shows that personal stories often transmit knowlege more effectively than dry ‘technical’ statements. This In the right-hand column, verbatim quotations principle is the basis for the Learning History reporting format developed at MIT from interviewees tell the story from their various (and used in Buro Happold’s pilot trial), and it can be used in less formal reports points of view, identified only by their position. as well. Major learning exercises based on large and complex projects, like those Research shows that stories are a particularly in MIT’s published case studies, may contain many diverse lessons for different powerful medium for communicating insights and parts of an organisation. They can only be disseminated effectively though ideas: the context and the personal voice (which detailed Learning Histories, supplemented by knowledge-sharing workshops for appear irrelevant at first glance) make them more key staff. Whatever their form, reports should always be validated by giving understandable, memorable and credible than de- workshop participants and interviewees an opportunity to comment on drafts; personalised ‘bullet point’ distillations. it can undermine their impact if word spreads that they are inaccurate.

The Learning History format Sometimes learning exercises suggest specific changes to formal procedures. In these cases, the first step is to convince the appropriate managers in one- to-one discussions or a small meeting, backed up by a short report which explains the proposed changes and shows how they are supported by the evidence. Lessons can then be embodied in new procedures, documented and promulgated through normal management channels.

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