Building absorptive capacity in an alliance: Process improvement through lessons learned

Lessons learned provide the greatest value when they form part of a continuous learning process and should be: documented, communicated, archived, throughout all stages of a project. This can enable a project to maximize its 'absorptive capacity' (i.e. its ability to value, assimilate and apply new knowledge). With this in mind, the development and implementation of continuous 'lessons learned' process adopted by a program alliance that was able to improve its safety and quality performance is presented. The alliance was able to shift its mindset from single to double loop learning fuelling its absorptive capacity. The paper examines 'how' the lessons learned process was implemented and presents examples of learning that were implemented. The alliance's experiences in enabling the acquisition and transfer of knowledge through their 'lessons learned' initiative provides a learning opportunity for organizations seeking to ameliorate the performance of the projects that they are charged with delivering. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. APM and IPMA. All rights reserved.