IISD's new "Lessons Learned" database helps achieve organizational mission

By Janice Gair, Bill Glanville, Marlene Roy and Darren Swanson

By capturing and disseminating the lessons learned by project staff in the course of their work, IISD promotes knowledge-sharing, institutional development and the quest for innovation.

IISD's mission—to champion innovation enabling societies to live sustainably—demands that the Institute continue to learn and adapt. Innovations today will become standard operating procedure tomorrow. Therefore, the IISD community needs to reflect on what it can learn from its base of completed project work, for two reasons:

Over the past year, a process for systematically accomplishing these two aims was implemented.

In 2003, IISD launched the "Innovatory," a strategic management cycle to ensure alignment between the day-to-day work of the Institute and its mission. The Innovatory, which is housed on the Institute's intranet, is an organizing framework for a suite of project management tools designed for incubating ideas, developing concepts, preparing proposals, managing projects, and learning and adapting as an organization. Over this past year, IISD focused on strengthening the learning and adaptation part of the cycle. Under this spotlight, the "Mission Possible" project lessons learned database was born.

In search of trends, 5-10 project teams will be interviewed each year (six interviews were conducted in 2003-2004). Results-based management questions are used, focusing on activities, outputs, outcomes and impacts as well as consistency with IISD's mission and vision. Responses are then captured in a synthesis report and in a searchable database to become a permanent record of the project history.

One of the key lessons learned that was common to all of the first projects studied was that external factors beyond the project teams' control—surprises—influenced, to varying degrees, the execution and outcome of projects. This particular lesson resonated with several project managers. Guidance for how to deal with surprise, uncertainty and change during project execution was sought.

To help IISD make critical adaptations to the key lessons learned, three institutional mechanisms were envisioned. First, a series of "brown-bag" lunches will be developed on how to grapple with the key challenges identified in the Mission Possible database. Planning for the first meeting is underway; and it will gather project managers to brainstorm and develop pragmatic ways to adapt current project development and management processes to be more resilient to surprise and uncertainty.

The second institutional mechanism for adapting to key Mission Possible lessons is to feature select project teams and their work at staff meetings, to discuss the innovative aspects of their work. Two such meetings were held this past year: one about the recently completed Canada-India (TERI) Energy Efficiency project funded by the Canadian International Development Agency; another focused on the innovative aspects of our work with the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development. It is hoped that through this type of discussion, the Institute as a whole will continue to enhance its understanding of what it means to champion innovation for sustainable development.

The third mechanism is to close the loop on research lessons learned by giving feedback to IISD's Planning and Review committee composed of key research staff. The detailed Mission Possible synthesis reports and the individual lessons learned briefings are also made available to project managers in the Innovatory.

The Mission Possible database and the associated learning and adaptation initiatives connect staff and their work in a more concrete way and helps leverage successes while avoiding the repetition of mistakes. All of these efforts position IISD to achieve greater impact with its work.

Asking the right questions The Mission Possible database of lessons learned from projects is anchored by interviews with project staff. The following questions were used in 2003-2004 to capture project details, staff insights and ideas for addressing future challenges in managing and implementing projects. Please briefly describe your project and its goals. What were the main activities of your project? What was well done and what needed improvement regarding your activities? How did your project help IISD achieve its vision and mission? What new knowledge did your research contribute? What decisions and/or policies were influenced and/or impacted by your project? What was well done and what needs improvement in regards to influencing and/or impacting decisions and/or policies? How was your project innovative? What critical events stand out in your mind and what happened? Did any unanticipated issues arise from the project? What went well and what needed improvement in funding and managing the project?