Hack:
Making Denial Hard To Do

In today’s organizations there is not only a gap in leadership but a seemingly high level of denial. This hack is to adopt the practice of after action reviews for lessons learned and then to share them broadly througout the organization so as to discourage denial and encourage dialogue and action. For selected activities, conduct after action reviews and involve staff from throughout the organization. Be constructive and absent of blame. Use the lessons learned to better involve formal leadership in continuous improvement. Also share the lessons learned with others throughout the organization. The idea is that it becomes far more difficult to deny reality. In addition, by sharing lessons learned with others and encouraging dialogue, those who are not in leadership positions have information that can be used to further dialogue with others and take action to solve problems. In other words, at the top, middle, and bottom of the organization a conversation can be forced to push leadership out of denial and empower everyone to talk about problems and act to address them.