It was a lessons learned moment.

 

DAVID HOLTHAUS had an interesting observation in an article he wrote about the Inoneweekend event July 12^th. “There was dissension: As the group prepared to vote on the company name, one member disputed the voting method. After an admonition to offer solutions rather than problems, the vote took place as planned.”I remember this event very well. It concerned the process used to vote on items. Each idea was written on a separate piece of paper. All of the papers were taped to the wall resulting in a series of papers along one wall. We were given colored sticky notes and were to place our sticky note on the paper that contained the item we liked best.  A pretty simple process, to obtain quick results. It was noted by one person that the first time this process was used it resulted in some people waiting to see how the voting went before they used their vote. It was a correct observation; in fact I wanted to wait for the crowd to clear some myself. When I finally got up to the wall I really did not focus much on items that have not received any votes. Much of my focus was on the items that had the highest votes. In fact my votes went to the three items that had received the most votes at the time I was at the wall.

When the vote for the company name came up one person made this observation. Was it dissension or was it a lessons learn moment. First, the person who made the observation made a statement based on fact. Secondly, it concerned the process that was being used. Because time was critical only something that was important and urgent could really justify changing the process that had been selected to be used for voting during the weekend. The process being used to vote was good enough to meet current needs so the observation was not urgent. There was not enough time to examine the current process so the observation was not important to the success of the weekend event. So was admonition to offer solutions rather than problems needed. Or was it rather a case where the group as a whole needed to focus on the execution of the task and the examination of the task itself really needed to take place at a later date when time could be devoted to truly understanding the observation? There is a concept in project management call lessons learned. It is all about taking factual observations throughout the life of a project. Some observations will be acted upon immediately. Many others will simply be documented for after the project when the processes used to accomplish the project can be examined and improved for the next project.

There is an old saying “When you are up to your ass in alligators, who has time to drain the swamp”. It is not uncommon when one is in the execution stage of an event to focus on just the issues that are relevant to the execution. However, if the event is going to be a repeatable event, then it might be a good idea to collect information that could allow you to DRAIN the swam the next time. This is where collecting lessons learned becomes so very important. After all one definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. The opposite of this is an iterative process where learning takes place and is acted upon before the next iteration.

So I never saw dissension. I saw a person make an astute observation that should have been saved as a lesson learned so it could be examined at a later point in time. Such treatment encourages people to come forward with their insights and observations. While at the same time, allowing the focus to remain on the execution of the task at hand.