Lesson Learned and Cognitive Biases

The lessons learned activity is of utmost importance for any organization and its projects, as it is the natural feedback of an organization and gives the basis of its know-how. However, this activity, like all activities involving executing staff, is exposed to the egos and fears of its participants, regardless of their role in the organization, which could lead to biased approaches that undermine the success of the lessons learned performance that must be objective being assertive.

It is a fact that the precepts and judgments about past events are modeled by our egos, beliefs, prejudices, expectations, interests, desires and fears. This is known as cognitive bias. So it is very important to be aware of it since the lessons learned activity by definition is the review of past events and detection in them of the causes of failures and successes.

How to avoid wrong identification of success/failure causes.

Firstly, it is positive to recognize our natural exposure to cognitive biases in order to implement preventive actions.

Listed below are some of the biases that are likely to be present during the identification and weighting of success or failure causes:

Bandwagon effect: The tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. The probability of one person adopting a belief increases based on the number of people who hold that belief. Related to groupthink.

Blind spot bias: The tendency to not recognize our own biases.

Choice-supportive bias: The tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were. Confirmation bias: The tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.

Focusing effect:  Prediction bias occurring when people place too much importance on one aspect of an event; causes error in accurately predicting the utility of a future outcome.

Outcome bias: The tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.

Attentional bias: Neglect of relevant data when making judgments of a correlation or association. 

When we assign much or little importance to the information we have, biases affect the quality of our decision or selection. As a result, tactics that allow us to minimize or avoid biases would be very useful.

Tactics to minimize the biases during lessons learned exercise:

TACTIC	BiasEs to be avoided
Identify at least three motivating elements for each cause of success or failure.	Confirmation bias. Choice-supportive bias. Outcome bias.
Monitoring the selected causes of success or failure.	Bandwagon effect. Attentional bias. Outcome bias.
Promote the questioning of the success and failure causes.	Bandwagon effect.
Take an outside view and/or advice.	Blind spot bias.
Look for other options to the selected causes (what else could have happened?)	Choice-supportive bias. Confirmation bias.
Once the causes were identified, identify possible biases in their selection.	All
Training employees to detect situations in which biases are likely to occur.	All
Implement a checklist to rule out biases.	All

It is advisable that the project management be aware of the Bias Risk in the implementation of the lessons learned sessions and therefore, some preventive actions could be taken using the project management tools, in addition to request the expert advice and apply common sense.



Spanish version available at:
https://ingconcurrente.blogspot.com/2017/07/la-actividad-de-lecciones-aprendidas-de.html