Postmortem Calls are a Giant Red Flag

Justin James
Jul 23, 2017 · 2 min read

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:

  1. Poor leadership team is put in place.
  2. The wrong people with the wrong attitudes and the wrong skills are hired.
  3. The wrong employees are allowed to stay in place (or promoted) by the poor leaders.
  4. 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

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