What's wrong with post-mortems

Several weeks ago, three of us engaged in an informal post-mortem on a recent proposal. One of the participants, who has extensive experience with our company but is relatively new to the bid process, questioned why we were referring to this as a post-mortem. To him, that implied that our proposal to the customer was dead on arrival.

Whether you refer to it as a post-mortem or a post-partum, there is usually some type of "lessons learned" exercise after a project completes.

Or after an event occurs.

I turned on my car radio late Friday morning. About eleven hours had elapsed since the tragic shootings in Aurora, Colorado, and a so-called security expert was talking about the lessons learned from the tragedy. To him, the chief lesson learned was that we need more security at movie theaters.

I switched the station in disgust.

Why? Because a "lessons learned" exercise often takes incidents from an individual project or event and blows them up out of proportion.

Thousands upon thousands of movies are viewed in theaters every day. Heck, there were probably thousands of theater showings of the new Batman movie on Friday, July 20. Of all of those thousands upon thousands of movie presentations, how many resulted in multiple deaths? Exactly one. So does that mean that we MUST suddenly increase security at all movie theaters?

Now I don't discount the fact that theaters can be crowded areas and could be targets for someone intent on doing harm. But movie theaters are clearly not the only crowded areas.

Of course, this isn't the first time that a single isolated event has resulted in a "lessons learned" exercise with far-reaching consequences. One guy (Richard Reid) unsuccessfully tries to down a plane with shoes, and all of a sudden, millions of plane travelers are taking off their shoes while going through airport security.

Looking at the business world, how many times have you had a particular "once in a lifetime" issue with a particular project, and all of a sudden you find that all future projects require a check to make sure that "once in a lifetime" issue never happens again?

John, before you can ship this proposal, you need to go through this 115 item checklist to make sure that we can ship it. First, have you ensured that the customer is not on a U.S. State Department blacklist?

THE CUSTOMER IS A CALIFORNIA COUNTY. IT IS NOT ON A STATE DEPARTMENT BLACKLIST.

Fine, let's move to item 2. Have you ensured that all export licenses have been obtained?

THE CUSTOMER IS A CALIFORNIA COUNTY. AN EXPORT LICENSE IS NOT REQUIRED. HEY, CAN WE SKIP OVER THESE FOREIGN ENTITY QUESTIONS? THEY DON'T APPLY HERE.

I'm sorry, we can't waive these questions. They're mandatory because of the problem with the foreign shipment several years ago.

YOU REALIZE THAT MOST OF OUR BUSINESS TODAY IS IN THE UNITED STATES, AND NOT TO FOREIGN COUNTRIES?

Let's continue. Has the proposal been translated into the customer's native language?

Yes, I believe that a "lessons learned" exercise can be valuable. But when deriving lessons learned, you have to consider the probability of that particular item occurring in the future. There is a cost associated with every action, and if we suddenly go through great effort to put metal detectors at every movie theater...the criminals will simply go to the smoothie shop next door.

But if you insist that no cost is too great to protect people from harm...then you'd better ban songs about roller coasters. Just to be safe, you know.