Learning from mistakes is probably the most value we can gain from our past actions. Debriefings (aka post-mortems) are a way of doing this by focusing on the learning and the environment rather than the blame.

1. Debriefing
Learn from doing

2. Debriefing
“Debriefing is the practice of garnering insights and
context from routine efforts and processes by
focusing on the facts of execution” - Yonni Mendes
2020
Why learn from past efforts?

3. Mistakes
They happen because:
1. People are stupid
2. We’re surrounded by gremlins
3. Ghosts in the machine
4. Corporates are evil
5. Corona and Trump
So why??? Why must mistakes happen?!

4. Learning cycle

5. How does it work?
1. Prepare:
a. Timeline
b. Insights
2. Meeting: Analysis & plan action items
3. Action items execution

6. Timeline
Collect facts about the execution
Execution: the specific instance of a specific
process
Facts: numbers, dates, log entries, tasks
Collect: order items into a timeline, tell a story
Stick to facts: if it’s not written, it’s a
guess/feeling/biased

7. Insights
We gain insights from a timeline’s patterns
Pattern: Repeating groups of facts, from past or current instances of a process
Insights: Naming a pattern of facts, adding context, external details, other
related facts
Write down insights.
Avoid binding different insights together

8. Analysis
By looking at facts and insights we can
interpret events together
Interpretation: Attempt to explain insights or events
using own point of view, opinions and analysis.
Write down analysis and contribute in the debriefing
meeting
This is done before and during the meeting. It is both
a part of the preparation phase and the debriefing
meeting itself.

9. Action items
We change the world by doing
● Action items must be an action.
● A thing that we can do in reasonable* time to make a difference.
● It’s a specific result of our actions.
Yonni: discuss about improving the
thing
Gal: improve our practice of thinking
about the thing
Omer: rebuild our management console
from legos
Yonni: Decide on improvement
parameters of thing
Gal: Send an email with the best
method of thinking about the thing
Omer: Demo a POC for lego
applications

10. Before the Meeting
1. Prepare the timeline
2. List your insights
3. Open the timeline to comments
4. Participants must review and add comments and introduce more insights

11. In the meeting
20 minutes or less if possible:
1. Briefly go over main points of the timeline
2. Go over timeline comments
3. Go over insights and add new insights
20 minutes:
1. Discuss insights and interpretations of events - bulk of the
meeting
Last 10 minutes:
1. List out action items, order them by importance/priority/impact
2. Choose a number of action items (as many as participants in the
room). The other AIs are *deleted*
3. Assign a person to each action item