Process Improvement with After Action Reviews and Lessons Learned

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to this class on lessons learned, your step-by-step guide on how to analyze your work and how to continuously improve that work. In this class, you will learn a simple way to perform after action reviews and to reap the most out of those efforts with detailed and effective lessons learned. I've been testing ways to improve lessons learned analysis for years, both when I ran a small software business and now in my work as a management consultant to other small businesses, I found that the biggest challenge is analyzing your own work with a completely neutral approach without bringing any preferential bias or using handy hindsight in the moment. The method that I have developed and that you will learn in this class forces my clients and my students to think about their work in its true context. If you are a small business owner, if you are a department leader or the head of a team or in any way responsible for your team's performance and project outcomes. Then this course is for you. You want the best results. You want to be making the best decisions. And you want to train the best employees to big leaders of the future. And of course, you want to improve performance overall from one project to the next. This course will teach you how to do all of that. And it will do so by giving you a simple step-by-step guide you can use to analyze the results of a project. You'll use it to know what worked well and find out what can be improved. And of course, how to make those specific changes for improvements for the next project. As your class final project, you will create a plan for your first set of lessons learned. You'll use the steps that you will learn throughout the class and you'll do so on a real life work project of your own. Everything we do, whether success, failure, or anywhere in between, can always be improved. And an effective lessons learned system means that you are constantly finding areas for improvement. As a result, your business will be more effective, it will be more innovative, and it will be more creative overall. Get started right now. Jump straight into the initial lessons in this class. And those lessons will explain exactly what lessons learned are and why you want to be using them in your business. Happy learning. 2. What is process improvement: Once you have a process in place, you need process improvement. As you learned in the previous lesson, this is one reason to make sure that all of your processes are written down and documented because it is the only way to continuously improve them and thus to improve your business. Let's start with a simple understanding of what process improvement is. Business process improvement is the practice of identifying and implementing changes or improvements to your existing business process, whether this is for the ongoing work of your business or specific projects or project types. You want to be implementing process improvement because it will make your business more efficient. You'll be finding easier ways to do things. It will also make your business more effective. You'll find better ways to do things. It will make your business more accurate because you'll find more specific ways to do things, and it will make your business more reliable because you're finding more consistent ways to do things. And finally, it will also make your business more responsive because you're finding faster ways to do things. All of these improvements will make your clients happy, your employees happy, and your business more successful. But what is the point of writing a process if it is constantly changing? Well, therein really lies the crux of the matter. If you don't write it down, you just can't improve it. And if you can't improve it, your business will become stagnant or even obsolete. Doing this requires creating a culture of continuous improvement. So you and your employees are all open and you're all curious. It really means shifting the mentality of problems to having them become opportunities, and that has to come from the top. 3. Why Lessons Learned?: One thing that I want you to get out of this class is a new way to look at all of your business efforts. Who remembers the notion that many of you and many of you have probably heard of it, even it was Apple's first handheld device. It was the precursor to the iPhone. Now, managerially did everything right. And yet this product was a huge flop, but the brand did not disappear. And 13 years later, they launched the iPhone, which has set the standard for handheld devices ever since. It's okay for things to go wrong in business. Even when a mistake feels like a punch to the gut. Don't go into your business efforts thinking about good or bad success or failure. Instead, give each individual outcome the same considerations. Ask yourself, why? Ask yourself how? Ask yourself what could have been different? Ask yourself what might be in it for the customer, and so much more. Ask yourself what actually happened as a result of the individual actions. What you'll find is that you always learn something new from that type of analysis. And you will also always find something to celebrate. Lessons learned are not about success or failure. There is simply about why did something happen? Generally speaking, you will always start at the beginning with a brainstorm of what happened right down your impressions of what you did well and what you can improve upon. What did you learn along the way about the project, about your business, about the environment in which you're working. Next, you'll examine those actual outcomes. You want to understand how they occurred, why your expectations were correct or why they were incorrect. This is the information you'll be able to use to determine what you will change next time that you're in this situation. In fact, at the end you will have that list, not a list of successes and failures. A list that looks to the past, you will have is a list of repetitions and improvements, which is a list that's looking to the future. In the next lesson, we'll take a look at how this lessons learned practice falls into project management. 4. Terminology: You may have already heard of both after-action reviews and lessons learned. If you're wondering exactly what the difference is, you're not alone. This is a common question, and I've heard these two terms used interchangeably, but they're not exactly the same thing. Let me explain the difference between these two. In context. You have a sequence of events that lead to lessons learned. Those events are, first of all, the project. That's what happens first. It is then followed by an after-action review. And the after action review results in lessons learned. This is the order that you have to go in. Let me briefly explain each step to more clearly delineate the differences. The project is the thing that happens. Now. It could be a current process that is up for review, or it might be a onetime special project. The main point for our purposes is that the project is all about a certain objective. There is an expected outcome or deliverable from this project. And the details of the project will then include things like tasks and tools and people and timeframe and much more. The after-action review is the analysis of that outcome. In other words, what's the objective of the project achieved and how the main purpose of the after-action review to compare the intended outcome of that project with the actual outcome and then analyze what got you there. And that leads to lessons learned. Lessons learned are the results of your after-action review. The lessons learned are a list of what to retain from that project and what you need to improve in the next one. This is the correct sequence and it has to happen in this order, project. After action review and lessons learned. For the purpose of this class, we're interested in these last two steps after action reviews and lessons learned. And that's what you're going to be learning about. 5. The challenges: If you are taking this class to create a lessons learned system for the first time, then you will want to know the most typical challenges so that you can avoid them right away. If, on the other hand, you've been running lessons learned unsuccessfully, then it's likely because you've run into one or more of the challenges that I'm about to list in this lesson. We'll continue on to find out what they are and how to overcome them. Either way, the more you know about what could go wrong, the more you can do to make it go right. Most problems with lessons learned efforts will fall into one of the following categories. The first one is lack of time. Once a project is complete, you're in a hurry to get onto the next thing, so you don't take the time or time to stop, so to speak and analyze what happened. The second is lack of access. You can't get feedback or data from the people necessary. Or perhaps you can't get involvement from the boss without access to the correct information and the correct people, you can't perform a proper lessons learned analysis. And finally, lack of structure. Perhaps you collect some information and then you share it either in an email or an amusing. But there's no formalized structure to it. There are no formalized next steps and people don't really know what happens from there. These are common challenges, but the truth is that they're only problems if you don't account for them upfront. While they're difficult to overcome once they've happened, they're fairly simple to avoid in the first place. If we think about lack of time, we've already mentioned that after action reviews and lessons learned are part of the whole project plan, implant a proper project management effort that includes these steps upfront. The project isn't in fact over until it is complete and it is only complete. After lessons learned. You can combat lack of access by making sure that the efforts come from the top. If you are a leader in your organization, either the small business owner, the unit leader or manager, then you have to model the behavior that you want to see. Create the new project format that we've mentioned and lead the charge on lessons learned. Make sure that you are the person who constantly highlights how important this is. If you're not the leader, then find a sponsor, get somebody in an influential position to be the main driver of lessons learned right from the beginning of the project and to combat lack of structure. Well, that's why you're here. Follow the rest of this class and you will have the structure to run a proper lessons learned. You will learn everything you need to know to build those last two steps of the sequence in your project plan. 6. Why Lessons Learned are important: Many businesses do reflect upon their past experiences or disgust general outcomes of a project. But the truth is that not enough businesses perform a proper in-depth lessons learned plan. What they will do is look at a project overall. And then they might decide that if it has been successful, they will repeat it. And if the project overall was not successful, then they'll never do it again. The problem with this approach is that you end up either repeating errors or discarding good ideas. It will never be the totality of a project that was excellent or a complete disaster. In reality, it comes down to individual steps and decisions. When you do a lessons learned, you want to analyze at those individual steps. Lessons learned to our experiences from past events, and they should be used to inform future events. As such, they should also be part of the overall project plan. The final stages of that plan should be the after-action review. And the lessons learned. Not least because real mistakes are repeated mistakes. The problem is not doing something incorrectly. That's going to happen naturally as you try new things or as circumstances change, the problem is going to be doing the exact same thing wrong. Again, a mistake only happens when you're repeating the same mistake more than once, when you haven't learned from past experiences. A proper lessons learned list will avoid all of this. In addition to that, it will also increase your data and offer insight into what you're doing and how you're making decisions. It will improve communication both within your team and across different teams in the business. Obviously, it will offer business improvements. It will bring innovation, keeping you at the forefront of industry development and of performance. You'll find that you are no longer wasting money. Learning from your mistakes means not throwing money at something that hasn't worked already. And in addition, it also means that you will document your successes. It's not just about what went wrong. You will also get to highlight what went well. And everybody appreciates that these reasons and more are why you want to take the rest of this course. 7. What is an After Action Review: We've stated previously that an after action review is an analysis of the outcome of a project. It comes as part of the overall project management plan. And it's an important part of any project scope. After the completion of the project, execution tasks comes the after-action review. This analysis will tell you what happened. Your project at a micro level will be able to understand individual activities and occurrences, but also why it happened in that way. This is the information that you will use for your lessons learned. With the information you'll get out of this analysis, you will be able to extract what went well, looking both at your strengths and what happened due to luck, it is important to understand the difference between these two. And it will also tell you what you can improve. Generally, looking at the areas of skills, knowledge, and communication, communication breakdowns are really common cause of project tripping points. This is the information that you will use to build your lessons learned, that list of improvements and things to retain. Now, most after action review guides will tell you the process of an after-action review. You define the scope, you conduct, the research you analyze. That is actually all part of your project plan. That is, how to go through the steps of the after-action review. In this class, we're going to learn specifically how to conduct the analysis itself. How to take the data from the project and look at it in all its small parts. We'll do that by breaking the analysis down into four areas which are process. We will look at the communication throughout the project, will consider distractions, and we will also consider external forces. If you need to differentiate between strength and luck, it's just as important to differentiate between errors and things outside of your control. Over the next few lessons, we'll look at each one of these in detail and how to conduct that particular part of your after-action review. 8. Start with a brainstorm: Start your after-action review with basically a brained up brainstorm your first impressions just off the top of your head. Make sure that you do this quickly. Just five-minutes or so. We're not yet in the analysis phase. We just want to collect your first impressions. This will also have the advantage of getting you in the correct mindset. You'll be reimbursing herself in the experience of the project and therefore better prepared to deal with the more in-depth analysis. Write down a paragraph or two about the experience of the project, what you think worked well, and areas that you think need improvement. These are your first thoughts. A simple brainstorm. Go. 9. Process review: First of all, I want you to understand that your problem will never be the process as a whole. But rather, if anything, a particular step within your overall process. Review the process of the projects step-by-step. Start by taking your project plan and examine it with the wisdom of hindsight, with what you know now, was this the correct procedure for the project? Did things e.g. happen out of order in the reality of the execution or steps moved around from what you had expected, where there are steps that were added as you went through the project, did more have to happen than what you had originally accounted for? And also where any steps missed. What did you do that wasn't in your original procedure. Make a list of the procedural steps that did not match the original process, and keep that list handy. Now start looking at each individual step on its own. What was supposed to happen? Why was this particular step included in the detailed procedure? In what was the ideal outcome of that step? Next, determine did that outcome occur? Did the thing that was supposed to happen actually happen? And if so, great. And if not, why not? Why was the result of that step not what you expected it to be? Was it because of a procedural weakness? In other words, was it because the step was either in the wrong order, was it completely redundant or something else to do with those details of the process? Once again, make a list and keep it handy. At the end of this analysis, you will have a list of good process decisions and the errors made in the process and in those more detailed procedures. 10. Communication review: Communication seems so simple. We talk, we just stipulate we communicate. But the truth is that in a business context, we need information sharing and we need information transfer. And this should be done in a structured way. Miscommunication is probably the most common cause of error, and it can take many different forms, such as forgetting to tell somebody something. You might tell somebody something that is incorrect, the wrong information. You might tell somebody something that they misunderstand. You might take for granted that somebody knows something, but they actually don't, or you may give an unclear instruction. I've witnessed plenty of meetings e.g. where good decisions were made, but no clear instructions were given for after the fact. And so nothing actually happened. Examine how you communicate and find if the flaw is somewhere in those steps. Here's how to do that. Describe, first of all, who was involved, who was part of any information sharing and transfer? These could be clients, certainly colleagues, perhaps across teams, any vendors and anybody else. Analyze what was communicated back and forth. Here you want to think about things like instructions that were given from one party to another. Any knowledge that was required to perform a certain step, progress updates throughout the project, especially from one team or department to another and anything else in terms of information flow, now, analyze how that information was flowing from one place to another or one person to another. Where you're using a project management software, a chat platform. Do you do this through e-mails, phone calls? Did it take place in meetings? How did information move through the organization throughout the project? Finally, look at how the information was captured throughout the project. Is information stored somewhere specific, like a project management platform? Is it shared easily with everybody involved? Is it easy for people to access? E.g. are there gatekeepers to the information or is it lost somewhere in some long chat thread? Is the correct information either tagged or somehow connected to the relevant part of the process or the relevant individuals. Make a list of all this information. And then you can take a look at what you can conclude about any weaknesses in communication during the project. Where was communication lost? Where did you have to repeat the same information? Where was information misunderstood in anything else that might come out of this analysis? Make a list and keep it handy. At the end of this analysis, you will have a good understanding of all the areas in which your communication is lacking proper structure. 11. Distractions review: There's always going to be something that you just forget. The longer or more complex the project, the more likely they are to be errors of distraction somewhere in there. Why is it important to review these types of mistakes as well? Is it really something that you can fix? Well, possibly, in fact, probably. The better you understand the conditions in which you are distracted and the consequences of that distraction than the less likely you are to repeat them again. But there's more. You don't want to risk changing something that actually works. If you misdiagnose a distraction error as something else. Well, that's the risk that you run into fixing something that doesn't need to be fixed. So when you isolate them out from the real areas that need correction, you're creating a better result. How do you analyze your distractions? Review if there were moments in which your head just wasn't in the work. You've already done. A pretty detailed review of the project to examine the procedural steps and the communication flow. Using that analysis, have you revealed any moments in which you were just not concentrating properly? Perhaps you were multitasking or maybe you wanted to get through something very quickly and so didn't give it proper attention. Another way to look at this is of the problems that you have identified so far, were any of them actually because the person involved just wasn't focused. So it wasn't a process or communication problem, it was just human error. This is unimportant difference to ensure that you are correcting the right thing. If the error was distraction rather than procedural or structural, then you want to make sure you don't fix something that works. Take a critical look at your work and determined those moments where you may have simply done the wrong thing or done the right thing but badly, make a list and keep it handy. At the end of this analysis, you will have notes and possibly corrections on the problems you've identified so far. 12. External Forces review: Not everything is your fault. Sometimes things happen to you. Sometimes problems are caused by external forces which you can't control at all. But you can control how you choose to react to them. If your problem was caused by something outside of your business and outside of your control, you want to learn how you can secure your practices against that event or similar event happening again in the future. It's good to know what you can't control. So you can strengthen your position through what you can control. As with the distraction analysis, use the material and data that you already have. What I want you to do here is to make two lists of external forces. A list of everything that once in your favor, so things that were helpful, and a list of everything that worked against you and was harmful for each item that you add to either list. Explain what caused it. Explain how that event changed things in your project. Explain how you reacted, what you did to adjust. And also, do you think it will happen again? And if so, how can you anticipate it? Make a list and keep it handy? At the end of this analysis, you will be better prepared for all your future unknowns. 13. What if you missed something?: But if I forgot something or if I missed something, or what if I was distracted again and there's still more to be discovered? Endure after action review with a quick brush up on anything that could be outstanding. Start by going back to your original brainstorm. Look at those few paragraphs you wrote right at the beginning, reread them. Is there anything that you wrote down that isn't accounted for in your after-action review, does what you're reading now change your view on anything that is in your after-action review. If necessary, make any required updates. Next, scan the information again. Look at the interviews you ran as part of your after-action review. And also glance through the data once again, you've gone through both in detail already. What you're doing now is more of a high-level end of task brainstorm to see if you missed anything or if this review changes your opinion on something that you already have and consider any comments you heard, whether first or second hand. I think of both the insiders and outsiders. What did the people connected to the project say throughout the duration of the work, as well as after it was complete and they could see the results. But also what were the impressions of people not directly involved with the project, but seeing it from the outside. With this last review, you may find nothing new at all. You may find new ideas that on closer inspection, you can simply discard. Or you may find some additional information that affects or changes part of your after-action review. 14. Create your Lessons Learned: You've now completed your after-action review. You're going to use that information to compile your lessons learned. And that is the focus of this next section. Over the next few lessons, you will learn how to build and use your lessons learned. We're going to cover both the good lessons learned, the things that worked, as well as the area for improvement lessons learned. And then we will discuss how to implement the changes that you find both urgent and not. Throughout these lessons, I'll keep highlighting the importance of recognizing the difference between what you did, What happened to you. In other words, your good decisions and things that were pure luck, whether good or bad. Understanding this difference is essential to an effective lessons learned exercise. 15. Lessons on what to keep: Let's start with your positive lessons learned the elements you found that worked well and that you want to retain for future projects. Never skip this step. You always want to share the lessons learned about what worked well, the things that you want to keep. There are two main reasons for doing this. The first one is to make sure that you really do retain them. Remember that this particular feature that you're talking about has been specifically slated to be retained. So don't skip or remove it in service of something else next time, or at least not without an excellent reason. Number two, you want to celebrate it. Recognize that you're making good decisions and that your working well. Obviously more focus and time will be given to what needs to be corrected. So it's helpful to remember that not everything is actually being corrected. Present, and share the lessons learned about things to keep. These will cover process, the detailed procedural steps and decisions that are beneficial and valuable to your work overall. As a quick parenthesis here, I'm using both the word process and procedure throughout this class. Process is the overall structure that you're using. Procedures are the detailed steps, both are pertinent. This will also cover communication, of course, the successful methods of information caption, capture and information sharing. You'll look at distractions. Now, if distractions did occur, those go on the negative list. But what you can highlight here is any instance of immediate correction ways in which you avoid problems by adapting during the project itself. And you'll review external forces where you dealt with external forces successfully. This can be due to two main reasons. One, they worked in your favor. In this case, can you replicate those conditions next time or can you rely on that external force happening again? There's also where they worked against you. But as with distractions, you adapted well to the situation. These are all things to note and to celebrate. This brings us to another point that you have to make throughout this exercise, which is to differentiate between what is a strength that you have used and what is just pure luck. Your strengths are things that you want to retain and you want to replicate. When you were lucky. What you can do is look at how you can replicate the circumstances that brought you look, turn that into a strength for next time. 16. Lessons on what to improve: This lesson is the core of the entire class here on lessons learned. In this lesson, you will learn how to compile your list of improvements based on what you learned from your execution of the project. Note that we are not yet differentiating between immediate improvements and longer-term ones that will come in the next step. Improvements mean that changes are being made and changes can't be made by the process or they can't be made by a business. Changes are made by people. The goal with this lessons learned system is to make those changes and therefore they have to be specific. People have to know exactly what to do to make the changes. And most importantly, how to recognize that the change has been made. For this reason, we use different categories now in the lessons learned than we used in the after-action review, we're using categories that make it easy to isolate the specific change that has to be made. The first one is decision-making. A great deal in the process planning area of improvements. But not only, it also comes up in any situation that requires a quick adaptation, such as external forces and distractions. Based on your after-action review, do you have to improve how you're making decisions? Do you need more information? Should you be involving more people? Should you be involving different people? Do you need a better list of your pros and cons? Be specific about exactly how you will update your decision-making process. The next category is skills. What have you discovered about any weakness in particular skills that you and your team have right now. You can start by stationing the required skills necessary to get the job done and then extract the people who need training and in what areas specifically. Also note whether they need additional training, whether they need to be taught something new, or if they need more experienced doing something, and then state specifically how that will be provided to them. And Glenn, what do you need to improve in terms of knowledge? Were there clear knowledge gaps in what you did? And by this, I mean knowledge gaps that should not have existed, things that you should have known, but you didn't know when it mattered. Why didn't you know them? Did you not look hard enough to not speak to the right people or did you not properly understand something that you should have understood, or did you not ask the right questions? In this lessons learned list? Explain the steps that you will take next time to ensure these knowledge gaps don't repeat themselves. There's the category of communication. Now, this obviously is one of the after-action review categories as well. And it makes sense as a change category because it gives us a list of things we can act on. What are the instances of lost or miscommunication. What will you do to improve information capture and access, recording information and doing it in the right place. What will you do about improving information flow throughout the interested parties? And how will you communicate in the next project? Be particular about the individual roles that need to communicate the particular information at each step. And remember that this could also include confidence building in terms of communicating with the correct people in the correct way. Let's consider tools. Did you not have the right tools for your job? You will have learned during your after-action review, if there were tools to support and communication process or in any other part of the project. And you are lacking those tools at the time. You will need them next time. Create a plan for what the tool is, because it's software, manual, etc. Why do you need it? And how you will select the right one, as well as how relevant parties will be trained on using it. And what else. Take a quick look at your after-action review. Are there areas for improvement that don't fit into any of the previous categories? And if so, go ahead and add them to the list and create the new category. Pushing the improvement into a category like this makes it easier to understand and to pursue. This exercise and lessons learned will give you not just a list of improvements. Rather for each improvement, you should also have an explanation of how that improvement will be made. What is the process for improvement, who is involved, and what resources are needed? Also include the timeframe expected. Next, you have to select what to work on right now and what can wait. 17. Immediate improvements: How long is your list of improvements? Is it five items? It's 1025. There isn't a correct or incorrect answer here. But what matters is what you can realistically do now and what needs to wait. Select those improvements which are truly urgent. Let's follow the four steps you need to make that decision. How do you decide what is urgent? Start by looking at the consequences of not making this improvement. Ask yourself, what happens if you don't make this improvement? What are those consequences directly, but delve deeper to, does it cause an even bigger problem? Does this problem exacerbate or increase the possibility of another one? Does it create an impediment if you don't fix this, does it keep you from doing something? And also very importantly, when does the problem occur? The challenge here is to be realistic. Be honest with yourself about how big a problem this is when the negative consequences will present themselves. Also discuss what happens if you don't fix it. And is that outcome itself a problem? Is a problem now or in the future? Does it depend on other things? Understand fully the consequences of not fixing this and not fixing this, immediately. Challenge yourself also to be selective. How much time do you have to work on these improvements? So do you really have to fix this right now? As you go through this analysis, it can also help to have an assigned contrarian in the room as part of the meeting. Somebody whose position is that nothing is urgent. And that's a way to help you see both sides of that argument. Every change you do will take time. And that's why you want to be selective with what you work on right away. But eventually you will have your finalized list of improvements and at that point, create a project plan for each one to include what you are doing. You want the plan to explain how you're going to accomplish this improvement. Make sure you indicate who needs to be involved and in which parts. Make a list of the tools required and always include the expected timeframe. Now that that's ready, All you have to do is start. 18. Parking Lot items: Well now, what about all the improvements that aren't urgent? They might still be important, even if their effects won't be felt for awhile or until a particular other thing occurs far in the future. Those items we put into a parking lot. The parking lot is a productivity technique. It's used to keep meetings, projects, and discussions within the scope. The parking lot is a list of ideas that warrants further discussion, but not at this time. And it's a way to acknowledge all the contributions and make sure that those aren't ignored without letting them derail a live discussion. We will use the parking lot tool to separate immediate improvements From improvements that are important but not urgent. The main purpose is to not try to do too much at once. Therefore, ensure that we are prioritizing correctly. Take everything that is left over after you determine your immediate improvements, and then build a table for parking lot improvement items. You want to include in that table what the improvement is. Explain where in your after-action review you identified this issue for improvement. Describe why it matters, what will change for your business. And also consider what would be the consequences if you didn't make this improvement eventually. Say when it will happen. When would those consequences occur? And therefore, one is the right time to tackle this improvement. And finally, the action. What is the improvement plan? What has to happen? Who is involved? What does it involve, and how long will it take? This is the same project plan as we used in the previous lesson. But at this stage, it can be a higher-level view to be built into more detail when you actually tackle the issue. After you have this table complete, there is one last step which is to review the full list. Is each improvement really important? Does the consequence really matter? This is your last chance to cut away anything that doesn't match her on closer consideration. At the end, you will have your list for future improvements. And the important thing is to schedule regular reviews of this list monthly, at least really cordially at most. And make sure that you are addressing and correcting the items in this list. 19. Final Project: You are almost done. But before I let you go completely, how about a trial run? As your final project, you will prepare a lessons learned light. This exercise will have you combine the after-action review and the original brainstorm into a well brainstormed after-action review. Consider it a starch or exercise to prepare for deeper analysis in the real-world. Take a recent project. It can be a sales pitch, a special initiative, a client deliverable, an event you held or anything else. Using the attached PDF templates, fill in the table and make a list of the actions that were taken, the desired outcomes of each of those actions, and then the actual outcomes of each of those actions. Once you're done, note where columns 2.3 don't match and explain why they don't match. Also note in a corner, if this was a problem of process, communication, distraction or external force. 20. Conclusion: Congratulations, you have completed this class on lessons learned. You've learned so many different things from the difference between lessons learned and after action reviews. You've also learned why both of these things master and how to do them, how to use them. And you have a system and all the templates you need to apply that work to your own business. Now remember, the only Mistakes are repeated mistakes. So be open to change, be open to experiments in your business, and always be open to learning. Make sure that you complete your project and share the results of that project. I welcome comments. I welcome any feedback and any type of question. So don't hesitate to reach out and contact me directly. If you want to keep learning, take a look at my other classes and for more about me and what I do and my consulting, you can subscribe to my weekly e-mail. It's called Tuesday on your business. And every single week I send a business tip. Click the subscribe button on my website, www.rgbreedseat.com. Best of luck, have fun with more learning and remember to always stay curious.