Learning from Experience

There's a common and true belief that we learn from our experiences. For the most part this is a very true and accurate statement. The enemy of this statement is time. In short bursts of time it's easy for us to learn from our experiences both good and bad. It's easy to reflect on what's happened and navigate how to move forward. But as time moves along we forget the decisions that lead us to various ends. This is the old phrase of "those who do now know the past are doomed to repeat it". But how does all of this effect us in our organizations?

The challenge is make the best decisions possible with the best desired outcome in mind while honoring all those involved and effected by our decisions. The challenge might be to properly capture the reasons by the decisions we made so that as time moves along we can and others can learn from the motive and the result.

We are all aware that most of the decisions we make today in business most likely spread their wings of influence in the years that follow. How many of us can remember the motive behind a decision that's now years old? Not many of us.

The goal here is to be intentional, the plan well, and the share wisdom as best possible with those who will come up after us. We have a great opportunity to share and coach others in this area as they are making decisions and mapping a future path for their efforts. May this be a challenge to us all that we alone are not savvy enough to learn from our own experience and that we desperately need external forces to help up learn those valuable lessons.