Unleashing Creativity: Bridging Frameworks for Effective Lesson Learning

Organizational lesson learning practically implements the central ideas of knowledge management: reusing existing knowledge through repeating successes and preventing repetition of failures, and creating new knowledge. However, as is well known, lesson learning is not an easy task to execute, with numerous obstacles in its path, primarily cultural ones. Moreover, even when we have succeeded in overcoming the cultural difficulties and begun the process of lesson learning in all its stages, we find ourselves "stuck" in implementing the main part - drawing conclusions and extracting lessons. To implement this part, we need to be open and creative, but often the circumstances and situations we find ourselves in cause us to feel "stuck," and we encounter difficulties. These difficulties stem from the fact that we are inside the situation we are investigating and are too involved in it; we are fixed in certain opinions and work processes, making it difficult for us to develop new directions and ideas. Additionally, our view is often subjective.

What then can be done to achieve the goal before us - creating new knowledge? How, despite the difficulties, can we extract lessons and overcome the obstacles?

One way could be through external help, such as bringing in consultants or external experts to the organization. These consultants can provide us with new ideas and new directions for thinking. Being external, they are not fixed in the work processes of the subject being investigated, they are not emotionally involved, and their perspective is more objective. However, relying on this approach is usually possible only for a limited number of investigations and lessons learned, as it's not always feasible to bring in external personnel for the investigation, due to both the high cost and the fact that we sometimes investigate sensitive or confidential matters.

A second approach could be through internal help, involving people from within the organization who are not directly involved in the event or project being investigated. This approach is more feasible than the first because it's cheaper. On the one hand, internal employees are familiar with the organization, and on the other hand, they are objective because they are not directly involved in the subject being investigated. However, here too, there is a certain risk of fixation and concern about excessive openness, as these are work colleagues.

A third way is through the use of allegories - when we investigate a specific project or event that has occurred, and we cannot succeed in extracting the lessons and reaching the visible and hidden causes, it's possible to try to understand them by breaking out of the framework. Breaking out of the world and environment we are in to another framework, to another world. This can be done by using an allegory from another world. It's easier to break out of fixation and think about what we would do in the existing situation from another world, and then apply it to our world. It's easier to be creative and open-minded.

The allegories can be drawn from the animal world, for example, life in a beehive, where one can analyze the actions of the workers and the role of the queen. Another example from the animal world is the relationship between predator and prey, and the way each copes, whether through camouflage or by adapting its body structure. We can apply the laws of nature to the laws in our world.

Other allegories can be drawn from the private world, for example, managing household economics - what do we do when the amount of money is finite but the children's demands are infinite, and how do we address these problems? We can apply this to the project with the parallel: the children's perspective is personal compared to the parents' perspective, which is broader and encompasses the whole family. Another example could be the "project" of organizing a wedding, and applying this to our project.

To effectively use allegories, we should encourage partners in the learning process to pause and propose alternative "external" worlds that are similar to the analyzed situation. We should give room for several different ideas, whereby we are already breaking out of the "fixation" at its initial level. The facilitator should sort through the suggestions to identify the one that seems most relevant to them, and then, after raising the associative suggestions, try to refocus the discussion back on one of the worlds and develop a brief discussion of lesson learning in the "external" world. The final stage, of course, is to return to the allegory and apply the lessons to our business or organizational world, examining their validity in real life. You'll be surprised by the results.

Good luck!

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