In the previous lectures we have established the importance of knowledge for an organization, so this time we talked about the way an organization can learn.
Learning process can happen anytime: before, during or after the action/project/process being performed, and for each stage there are different technics for learning. The result is usually the same – written documentation of learned knowledge.
It looks like most of the theories and theory implementations are based on changing the culture in the organizations, and making ideas and information sharing to a basic component of daily routine (BA and SECI).
There is a quote that says:
“Smart people learn from their mistakes. But the real sharp ones learn from the mistakes of others.” - Brandon Mull
While learning from others mistakes would be the most beneficial for an organization, I guess that in many cases the situations are so unique that the first option is the only one available.
Debriefing is the best tool for learning from own mistakes but it seems that it is not an easy task. On one hand you want to get the most detailed and objective explanation about what went wrong and what led to that situation, but on the other hand you have employees that are afraid of being punished or fired. Such employee would probably adjust his\her version in order to get clean out of an investigation, and this would lead to wrong lessons learned.
AAR (After Action Review) most important part (in my eyes) is to have all the ranks removed during the process and to turn interrogation to conversation.
This is the best place to answer Eli’s question.
I think that we are expected to answer that the employee should not be punished, because it will interfere with the ability of the organization to create a “relationship” with employees where knowledge is shared freely and without fear of being punished.
I think that some information is missing in the question, and that is why I’m not sure that the answer above would be correct in all the cases.
First, we don’t know if this is the first time this kind of incident happens. We also don’t know if previous incidents were investigated. If they were investigated, we don’t know if they were documented and communicated to the employees. There are many more details and pieces of information that are missing, but the bottom line is that we want to learn from incidents in order to avoid them happening more than one time.
My answer is that if plant process was wrong (no available information, no experienced person available to help and so on…) it needs to be fixed and the employee should not be punished, but if there are processes for such cases and only employee ignorance or negligence brought to such situation, I can’t see why the employee should not be punished.
Back to the lecture, I have to say that the most memorable part for me was the 5 Why’s system. It is so simple,yet so powerful and I believe it can be used for many cases, even in our private lives. Children learn about the world around them using this precise system!
All that being said, there is one thing that really bothers me. The result of most of the leanings are written documents or manuals. NO ONE reads manuals! They are never available when they needed, it is difficult to find anything when you need it and they are (in my personal opinion) very boring. Shouldn’t there be another way?
I’ll finish this post with an example of “Why’s” system performed by my favorite comedian Louise CK (There is some “language” in this video, so don’t watch if you are easily offended).
) here is a short scene from 2nd season of “Game of Thrones” series.