The Post Mortem

When something is finished, most people do one of two things. They celebrate, then forget. Or they collapse, then forget. Both leave the same hole. The lessons of the project, the painful ones especially, evaporate within 48 hours, and the next project repeats the same mistakes. The fix is the post mortem. A short, written, blame free conversation with yourself or your team, done within a week of the project ending.

The post mortem has three questions. What went well, and we should keep doing. What went badly, and we should change next time. What surprised us, that we did not even know to plan for. Three questions, one page of answers. The first two are easy. The third one is gold, because surprises are the things you cannot google, the things only your specific project will teach you.

Now the most important rule. The post mortem is blameless. The second somebody starts saying 'Ali ne pani ka ziker hi nahi kiya tha', the post mortem is dead. You are no longer learning, you are now defending. Replace every name with a system. Not 'Ali forgot the water', but 'we did not have a single owner for refreshments'. Names breed defensiveness. Systems breed improvement. This is true at age 16 and it is still true at age 60.

Today's habit. Pick the most recent thing you finished, even something small, even a school presentation. Write three sections in your notebook: kept, change, surprised me. Two lines each, no names, no excuses, no boasting. Keep this notebook. Over a year you will build something more valuable than any management book, a personal manual of how the world actually behaves when you try to ship things in it.