Celebrating Successes and Lessons Learned

This month, I am going to take a step back from our goal-setting blogs. Instead, I will share a great technique I learned while spending the last 20 years of my life in the corporate world.

Lessons Learned

The world of project management was not the certification driven world it is today when I started out.

Most projects did not have phase gate reviews, GANTT charts, or ways to easily calculate values. Instead, we had long-term goals written on write boards with a seemingly impossible deadline that was appointed by a project sponsor.  However, most projects always had a “Lessons Learned/Lookback” portion. This was the time in the project when the team would list out the lessons learned while implementing that portion of the project. These sessions inevitably turned in to the proverbial complain-fest.

So, the list of complaints would go on and on until everyone looked around wondering, “did we do anything right?” Needless to say, this was not the intention – but rarely was a lesson learned.

Success

I ended up spending five years with another company who added “Celebrate Successes” to all their project plan templates. At first, I remember rolling my eyes. However, I learned instantly from my client that this was required.  The company bought into it and celebrated their successes! In addition to pointing a spotlight on areas of improvement, we also intentionally acknowledged the positives of what worked well. It might sound silly, but this worked!  This helped create momentum, a positive atmosphere, and a balanced perspective of the work that had been completed.

The reason I’m sharing this with you is because I am finishing up my second to last semester of graduate school. So, I was thinking of those things that I could have done better, but I am also going to take the time to remember that I accomplished quite a lot. So, this is a reminder to anyone reading this that it is essential to recognize and celebrate your successes. You just might find that focusing on your successes breeds more success.

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