Lessons (Actually) Learned
The Dilemma of Learning from Competitions
Though typical practice in the defense industry, lessons learned conducted on major competitive losses have largely failed to result in enduring systemic learning. They are typically conducted only on strategic surprises and significant losses creating biases in true understanding of competitiveness. The conventional learning model of traditional approaches employ a problem-solving perspective to discover fault associated with issues unique to each competition, resulting in findings often limited to unique external or internal conditions that make it difficult to transcend from experiential to pedagogic knowledge needed for organizational learning. Organizational learning from wins and losses is ultimately manifest as an enduring improvement in a firm’s capacity to compete, namely its capabilities vital to winning. A capability-centric perspective to learning overcomes the limitations of traditional approaches:- Findings are directly actionable as needed improvements in competitive capabilities
- Capability maturity models provide a common baseline across competitions for continuous improvement
- Reduces dependence on conducting lessons learned from unique experiential knowledge to teachable tradecraft
| Characteristics of Effective Lessons Learned Capability | Barriers to Effective Lessons Learned Capability | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Systematic and continuous assessments of both losses and wins evaluating the win strategy, capture activities, and proposal | Bias toward conducting episodic post-mortems on most significant losses |
| Input Objectivity | Data based evaluation of all aspects of competition to prevent unintended biases | Interviews/surveys of stakeholders in the competitive capture process can lead to retrospective justification and finger pointing |
| Analysis | Evaluates process, behaviors and tradecraft using multiple methods based on transparent logic that can be tested and validated | Identification of areas driving competitive losses based on outcomes or the most easily observed evidence |
| Corrective Action | Recommends corrective actions for improvements to enterprise processes, systems, capabilities and governance as explicitly managed initiatives | Recommendations are specific to subject competition because based on experiential knowledge and unique conditions associated with competition |
| Continuous Improvement | Lessons Learned archived in a manner that enables trend analysis, which is used to implement changes to CONOPs; implementation outcomes measured for effectiveness | Lack of common criteria for conducting L2 prevent trend analysis |
| Guidance | Explicit (documented) approach to assessment to ensure consistency in evaluation | Lack of formal approach and L2-specific training and tradecraft |
A Capabilities Perspective of Systemic Learning from Competitive Performance
In today’s competitive environment, offerors must pursue a distinctive and compelling strategy that is expertly executed in capture and convincingly documented in the proposal. All the conditions are necessary, no single one is sufficient to win. These losing (or winning) conditions arise from any of three necessary functional capabilities:- Processes and Systems: Were robust processes followed with discipline?
- Governance: Did good decisions get made between well-understood choices?
- Skills: Was mature tradecraft expertly practiced?
Examining these three simple questions using the extant capability maturity models codified in policy and command media directly leads to genuine, actionable findings to address capability gaps, provides a common baseline across competitions for continuous improvement, and is a repeatable process with teachable analytical methods.
