No-blame process sparks a no-blame culture

We hear a lot about the importance of a "no-blame culture" in developing an effective learning organisation, but you can't have a no-blame culture unless you have no-blame processes as well.

Becoming a learning organisation requires a culture of openness, so that people are willing to explore honestly and openly their performance and the performance of their team. It is only through this honest exploration that we can identify what might be learned and what might be changed.

This is particularly important when learning from projects or incidents where things have gone wrong and where mistakes have been made. If people feel they are likely to blamed for the mistakes, and that their career or reputation might suffer as a result, they are unlikely to discuss the issue openly, which makes it impossible to learn from project mistakes.

When I discuss the topic of lesson-learning with clients, I often hear the concern that lesson-learning meetings could be seen as "witch-hunts" - in other words, a search for someone to blame. People are then reluctant to open up, and it becomes very difficult to understand the root cause behind incidents and therefore what can be learned and what can be changed. The fear of blame destroys openness, and maked organisational learning impossible.

To overcome this concern, we need to introduce a no-blame process for lesson-learning; so people can experience organisational reflection and learning without fear. The process that, in my experience, works best of all is the Retrospect.

The Retrospect is a team meeting, held after the end of a project or project stage where, with the help of an external objective experienced facilitator, the team identifies and analyses learning points through discussion and dialogue, in order to derive lessons and actions for the future. The facilitator leads an inclusive discussion to identify

• What went well and what did not go to plan in the project
• Why the successful elements succeeded, and why the failures and mistakes happened (looking for root cause)
• How future projects can repeat the success and avoid the failure.

The key questions are therefore What, Why and How; very open questions which allow full exploration of the lessons learned.

Note that there is no Who question. We do not really care who was the hero or who was the villain. This is a no-blame process, as well as a no-praise process. We are searching neither for Witches or for Heroines; only for the truth. A few well-run Retrospects can reassure an organisation that organisation learning can be blame free, and the culture can begin to open up as a result.

An open, no-blame culture can be sparked into life by a few no-blame processes such as the Retrospect.

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