Organizational learning

Success Problem

How can a permanent organization learn?

Impact

The knowledge and experience is leaving together with organization members, leaving the organization. Organizational learning is a process of collective and systematic collection, preserving and exploitation of lessons learned from past projects for more effective management of future projects in project mature permanent organization.

Recommendation

Acquisition of lesons learned involves three steps: (1) know and identify the useful experience; (2) evaluate and preserve gained knowledge and (3) share the lessons learned between the stakeholders of future projects. The lessons learned constitute the part of the organization‘s knowledge base, available for all organization members. It is recommended to evaluate the lessons learned not only in the closure report, but also during the project execution, e.g. in selected project milesto-nes. The requirement for continuous archivation of the lessons learned invokes aversion against the so called „needless bureaucracy“. To overcome this natural aversion the top management must ensure also consistent exploita-tion of the lessons learned. Obtaining and use of the lessons learned is frequently omitted from different reasons, for example: • a little time owing to starting new projects, • the feel of „needless bureaucracy“, • averseness to acknowledge the mistake, • apprehension from the sanctioning the mistake, • the idea: project was successful, so it has no lessons learned etc. Criticism by the lessons learned does not mean an appeal to personalised charging, but to unbiased search for the problem reasons. Critisism does also not mean an appeal to reject a right for failure in hard project conditions, but an appeal not tolerate the mistakes from carelesness.

Category

• Organization & Structures & Processes