3 levels of lesson learning

In a large organisation, lesson-learning can happen at multiple levels. 

In global oil and gas companies for example, there are often three levels

• Firstly team learning uses After Action Review to learn within project teams. Discussions take place within the team, and any changes are to team processes. Lessons are documented in simple form, perhaps in Excel spreadsheets.
• A more complex form of learning is learning from one project to another, using facilitated lessons-identification meetings. Lessons are collected, actions are assigned, and changes made to organizational process. Lessons are documented in lesson management systems.
• Finally in analyses of major incidents, an investigation team is tasked with collecting observations, the insights, the learnings, and even the recommendations for action. Lessons are documented in evaluation reports.

In each case, and at each scale, the learning cycle is similar.

Lessons are identified through discussion and investigation, and pass through a series of stages, from context to observation to insight to lesson. If the lesson is to be truly learned (in other words, embedded into new ways of working), then there are further stages.  

 The lesson must be documented and validated, it must lead to assigned actions, those actions must be disseminated to the correct people through a lessons management system, the appropriate actions must be taken, and the lessons closed.

However the scale varies - from one project team, to multiple project teams, to the whole organisation, and as the scale changes, so does the rigour of, and the investment in, the learning process.

The table below shows how the learning stages and steps are applied at each of the three levels.

Step/Stage	Within a team	Between projects	Major Investigation
1.     Context	Discussed within the team After Action Review	Discussed within the retrospect, led by the facilitator	Investigated by the incident investigation team
2.     Observation	Discussed within the team After Action Review	Discussed within the retrospect led by the facilitator	Collected by the incident investigation team
3.     Insight	Discussed within the team After Action Review	Discussed within the retrospect led by the facilitator	Analyzed by the incident investigation team
4.     Lesson	Discussed within the team After Action Review	Discussed within the retrospect led by the facilitator	Recommendations made by the incident investigation team
5.     Documented lesson	Either not documented, or documented within a lessons log	Documented within a lesson management system by the facilitator	Documented as the incident investigation report
6.     Assigned action	Discussed within the team After Action Review	Either discussed within the retrospect led by the facilitator, or discussed after the facilitator by senior staff	Discussed and agreed by senior management
7.     Validated lesson/action	Validated within the team and by the team leader at the After Action Review	Validated a) within the lessons management system, or b) by senior staff	Discussed and agreed by senior management
8.     Distributed/notified lesson/action	Action assigned using existing team processes such as action log	Use of a lessons management system	Use of a system such as the ‘strategic implementation planning’ tool
9.     Taken action/change	Action taken by team member	Action taken a) by other teams, or b) by company authorities such as Subject Matter Experts	Action taken by company authorities
10.  Completed lesson	Action closed in action log	Actions tracked and lessons closed in lesson management system	Actions tracked and lessons closed by central team.
Monitor, review, report	Monitor through routine team action monitoring	Statistics created and reported from the lessons management system	Lesson closure reported by central team.