Heidi, it's an important topic you have floated.
First of all, sharing lessons with others – is very important. That's how we learn from one another – that's how progresses happen – that's how professional closeness develop.
But, many learned lessons are rather trivial – some may even suffer from cognitive blunders and biases (as Mitch has pointed out) – one should keep them for oneself – as a learning process in incremental career development.
Agreeing with others – perhaps trying to share via emails is not worth it. If persistent, the receiver may find them annoying – thinking that the sender is seeking attention. One has to keep a balance.
Some others are worth sharing – as you have felt yourself. Finding contradictions or inapplicable standards, codes and regulations – is one familiar example.
In cases as such, my experience tells me – that the most effective way to disseminate them – is to approach regional managers or directors, or even to corporate executives – telling them why the learned lesson is worth sharing with others within the company. If they see value – they will arrange the dissemination in one way or another. They have the leverage to allocate hours to participants – joining either in-person or on-line.
When the learned lesson is significant and if the situation permits – one does it through publications, conference and workshop presentations. One can even begin modestly with forums like this ASCE member Forum (perhaps we are doing it, as we speak) or other professional platforms one subscribes – to assess audience response and reactions. This ushers in another learning process – augmenting one's foundation of technical, scientific and transferable skills.
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Dr. Dilip K Barua, PhD
Website Links and Profile
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Original Message:
Sent: 09-16-2025 09:53 AM
From: Heidi Wallace
Subject: Converting Lessons Learned into Lessons Shared
Something that I've been thinking about lately is how to effectively spread knowledge from "lessons learned" throughout a company or department. When you have 100+ people, an email about each one eventually becomes ignored background noise. At the same time, it is a waste for each person to have to individually learn the lessons through personal experience.
A recent example is a change in a local design criteria that requires using a more expensive material than is typically called out, but only in specific locations/cases. (This requirement is buried in an obscure location within a document we typically don't need to reference in the scope of our designs.) When one engineer asked around about it, several others had been "bit" by it on a project previously, but that information stopped with them.
When people were asked in the past, though, to share any "lessons learned" that we could add to a group lunch and learn, very few people could think of any. It's difficult to recall random lessons learned weeks or months later without context when put on the spot.
Does anyone have any ideas or best practices for turning individual lessons learned into group knowledge?
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Heidi C. Wallace, P.E., M.ASCE
Tulsa, OK
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