Stage 4: The Lessons Audit

To oblige the decision-making skew, the next stage involves learners jointly evaluating how their prior decisions could have been different in the exact historical circumstances of the time—specifically, how using the benefit of hindsight their changed decisions could have elicited a more productive outcome. This culminates in a jointly written list of lessons specific to the chosen experience—a so-called Lessons Audit, the objective being to produce a hit list of dos and don’ts, and other counsel for consideration next time an experience of a similar nature arises. The lessons are broken down into strategy-type conclusions and operational-type suppositions. With a suitable preface, the Lessons Audit then becomes a definitive notice of new knowledge with which the organization can pass on to selected others, both those within the company and new entrants when they arrive, with a note that this erudition should provide the starting point for their own decision-making process. I like to describe this as “leg-up,” or the means by which new knowledge can be shared across the organization and down the generations efficiently.