Aggressive Learning

He yelled it as if he had discovered gold: “We need to fail faster!” That was the moment another manufacturing leader had the eureka experience of finding the value in failure. Nothing creates a teachable moment more quickly than a failed sales quota, a missed delivery, or shutting down a customer’s line. The man I am quoting had realized how much his team had learned from a customer catastrophe. With this revelation, he determined that they would make a habit of studying failures, large and small, to continually improve their processes.

What of success? We can just as readily learn from victory, but we regularly just celebrate our brilliance and move on. That is my personal tendency, and it’s the same for most of the companies I encounter. Failure drives me to my knees in prayer and introspection. In victory I pump my fist, humbly take credit, and tackle the next job.

I am convinced that what separates the companies that increase and sustain profitability year after year from the rest is aggressive learning. This is the discipline of squeezing the lessons to be learned out of each success, each failure, and each near miss. While reactive learners settle on survival of a crisis, their aggressive competitors aim to make lasting changes. They hate to solve the same problem twice. We can all recall the dark days when we experienced a customer catastrophe, and we tell the story because we learned our lessons, worked the hours, changed the process, and used the experience to grow the business. What if we developed the discipline to exert that same level of attention, if not angst, to aggressive learning every day?

Long before Jim Collins shared the “Autopsy Without Blame” in Good to Great, there were those who adopted the discipline of aggressive learning. For as long as there has been football, savvy coaches have gathered the team to study game footage. As far back as when it was known as the Army Air Corps, pilots have debriefed each mission. At times the process is highly defined as in a formal safety investigation, or a root cause analysis, or it may be a casual Monday morning quarterback conversation. What they all have in common are a few simple steps and conditions; they compare the plan with the outcome and search for ways to do better.

The Conditions

The first step to cooperative problem-solving is to set ground rules. The pilots go so far as to remove the bars on their uniforms. While no one forgets who the colonel is, this move reminds everyone present of the ground rule that this is a no-rank discussion. The second imperative is that assignment of blame is not an objective of the meeting. The priority is to determine the facts about what, when, and how it happened. If the same who comes up repeatedly, then adjustments will be made, but this is about what, not who, influenced the outcome.

The Process

A screen or a whiteboard can help to get everyone on the same side facing the issue. I use a dry erase board set aside for this process.

1. What was our intent? What was supposed to happen?
2. What happened? Just the facts.
3. What differences, both positive and negative, can be seen between the goal and the outcome?
4. What changes can be made to the process to improve our performance?
5. Action items

As a sales manager, you might develop the habit of exploring the lessons to be learned for one victory and one problem in each meeting. The first few times you may want to complete this one-on-one before sharing it with the group. As a member of the safety council, you could discuss near misses to increase prevention, and examples of good safety habits to increase their frequency. As a production leader, you might debrief after a difficult batch of rework or a particularly quick changeover. A maintenance manager could do the same logging notes on machine downtime recovery and prevention. The opportunities are everywhere, and the companies that learn aggressively find value in solving small problems and studying even nominal wins. It starts with a commitment to see problems in a different light. Every time we stop to focus on the process, we will make it better. The most successful companies are set apart less by the frequency of failure than by their ability to recover quickly and learn aggressively. Fail faster.

Scott Ellis, Ed.D., provides the brutal facts with a kind and actionable delivery when a leader, a team, or a company needs an objective, data-based assessment of the current state of operations and culture. Training, coaching, and resources develop the ability to eliminate obstacles and sustain more effective and profitable results. Working Well exists to get you unstuck and accelerate effective work. He can be reached at 425-985-8508 or scott@workingwell.bz.