What do you do if your project post-mortems and lessons learned sessions are ineffective?

It’s essential to identify the underlying challenges and take proactive steps to improve them. The first step is to assess the current approach by evaluating the processes/procedures followed in the lessons learned sessions and identifying the shortcomings in the practice. Second, clarify the objectives and ensure everyone involved understands the purpose of the sessions. Third, create a safe environment where all participants feel comfortable in sharing their perspectives and opinions. Fourth, facilitate effective discussion to be productive. Fifth, capture actionable insights from the sessions and follow on action items to track the progress

Go into these types of conversations with a clear goal (as well as meeting expectations). Make sure both have been communicated to your team prior to - lessons learned meetings are meant to be productive discussions, not time to complain or place blame. The objective is to discuss the project, what went off the rails, and learn how the process can be course corrected for next time. It’s actually healthy for the team to regroup post-project (especially if it was a significant undertaking). When you kick off the meeting, have a positive tone and at the same time, be direct and laser-focused throughout. At the end of the meeting, be sure someone has captured notes so any changes can be documented.

Revamp project post-mortems and lessons learned sessions by ensuring clear objectives, encouraging honest feedback, involving all stakeholders, providing a structured framework, focusing on actionable insights, documenting findings, and implementing changes based on lessons learned to improve effectiveness.

In post-mortems I've done, I've needed to rethink the length of each session. I have found long post-mortems to be tedious and fairly disruptive to the business. Generally, the long discussions are more broad which can promote more tangential conversation. Short post-mortems, more often, are highly effective. The brevity of shorter sessions gives your team more immediate action steps and more importantly, keeps your team engaged.

There is a delicate balance here between encouraging honesty and blame-shifting. Importantly, employees who participate in post-mortems need a safe environment to be honest. Additionally, these conversations need to improve ideas in the fires of healthy debate. Leaders of these discussions need to provide ground rules to discourage negativity.

Don't get stuck dwelling on past mistakes. Shift your post-mortem discussions towards actionable solutions. Encourage your team to think constructively about overcoming obstacles in the future. By focusing on solutions, you turn these sessions into proactive strategy planning meetings, leaving everyone feeling empowered and prepared to tackle the next challenge.

One of the important parts of focusing on solutions is to separate the discussion of problems from solutions. When problems are discussed independently of solutions, it encourages creative thinking and brainstorming. Team members can freely explore a wide range of ideas without feeling constrained by the need to immediately find a fix. This can lead to innovative solutions that may not have been considered otherwise. Additionally, jumping too quickly from identifying problems to proposing solutions can result in premature convergence, where teams settle on the first idea that comes to mind without fully exploring other possibilities.

Accountability transforms lessons into actionable change. In successful projects I've led, assigning clear ownership of tasks has been crucial. This approach ensures that insights are actively applied, not just discussed. By holding individuals accountable for specific action items, we not only see improvements in our processes but also boost personal investment in our collective success. This method cultivates a culture where continuous improvement is not just a goal, but a reality.

Perhaps the biggest reason post-mortems don't work: nobody changes anything. We do all the work to understand problems, root causes, and failures and then we propose solutions. But the most important part of a post-mortem is the real and lasting changes we make to operational processes, communications, and the like. Hold people accountable for the changes they agreed to make and post-mortems become something employees can look forward.

Although this wasn't part of the discussion here, I absolutely thing problem/solution separation is a critical matter. Spending dedicated time on discussing problems helps ensure that all team members have a clear and shared understanding of the underlying issues. This shared understanding is essential for developing effective solutions that address the root causes rather than just the symptoms. In many businesses, I see more time spent fixing invented problems rather than deep work in understanding the first principles.