Harvard Business Review/Learning from Mistakes

Harvard Business Review
Originally uploaded by ecentor

In an earlier blog entry on Arlington, rg comments thusly:

Excellent post. In terms of Arlington's mistakes, what I also like about Arlington is that they learn form their mistakes. Yes, Rosslyn sucks, but Arlington did not go and build more Rosslyns. In contrast, it seems like DC repeats many mistakes over and over and never learns. Mind you, my thinking on this is just anecdotal, but it's an interesting contrast.

I have been meaning to mention that the February issue of Harvard Business Review has four excellent articles:

• a case study on a hotel company creating an overarching branding strategy (my sum up, do it when the brand has value, but not when it doesn't, i.e., does "Westfield Shoppingtown" really have any meaning, isn't it just another mall?);

• "The New Leader's Guide to Diagnosing the Business" (I am working on creating similar templates for commercial districts);

• "The Founder's Dilemma" about start up organizations and the dilemma between control and success (running the show or bringing in other people with the necessary skills to grow the organization) -- this is a big issue in nonprofit organizations, and was outlined in the stages of organizational growh and developing organizational subsystems chapters in the class Social Psychology of Organization a long out of print textbook that is supposed to be revised and reprinted; AND

• "The Experience Trap" which states "as projects get more complicated, managers stop learning from their experience. It is important to understand how that happens and how to change it." (Similarly, also see the work by Chris Agyris about organizational change.)

I was really struck by the last article, that people just accept that there are going to be "problems" without really trying to figure out why problems arise, if they are a result of a faulty process or system, not just something that happens. And to change the process.

[This is what gets me in trouble in my work. People aren't comfortable challenging processes. And they think when you challenge processes that you are challenging people.]

I am not technically trained, but the process of six sigma defect reduction seems to be relevant to organizational processes whether or not you are engaged in manufacturing. The work of of Juran and/or Deming is equally applicable.