Albert Einstein said, "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."

The other day some colleagues and I were talking about how failure and mistakes were part of the creative process of problem-solving and discovery; and how Thomas Edison famously suggested that mistakes were a big part of his discovery of the light-bulb. "Results! Why man, I have gotten a lot of results," said Edison. "I know several thousand things that won't work."

The conversation caused me to search for an article originally written for Inc. Magazine by Hal Plotkin back in December of 1997 titled, What They Do (and Don't) Teach You in Business School. Although the article is addressing some of the important lessons associated with running a business, much of what Plotkin describes also applies to managing projects.

For example, Plotkin cites Art Dodge III, CEO and President of Dodge-Regupol Inc., in Lancaster, PA; a company that makes recycled-rubber products with revenues at the time of $30 million. "All your human-resources classes are about motivating employees, goal setting, things like that. But how do you recognize a bad decision, kill it, bite your tongue, and move on? You've got to be able to make mistakes quickly, find out, and get out of them quickly. They teach you a lot about how to be a success but not what to do when something goes wrong—when you fail, which you are going to do."

I took the conversation home that night and when I suggested to my wife that "People don't make mistakes because they're stupid, they make mistakes because they are people." She cheerfully reminded me that I certainly didn't feel that way when one of my teenage children wrecked the car or lost my "favorite" open-ended wrench. I had been caught in the hypocrisy of what many business and project leaders face when dealing with mistakes. What they purport to believe before a mistake happens, and their reaction to the costs of a mistake in the workplace.

"All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes," said Winston Churchill.

Although my wife was right, my reaction to a teenage son's or daughter's mistake was often inconsistent with my belief that people make mistakes because it's the nature of being human, I'm reminded that not every mistake is the same. That being said, most of the mistakes I observe and deal with in the workplace are seldom associated with negligence, but with the creative process of solving problems. Certainly the mistakes caused by carelessness should be treated differently than those that occur each day as people try to solve problems and try new things.

Oscar Wilde said, "Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes."

In my opinion learning from our mistakes (or experience), requires a regular and consistent approach that can be incorporated into any work management methodology. Here are a few suggestions to help any project team learn from their mistakes:
Establish a venue for sharing lessons-learned: It doesn't matter whether you call it a post-mortem, a project review, or a project retrospective, most organizations don't do them—but they should.
Share what has been learned: Although most organizations don't bother with a project retrospective, those that do don't always create an environment that encourages real learning—and even fewer share what was learned.
Don't make learning the next corporate initiative: It's natural for organizations to try to formalize the learning process into the next corporate project. Although the natural learning process should be encouraged, "corporate" is all too often the same as "bureaucratic," which employees will be more likely to avoid.
Don't make learning a one-time activity: Project learning should be ongoing and interactive—don't let it become an isolated activity that happens rarely.
Every organization has different needs. Some rely on their project software to help facilitate the learning process. I think that's good, but even organizations that don't use any specific project management tools need to create an environment where project learning can take place. Because there are so many organizations that struggle with this, please share some of your successful project learning practices.

—Ty Kiisel, www.attask.com