Postmortem Calls are a Giant Red Flag
How many times have you seen a big problem be followed by a request for a “postmortem call” or some other after-action analysis? And after a lot of hot air and wasted time, the problem happens again?
There is a reason for this.
The kinds of problems that end up producing a “postmortem call” usually have a cultural issue as the root cause. And a cultural issue cannot be solved with a “lessons learned” document or a list of “things we did right and things we did wrong”. In fact, the very same “Checkpoint Charlie” mentality that leads to these kinds of post-project documents, thinking that “next time will be different because NOW WE HAVE DOCUMENTATION!” is likely a big part of the cultural problem that sank the project being analysed.
Cultural issues can be fixed, but it starts at the top, takes a lot of time, and usually involves firing a bunch of people and deliberately replacing them with other people, with a completely different mindset.
And think about it like this: are the folks that hired a bunch of employees with poor job skills really going to suddenly start hiring better people?
If you break it down, the sequence of events goes like this:
- Poor leadership team is put in place.
- The wrong people with the wrong attitudes and the wrong skills are hired.
- The wrong employees are allowed to stay in place (or promoted) by the poor leaders.
- Projects fail because of the usual people problems.
A postmortem call simply cannot unwind this mess. You have to take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
J.Ja
