Teamworking Guidebook Part 5: Reviewing and Learning

Many companies aspire to be 'learning organisations'. But sometimes it seems hard to find the evidence! Teams regularly repeat the same mistakes. Also, successes are not analysed, and therefore stand a lesser chance of being repeated. Unfortunately, learning from experience is a skill that is seldom 'natural' to people, so we must consciously employ techniques to help us. In a team environment we call this REVIEW. There are two kinds:

Task Review
This is a discussion about the work we have done, the actual job itself. Here, we ask:

• Did we achieve what we set out to do?
• What was the quality of our work?
• If we repeated this job, what improvements would we make?

A Task Review is particularly useful for jobs that have to be done repeatedly, where a successful 'template' for the work can be used again. It is also a vital technique during a task, to assess progress and immediately take corrective actions.

Process Review
This is an examination of the way work was done. Discussion is focused less on end results, more on how they were achieved. We ask:

• What were particular successes?
• Why did they happen?
• What can we learn for the future?
• What problems did we have?

All teams have successes or problems, and there are often underlying causes in the ways that people set goals, plan and communicate. This technique can identify these, and help make plans to succeed in the future.

Process review is also discussed in the Team Toolkit.