Learning How to Learn: Getting Better About Getting Better

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.

  Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned  

One of my favourite quotes about learning (and doing) comes from the great American poet and author Maya Angelou:

“You did then what you knew how to do, and when you knew better, you did better.”

It's a great quote. It captures simply and clearly what for most of us is our reality, most of our lives. We are all trying hard. We seek to do well. We want to thrive. Few of us wake up in the morning with the intention of doing a bad job or having a bad day. We do the best we can with what we have, and as we gain more skills and develop more expertise, we endeavor to continue getting better.

Except, at least for projects, this simply isn't true. We don't try to get better. Even when we claim otherwise, the sad truth is that we keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Even when change is within our power to influence, we don't make the modifications necessary to improve. And I can prove it.

How we learn, and how we improve, is theoretically embedded in how we run our projects. It is also supposedly fully integrated into our organizational project management processes. While the apex of most maturity models is a robust, fully integrated process of ongoing improvement, even the most basic of project management practices acknowledge the need for learning and incorporate an essential theoretical commitment to ongoing improvement. At…

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