Of course we don’t learn lessons. And we almost take a bizarre level of pride in that fact. As I discovered during my time in purgatory, sorry, posting to JHC HQ where I was asked to design and implement an operational lessons system.
When I asked about resources I was told well at the moment it’s just you, so you’ll have to split your time between your Ops role and this Lessons Identified position. There might be a Clerk somewhere in the system to manage the database once you get it set up. When I asked about the gapped Lessons Learned post who was supposed to work alongside me implementing what I had uncovered, they said they couldn’t resource it, but it probably wouldn’t matter as we never learn lessons anyway, just as long as we identify then.
The worrying thing is that I don’t think this was in anyway unusual. But I don’t think it was necessarily an approach born of negligence. Resourcing and prioritisition to get Ops done is obviously.part of this, but it is also symptomatic of the very linear and unidirectional approach we take, marching onwards to the next thing without ever stopping to think and reflect on what we have just done. Until that unidirectional mindset is broken, this will continue. And I suspect to break that mindset and introduce the capacity for reflection will mean more resource, more time and fewer knee-jerk reactions that ‘something must be done and done now’. And that comes directly in the direction from the top of the shop. We say all the right things but that’s where it ends.