Learn Continuously
When an experienced employee leaves an organization, her skills and knowledge go with her and are lost, unless the organization has thought seriously about learning continuously from her beforehand.
Learn Across the Functions
In order to avoid repeating mistakes or duplicating effort it is vital that individuals and teams learn from each other. One of the most effective ways of learning and transferring knowledge is giving people the opportunity to work together in cross-functional teams. Another project team in another department may have skills and experience that would help you to take a short cut to a particular milestone. Take a look at your project plan and decide where you could learn from other departments or projects and who could learn from you. Then set up a forum to make the knowledge transfer happen. Pull the appropriate people together to address a particular issue, then document what has been learnt and make it available to other teams and individuals with an interest in that issue. If, for example, your project will need to use a particular piece of engineering software, find out who else is using it at the moment or will need to use it in the future and set up a cross-functional user group.
Make the Best Use of Away Days
High Impact
Project managers attending away days with the team to learn from the team
Making it in the best interests of people to learn and seek improvement
Looking for root cause and fixing real problems
Negative Impact
Project managers attending away days so that the team can learn from them
Allowing people to end up in a situation where they are too busy to think
Allowing a temporary “quick fix” to become a long-term solution
Use Thinking Days
Most project team members are busy people with operational targets to hit. This gives them very little time to stop and think. Yet when they do take time out to reflect teams can come up with ideas that improve effectiveness and productivity. Many organizations are introducing regular activities of this nature. Work out who should attend an away day or thinking day. You may want the cross-functional group to look for innovative ways to change; or you may simply want to take time to reflect on past events and how things could be improved in the future. The key is to provide a quiet and creative environment, without any interruptions.
The calm, reflective atmosphere of an away day can produce more creativity than a series of in-house meetings.
5 Minute Fix
Today’s work environment requires people to turn up to do the job they did yesterday and to improve the way that it will be done tomorrow.
Take advantage of the creative environment of a thinking day to ask each of your team members to think of one way in which they could improve their future performance.
Ask them to put it into practice the following week and note the results.
Check for Cause and Effect
The key driver for problem solving and learning is persuading people to think about cause and effect and move towards addressing the cause of a problem rather than the effect. Take a simple household example. Your washing machine is leaking. The cause is obvious – a hose has frayed and has a slight leak. You decide the leak is very small and put a bowl under the hose. Your decision is aimed at the effect. It has solved the problem quickly and with little effort. However, if you are to prevent the leak getting so bad that the hose bursts, causing a flood, you will have to find a solution to the cause of the problem.
If something goes wrong take some time to identify the root cause of the problem.
Once you have identified the root cause and found a preferred solution, think about what other aspect of the project could benefit from a similar fix.
Use PERL (Plan, Execute, Reflect, Learn)
PERL is a tool that helps teams think about continuous improvement and learning. It gives a structure to an away day or a regular meeting of the project team. You may also find it useful to use the process when an important milestone has been achieved.
Plan – What is the plan? What are the activities in the plan, and what are the timescales?
Execute – Focusing on the objectives of the exercise, implement the plan.
Reflect – Assess the implications of the activities you carried out and think about how you could have improved any aspect of the implementation. Look for the root cause of any problems.
Learn – Look at any procedures you might change as the result of the reflection stage in the process.
Perhaps the most important of these four words is “reflect”. When things go wrong, reactive teams ask, ”What are we going to do about this problem?” Reflective teams ask, “How should we change our planning so that it doesn’t happen again?” If you and your team adopt the PERL-cycle principle, you will become more and more effective, and you will be well equipped to avoid recurring problems and the repetition of mistakes.
looks at any activity or project in a logical fashion and ensures that individuals and teams not only plan properly and execute the plan effectively but also that they learn from their experience.
Case Study: Fixing the Cause
Beryl was the managing director of a company based in the US that sold complex electronic instruments. On a trip to Europe, she went to one of her factories and was surprised to find that they were spraying black paint on the insides of the cabinets of their products. When she asked Bill, the factory manager, why, he responded that while the cabinet met the electronic interference regulations of the US it failed to comply with European rules. Beryl insisted that their customers be put on notice of a short delay in delivery while the reason why the instrument was radiating interference was investigated. Within two weeks the problem had been located and put right.
By identifying the cause of the problem Beryl was able to reduce future costs by cutting out the need for paint spraying.
She had allowed the whole company to learn more about electronic interference and how it could be avoided.
Tip
If you stop learning you will not stand still but will simply become less and less effective.