Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Learning From Our Mistakes: Do We?
Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." So said the philosopher George Santayana, and while he may have been commenting on history, he could well have been discussing the current state and practice of project management.
By way of illustration, ask yourself the following question: What does your organization do in order to formally learn from its projects, both the successful and unsuccessful ones? If your organization is like most, the honest answer to this question is "not much."
This is not to say that a lot of grey matter doesn't get focussed on what goes wrong on projects. If nothing else, the conversation around the water cooler will generally be sufficiently candid and insightful for any serious observer to get a pretty good understanding of how projects are managed. What is far less likely is for there to be any coordinated effort to capture this information in a formal setting, or to concretely take action as a result.
The reason for this lack of formal assessment of project performance and results is fairly obvious and also fairly unfortunate. For a significant majority of project teams and organizations, the focus of the project is on simply "getting it done." Anything that is not seen as directly producing value to the project is avoided, or at the very least minimized. By the time the end of the project is reached, the need to stop …
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