"Hot washup" is military slang for reviews of a military war game. Why did the participants make the moves they did? What did the good moves have in common? What explains the failures? In the armed forces, war-game exercises and simulations are assiduously picked apart and analyzed. Command behavior and command decisions are rigorously reviewed. The results can mean the difference between a promotion and a career plateau. "The military is pretty good at learning from its war games," says James Dunnigan, who has designed military simulation games since the 1970s. "There's still a lot of politics, of course, but this is one of those areas where the private sector could pick up a few pointers."
In medicine, there is a strong tradition in teaching hospitals of "post-mortems" and case reviews. Notwithstanding a bias toward examining critical failure factors rather than critical success factors, the best hospitals attempt to create an environment characterized by well-documented decisions and ongoing review. Cases are reviewed with the expectation that learning will take place. This rigor is scarcer in business. Management surveys reveal that surprisingly few firms formally compile lessons learned from their prototyping experiences. Lincoln Bloomfield and Thomas Schelling both deplore the national-security establishment's laxity about formally capturing the lessons of the political exercises they facilitated. Too often, says Bloomfield, the simulation itself is treated as the goal. Its implications are managed as an afterthought.
Formal review processes do have a few notable business champions. MIT Professor Michael Cusumano's research on Microsoft affirms that the software giant rigorously employs reviews to plan new versions or upgrades of software packages. Similarly, GE Capital—long the profits powerhouse of Jack Welch's General Electric conglomerate—constantly revisits the financial models used to justify its investments. "God help you if you cannot document every reason why you chose to modify the model," says one GE Capital executive. "This is a culture that makes people totally accountable for how they use [models]. We are expected to share what we've learned from our models and we do. . . . You could never have gotten away at [GE Capital] with what they got away with at Kidder [GE's failed -investment-banking subsidiary]."
But just how introspective is introspective? Most organizations wouldn't hesitate to videotape a customer focus group interacting around a new product prototype. But how many design teams videotape themselves interacting around their proposed innovation? Why don't more organizations use videotape and other recording media to monitor their own design interactions? Could individuals learn to improve their own performance by watching their behavior around prototypes? These questions will become moot as firms recognize that more creative innovation requires more creative introspection. CAD systems make it ever easier to track the design evolution of product innovations. The ability to peel back and audit what design decisions were made, and when, has become a critical part of the design introspection/improvement process. "We look back at our CAD designs all the time," says IDEO's David Kelley. "Sometimes we do it with our clients; sometimes we do it by ourselves." This retrievable and auditable record of the design process, says Kelley, has become a core aspect of the firm's organizational memory.
But the ability to audit the evolution of a prototype is not enough. Just as world-class athletes review their performance in practice, world-class managers and innovators will need to review their performance in managing design and innovation processes. Organizations won't just learn from their most creative interactions; they will also learn from recording and reworking their most creative interactions.
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