One of the central dilemmas, and perhaps the most important one, in managing lessons and insights is how to use them.
Even if we formulate high-quality lessons and insights and establish a knowledge management repository to be proud of, our work will be in vain if we do not allow the use of collected lessons and insights.
Reality proves that despite the existence of lesson-extraction processes, many events occur in the organization where the same mistakes are repeated more than once. The reasons for this are diverse - lack of attention, knowledge, and sometimes even negligence.
Our role, as those responsible for extracting and managing lessons, is not only to collect and organize lessons and insights in a central repository but also to ensure their use. Usage is the most significant challenge in managing lessons and insights.
Here are several suggestions for using collected lessons and insights to prevent repeating past mistakes:
Integration into a Specific Work Process
Many lessons we extract in the organization point to a better way of conducting work processes in the future. To prevent recurring errors, it is appropriate to surface the lesson/insight or tip as close as possible to the time when it is required. Therefore, the suggestion is to integrate the requirement to review repository content as part of the work process.
Every organization has several core processes, each including multiple activity stages.
For example, in development organizations (pharmaceuticals, software, products), the core process is typically a development process, usually defined as a "project"; in marketing and sales organizations, these are performed tasks; in credit organizations, these are credit committees and sub-committees for approving client requests, and so on.
These processes have one thing in common: They are structured and defined through specific stages and/or requirements to which the employee must refer.
Additionally, the information the employee needs to organize and present about the project or core activity is usually organized in a form or agreed-upon template, designed to ensure uniformity and ensure that the employee remembers to address the relevant aspects of the project/activity under discussion.
For Illustration, Let's Demonstrate Using a Knowledge Management Project
Generally, the knowledge management project has five central stages: mapping, specification, establishment, launch, and maintenance.
Each stage is divided into multiple tasks. For example, the specification stage includes creating a specification presentation, conducting interviews with content providers, building a content tree, holding a user workshop, and more.
When writing a plan for a knowledge management project, we are required to address each of the stages and each of the associated tasks.
In this case, the organization will accumulate many lessons, insights, and tips over time for each of the stages and each of the tasks (examples of such tips can be found in all of our 2Know Newsletters).
As part of project planning, the project manager must describe each stage's stages, tasks, and timelines.
As mentioned, this is usually done using a form or template for project planning.
To ensure the use of collected lessons and insights on these topics, we will include in the template a section requesting the project manager to record lessons, insights, and tips collected in the repository that may be relevant to the planned project or activity. As part of the section's title (below it), it will reference the repository itself (via a link) so that the lessons are just one click away from the project manager.
A question that surely arises when reading these lines is why not simply refer them to the repository for reading, similar to the familiar "read and sign" we know so well from everyday life?
We believe that merely informing the employee about insights when they are created is insufficient.
To effectively use existing lessons and insights in the repository, we need to address the lessons and insights that were read close to the project/activity where they will be required; moreover, the project or activity manager needs to actively consider how these insights affect the planned implementation.
Here's an example of a possible integration:
Please cite two lessons relating to the specification stage.
Link to the repository
For each lesson you mentioned, indicate how it affects project planning.
Note—The link address activates a specific query that accesses the insights repository and surfaces lessons where the specification stage is involved.
By integrating into the work process, as demonstrated above, we transform knowledge consumption from passive to active, and increase the likelihood that the lessons and insights in the repository will be integrated as part of the project planning itself, past mistakes will not be repeated, but past successes - will be.
Sounds simple? Perhaps. Unfortunately, in practice, it is not so straightforward.
The Significant Challenge in Implementing the Proposed Process is, Almost as Always, Management, and More Specifically: Managerial Commitment
By its nature, every project requires planning and, at some point, approval by a supervisory level.
Common examples: A credit manager passing the request to a credit committee; a product manager in marketing submitting an execution plan to their manager, and so on.
To ensure the implementation of this approach, managers must insist on and enforce the use of the repository by integrating lessons and insights into project planning. In cases where lessons and insights are absent from the planning, they should not approve the project, just as a project with undefined timelines or budget would not be approved, and its planner would be required to correct the proposal and resubmit it with the necessary additions and updates.
On the surface, this seems to complicate the project/credit/execution planning process.
However, in practice, this process works as feedback: The requirement to access the repository and integrate lessons improves the project/execution/credit, saves time and questions during its approval, and ensures, to the extent possible, the avoidance of past mistakes.
An important tip for implementing such usage is to build the categories and attributes in the repository according to the project stages and tasks.
As mentioned, the difficulty is not in building such a process but in enforcing it through supervisory factors.
Successful implementation will help save time and money in the long term, even if it generates resistance in the short term.
Integration into a Specific Work Process - Meetings and Sessions
A less complex level of using lessons is surfacing them at central stages in work routines.
We call these stages "anchors" since the project manager or activity executor is required to provide an account regarding the continuation of the activity. These anchors include project initiation/launch meetings, steering committee discussions, status meetings, and routine team meetings.
In each of these anchors, the project or activity manager must present lessons and insights relevant to the stage for which the meeting has been convened.
For example: In a launch meeting, the project initiator must present lessons and insights relevant to the initiation stage.
The goal is to generate discussion about lessons and insights, where discussion raises awareness and readiness to use existing lessons in the repository.
As in the previous case, the emphasis is on the management process: the more presenters are required by managers to access the repository for reuse, the greater the chance of effective reuse.
Procedures and Guidelines
Another way to use lessons and insights is to integrate them into work procedures and guidelines relevant to performing the activity.
It's important to note that regarding lessons, organizations have an almost automatic tendency to integrate lessons into work procedures.
In our method, integration into work procedures is not good enough, certainly not as a tool to ensure their use, for several primary reasons:
First, work procedures are typically formulated in a dichotomous "do" and "don't do" manner. By their nature, they are directed towards one execution method and do not allow room for discretion. Lessons and tips are, by their nature, partially such, but partially recommendations, and therefore there's a tendency not to integrate anything that is not certain.
Procedures are quite comprehensive (dealing with macro-level issues) and will always be so, as they are meant to adapt and cover as many cases as possible. Tips and lessons often deal with details (micro-level).
Additionally, the usage level of procedures is not high in most organizations. Users are deterred from using procedures, either because their writing style is insufficiently convenient and user-friendly or because of psychological attitudes and aversion to organizational bureaucracy.
Indeed, one can integrate lessons and insights into procedure frameworks and work guidelines while ensuring user-friendliness, but it's important not to leave this as the sole/central activity channel.
A successful approach is to embed lessons within forms and routines that serve as procedure checklists.
In summary, several ways exist to integrate lessons and insights into work processes and ensure their use.
Among the proposed methods, the first and most effective is the one that points to integration into a specific work process in an enforceable manner. The benefit gained from implementing such a process is clear and immediate, but it is also expected to provoke the most resistance, as it involves changing the work method and, in the short term, even lengthening it.
It must be remembered that the most important key point regarding ensuring the use of lessons and insights is the management issue. The more managers are involved and committed, and demand enforcement of the established work process, the greater the chance of success. Without effective managerial commitment, no matter how successful, the process will fade.
On a personal note - ensuring the use of lessons and insights is, in my view, similar to long-distance running.
It does not require a single short effort or concentration of forces, but patience, perseverance, and precise definition of the target to be reached, while being prepared to invest and deal with expected difficulties along the way.
The persistent ones are guaranteed to reap the fruits of success.
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