-- Feature Article: Tips for Turning "20:20 Hindsight" into "20:20 Foresight"

-- Note from the Author: What Can We Gain from "Lessons Learned"?

-- Special Message: Can You Pass the "Midnight Test"?

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What Can We Gain from "Lessons Learned"?

I used to dread the idea of learning things the "hard way" until I discovered that every situation -- even the most unpleasant and problematic -- harbors hidden gifts, takeaways, nuggets of wisdom, and very important lessons about how to do things (or not to do things) in the future.

I ultimately realized that all I needed to do was pull out my archeological shovel and pail and sift through the rubble to find the essential insights. These "lessons learned" can help our future projects or other endeavors reach far greater levels of success. To enjoy their benefits, however, we must be smart enough to look for them, evaluate them, and apply their teachings.

Once I had this realization, I began to look at difficulty and disaster in an entirely different way. I see more objectively that life is truly an experiment involving many cause-and-effect relationships. So, whenever I hypothesize a certain outcome that doesn't materialize in the way I had envisioned it, I can simply analyze the data, redesign the experiment, and move on to the next thing!

For these reasons, I hope you enjoy today's features, including "Can You Pass the 'Midnight Test'?" and "Tips for Turning '20:20 Hindsight' into '20:20 Foresight.'" And please be sure to send your comments!

Here's to your business prosperity,

Adele Sommers, author of the "Straight Talk on Boosting Business Performance" success program

P.S. If you missed any previous issue, visit the newsletter index!

Can You Pass the "Midnight Test"?

I like to think that providing value to our colleagues, customers, or clients results, to a large extent, from carefully considering the circumstances or conditions under which people might want -- or need -- to use what we have to offer.

Usual circumstances involve the range of normal or routine modes in which people would consume our offerings. These might occur during the day, in sunny conditions, with access to plenty of help and support in case anything goes awry.

Unusual circumstances, on the other hand, are the abnormal, non-routine, or even extreme conditions under which people might need to interact with any of our products, information, systems, or services. These situations can occur off-hours, in inclement weather, or in remote locations, for example.

When you're designing and developing your offerings, anticipate a wide range of circumstances of use. This means considering not only when and how people might need to use what you offer, but also the possible consequences and ripple effects of their potential inability to do so. Will they simply be frustrated or delayed, or could they also be at risk for losing business, profitability, clients, customers, credibility, respect, health, safety, or other vital outcomes?

Comb your "lessons learned" database from your past projects or research your customer records to determine whether you need to make improvements in any area. If you ensure that your offerings are bug-free and can function properly under a range of possible conditions, you will prevent the aggravating headaches that could send your audiences running for the door. This approach can help you create far better routine user experiences, while also avoiding the risks of creating unhappy customers by overlooking the non-routine situations.

So, whether you're developing a basic "how-to" guide or a complex business system, ask yourself: Can it pass the "midnight test"?

Until you can imagine your colleagues, clients, or customers successfully using the product, information, system, or service in the middle of the night, in isolated conditions, with no help available of any kind, then it's simply not ready for prime time!

Tips for Turning "20:20 Hindsight" into "20:20 Foresight"
by Adele Sommers

Have you ever used or heard the expression, "In hindsight, knowing what we know today, we would surely have done things differently"? That's usually a good indicator that there were unanticipated events or circumstances that came back to bite, haunt, or baffle the participants of a particular project or undertaking.

Although the situation might have been problematic at the time, the good news is that astute observers can retrospectively extract valuable gems of wisdom from the experience, which they can then use to their greatest advantage going forward.

20:20 Hindsight = "Lessons Learned"

"Lessons learned" are the perfect 20:20 hindsight that we frequently have after completing a project or endeavor. This hindsight is worth its weight in gold if we mine its special value, but it's absolutely worthless if we don't make use of what it has to offer.

When capturing lessons learned, we want to identify what went well, what didn't go well, and why. At this point, you might be thinking, "What kind of reason can I give to my team that we should be doing this? It sounds like a bunch of bureaucratic overhead and more things to do. When the project's over, we're anxious to move on!"

The value lies in paving the way for future projects, so they will experience fewer headaches and setbacks. You don't, however, need to wait until the entire project finishes. You could capture 20:20 hindsight incrementally throughout the project, or very soon after it's over, while the issues are still fresh.

What Lessons Should You Capture?

For any problems that went largely unresolved, for instance, consider preventative measures that could help people work through or avoid the problems in the future.

Those measures might involve tools to speed up the work, checklists to make sure people don't skip important steps, and solutions for thorny problems. Examples:

• If people were stymied by complex document formats, try preparing and pre-testing some document templates that will be much easier to use next time.

• If quality was a issue because people didn't do thorough testing, try creating step-by-step checklists to guide people through the process next time.

• If you found components that were supposed to work together but didn't, and someone found a solution or a workaround, record that information to help people prevent or solve similar dilemmas in the future.

Lessons learned can have many possible uses. You can use your repository of lessons learned to help your customer service or technical support personnel solve problems in a just-in-time fashion, for example. If your staff or colleagues need to address complex issues on the fly, or troubleshoot technical issues quickly over the telephone, they would need fast access to solutions for similar situations that were addressed in the past.

20:20 Foresight = "Best Practices"

After capturing a series of lessons learned, the next step is to derive what's called "best practices." What is a best practice? It's a procedure or method that over time has proven itself to be better than any other procedures or methods that you were using to do the same thing. You could say that it's the very best way that you, your group, or your organization has found of doing something.

Why do they matter? Best practices are invaluable because they're the intellectual assets -- the "secret sauce" -- that can help organizations remain highly competitive. It's ideal to institutionalize best practices so that everyone follows them. You could incorporate them into policies, procedures, and/or online task support systems.

One idea is to design a best practice repository that other people can access easily. You don't want that valuable information to be buried in a file cabinet that no one knows anything about. The repository could be on a Web site, in a database, on an intranet, or another highly visible location.

Best practice repositories can substantially reduce the negative effects of attrition on the company's intellectual assets, which can be devastating. When people leave because they quit, retire, are laid off, or were simply temporary contractors to begin with, the company's "brain trust" completely vanishes out the door with them unless their knowledge is being captured and made available to others.

A Checklist for Capturing "Lessons Learned" and "Best Practices"

In conclusion, by capturing 20:20 hindsight incrementally and turning it into 20:20 foresight, you will achieve far greater long-term success than by blissfully ignoring or forgetting problems, or by simply moving on when a project or endeavor ends.

Copyright 2007 Adele Sommers

A Quote about Learning from Experience

Albert Einstein's Three Rules of Work:

"Out of clutter, find simplicity
From discord, find harmony
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."

Adele Sommers, Ph.D. is the author of "Straight Talk on Boosting Business Performance" -- an award-winning Special Report and Workbook program.

If you liked today's issue, you'll love this down-to-earth overview of how 12 potent business-boosting strategies can reenergize the morale and productivity of your enterprise, tame unruly projects, and attract loyal, satisfied customers. It's accompanied by a step-by-step workbook designed to help you easily create your own success action plan. Browse the table of contents and reader reviews on the description page.

Adele also offers no-cost articles and resources to help small businesses and large organizations accelerate productivity and increase profitability. Learn more at LearnShareProsper.com.

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