The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - How to Conduct an Effective Project After Action Review | PPP #7

Episode Date: February 22, 2020

In 'Project and Life Lessons Learned,' I share my $.02 on following the K.I.S.S. principle and share sample lessons learned survey questions.

Hey everybody, Kevin Pinnell, host of the People Process Progress Podcast, just sharing that we are approaching 1,000 downloads. That is about four times as many downloads in the first two months that we received when I started the Between the Slides podcast a year ago. So thank you so much, everyone that poured it over from Between the Slides. If you're just joining this podcast, the Between the Slides podcast started as a way for me to continue teaching or sharing some of my experience and those of my guests, particularly started off with Incident Command System, Incident Management, Project Management, and then really sharing just

kind of how can we work together, how do we organize things with some foundational four of objectives, org chart, resources, and communication? And really expanded beyond that to just talk with some really interesting folks. And with this People, Process, Progress podcast, same thing. We're going to talk to some great people coming up here in the near future, learn about them, learn about their process, their process in helping others, and how we can all make progress. Today, though, I just wanted to share a quick note to say thanks again as we approach kind of that big milestone and you know we're not stat driven show but it is cool to see folks listen and download and thank you all very much that's that's all you and

also want to share so I'm in the process I'm closing a couple projects which is great you know people do did great work we did great things and want to share the critical importance of making sure we capture lessons learned and keeping it simple. So in my opinion, capturing lessons learned doesn't have to be this super long survey that, you know, takes 10 minutes and about a 30 percent response ratio is, I think, typical for what you can expect to actually get responses. And higher than that, I think, is gravy. But keeping it simple of, you know, what's your position? Did you understand the objectives of the project? Did you understand your role? Did you understand milestones?

What are three areas for improvement? What are three strengths? How did we communicate? How do we do resources? And how, is there anything else that you want to share? And to me, that captures a ton of very helpful information and feedback. And you'll get people's answers, keeping it anonymous as well. So I would suggest know by position or by specialty, maybe who on your team does that and or rather responded.

But you don't have to know exactly who it is, but it'll give you a great insight for next time, right? For the next project, for the next effort. And as I thought about that this morning and try to do often is, is I do lessons learned at work, but also trying to do that for myself personally, right? So part of me as a person, as a people, just to, you know, kind of lazily loop that into the name of the show is the show, is being a better me, being a better husband, being a better father, being a better friend, and always trying to refine that and failing sometimes just like everybody else and succeeding sometimes. But then also looking at my processes. Am I staying up too late? Did I have that extra glass of wine I didn't need that made me a little tired the next day? Did I get up in the morning and exercise? Did I not exercise but for good reason to give myself a break? Did I push hard enough

during a roll? And, you know, this past week was a great week at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class. Again, great instructors, great people at Team Manon. And I found myself during some rolls caught in tough spots and then slowing down, taking a breath, pushing through. And that's from me doing my own lessons learned over and over again from previous roles, previous classes, previous mental states of thinking, you know, I quit when I laid there, or I didn't try and get out of something, or I didn't go for a submission, or I didn't push myself like I knew I could have. And if you've ever played sports at any level, particularly probably when you're a little bit older, middle and high school,

and there's plays that you missed that you maybe shouldn't have and they stick in your brain and I'm not reliving glory days, but in this life, we remember those things about, oh man, I could have done this better and I could have done that better and I should have tried harder here

or maybe I should have called that person directly instead of just emailing or I did get out of a submission because I pushed hard and worked and took a breath. Whatever it is in this life, that's how we're going to make that progress, is always double-checking ourselves, our teams, our organizations, and being objective and honest with ourselves. It certainly doesn't help to sugarcoat anything for yourself, and it certainly doesn't sugarcoat. There's a little more politics, a little more etiquette involved when you're doing after actions and lessons learned with other folks at work or somewhere else.

But for yourself, you can be pretty honest. So I would just encourage us all to be honest with ourselves, to try and do better every day. We're going to stumble and fall, but get up, get after it in whatever capacity you do. Gather those invaluable lessons learned from your team and then celebrate your team, right? Celebrate the great work they did, particularly if you're a project manager, you know, to my folks that are planning section chiefs or other leadership positions out there, you know, your people got the project done. You may have helped get them through it. You may have helped facilitate the process and kind of shepherded them to the right areas and help close loops in communication. But remember, your programmers did the work, your boots on the ground, save the lives, celebrate them,

take care of them, and get their lessons learned so we can keep doing better and better every time. So thank you all very much for helping me do better and better, for reinvigorating me in the podcast space and just reaching out to me. I look forward to talking and hearing from a lot of you at people process progress at gmail.com or via Facebook, same name, people process progress. Follow me on Instagram at the same thing. Godspeed to all of you and take care.