| Emphasize Pre-Calling Over Post-Critiquing (Post-Mortems) |
By: William Halbert
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Posted: Monday, May 30, 2011 4:33 pm
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"Time for the post mortem," Jan says as she passes Dwight’s desk.
"I’m coming," Dwight says as he gathers his project notes. "I wish we had a better name for this meeting. I always think, Well, this project’s dead because it’s time for the post-mortem. I guess that’s right, but it’s depressing."
Post-mortem. I learned that word in conjunction with death, as in, "We won’t know the cause of dead until the post-mortem is complete." But now it is the name of a meeting that brings everyone together who has worked on the project or at the end of the week to evaluate the effectiveness, quality, timeliness, and value of a project/work. Is that really what we want to say happened to our project-it died?
What if, instead of a post-mortem, we put more effort into starting with the positive and pre-calling? Pre-calling is giving instructions, expectations, lessons learned from previous projects/work, and positive feedback as a task is assigned or a project is undertaken. Let’s compare these two processes.
Job A
#1: Assignment is given that may include some expectation of success.
#2: Operational feedback (positive/redirection) during the work.
#3: Post-mortem: Dissection of work at the end with praise given, "should haves" lamented, and blame assigned. Redirection at this point is after the fact and, therefore, cannot impact this job.
Job A
#1: Assignment is given with instructions, expectations, lessons learned, and positive feedback that the person(s) can complete the task successfully.
#2: Operational feedback (positive/redirection) during the work.
#3: Praise is the only meaningful feedback at this point.
Job B
#1: Pre-calling the assignment includes lessons and redirection after-the-fact from Job A as well as instructions, expectations, and positive feedback that the person(s) can complete the task successfully.
#2: Operational feedback (positive/redirection) during the work.
#3: Praise is the only meaningful feedback at this point.
That may not seem like such a big difference, but I contend it is because pre-calling:
- sets the stage for success by giving parameters of a project, authority to do the work, any lessons learned from past experiences, and the expected outcome.
- includes training, as appropriate, so the assignment can be done correctly.
- is the time to give positive feedback to the person or persons taking the assignment in anticipation of success.
It’s time for people to speak up and go with a process that is positive and improves productivity!
"I have something to share," says Dwight. "I don’t think these post-mortem meetings are giving us the results we need to help us with our next assignment."
"What do you mean?" Jan asks.
"Well, having this meeting at the end of the week is a downer. I don’t know about you, but I leave work unhappy. It doesn’t exactly set the stage for being happy to come back on Monday. What if we waited until we started our next week/project to evaluate. We should have better information about the next project that would help us know what lessons from the previous work will apply. This technique is pre-calling," says Dwight.
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