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| Learn the purpose behind the chart and the Blackberry. |
Ah-Ha! Moment – A key technique in performance improvement is what John Maxwell calls "Evaluated Experience." Paraphrasing him – Everyone has experiences, yet few have evaluated experiences. Once an experience becomes evaluated, insights occur, lessons are learned, and changes can be made.
How is this applied in a group setting? It goes by many names – debrief, after action report, project post-mortem, and plus/delta among them. Regardless, they work the same way – an experience is transformed into an evaluated experience.
We recently had a project that was incredibly difficult, and all of my folks worked really hard on it – and it had a disappointing outcome. At first, I avoided putting this on the agenda for our monthly "Project Roundtable." And then it hit me – I evaluate my experiences in many different ways, including writing about my monthly Ah-Ha! Moment. Why shouldn't my staff have the opportunity to have their own "Ah-Ha! Moment"? So I emailed the staff this project would be the single topic for our next roundtable.
I was a little nervous about how things would turn out. We had never had a project end quite like this, and I was concerned about the staff's reactions. My concerns quickly melted away as everyone (except me – I deliberately kept my mouth shut) discussed things objectively, looking back at this experience to improve future projects.
Lesson learned? My staff benefitted greatly from this discussion and the individual and collective "Ah-Ha! Moments" because they finally had their own Evaluated Experience, helping ensure future projects run more smoothly.
