Baton = Passing

Introducing the Baton Passing workshop for rapidly capturing, and gaining commitment to high-value project lessons for re-use

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Baton=Passing Introduction

We use Baton=Passing to

identify valuable learning from

experience so we can use it

again in future projects

Users include:

- Regulatory organisation

- Legal services business

- Telecom programme management consultancy

- Global pharmaceutical R&D business

- Biopharma

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Background

The big problem in managing learning to have an impact

is to know what knowledge is useful, to whom, the form

it should take, where and when it is best applied and

when best to share it

Baton Passing is about giving people the knowledge

they need in the form they can use at the most

appropriate time. It is definitely not about documenting

everything.

This is like working out how to give someone you don’t

know or may never meet, a GIFT that they will want to

use

What people say about how to ensure that

lessons are not learnt

Write long, boring documents

• So no-one wants to read them.

Use ineffective language to make it obscure

• Specialist jargon.• Recommendations instead of defined actions.• More than 3 key points

Pretend that publishing means the job is done and something has been “learnt” (and will change)

• Just because you post a “lessons learnt” document on a shared drive doesn’t mean it has been learnt or is likely to happen.

Make it ineffective through delay and decay

• Long political sign-off process for management buy-in means it lacks “bite”, and topicality.

Make it impersonal…

• No drive to identify who needs to do what, differently.

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Baton=Build & Pass: Activities

We encourage experienced

colleagues to identify important lessons within a defined

situation

We identify the lessons we intend to apply in the

future, break them down into the key steps involved in making them happen, and commit to personal

action.

We use a visual technique for displaying important

lessons so that we can find the ones we want to use

again

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Successful Baton PassingFast

• Aims for less than 3 hours together for teams with relevant knowledge and good questions.

• Can be as fast as 45 minutes for a defined topic.

Visual, colourful and intuitive

• Exploits the way the mind organises information best.

Social and dramatic

• Brings together the people who have answers and the people who have questions.

Personal

• Documented commitment In real-time to specific outcomes that can be tracked.

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Identify Lessons: Cues for Gifts

If you drew a timeline showing the highs and lows in your project, what events and key lessons would emerge?

What is the most important advice you have that’s worth passing on to others?

What major barriers did you overcome and what would you recommend to others facing similar challenges?

For use by the team who are giving their lessons

If you could do this project again, what would you do differently, how & where would it go?

X 3G

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Question Themes

What questions would you most like answered that will benefit your / or a future project?

What do you perceive as the major challenges in your project where others may have ideas or experience that might help you?

For designing Key Question Themes for bundling lessons into useful categories

for future team use

Give a group of (Green

post-it) lessons a useful

name to identify them as

a group (this can be a

sentence or a question) P

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KQTs KEY LEARNINGS

P G G

GG

G

P

P

G

1. Agree Lessons Theme (what do we have to be good at?)

2. Invite participants to brainstorm and share 3 Green (lessons) post-its each, using black medium pens.

3. Group Green post-its into families around a common theme and use Pink post-Its to name the themes.

4. Reposition Pinks vertically on Left-Hand side and align related Green post-its horizontally on Right-Hand side.

5. “Garden” Greens (remove duplicate lessons).

6. Allocate 3 ticks to each participant to distribute across the Green lesson, identify the most powerful lessons for action, and circle these.

7. Remove the lessons which are seen as low priority.

8. Ask participants to identify a lesson they can use in their work.

9. Invite participants to complete a Baton Pass Lesson Tracking Template (see next slide) photocopy it, and ask them to briefly share an outline of their chosen lesson with the room.

Capturing and prioritising thematic lessons (without donor team)

A

B

A

B

This lesson is related to, answers this question/ theme (on the left)

This lesson is related to/ complements the lesson to the left

Communicating & Managing Relationships

G G

G

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Commit to Personal Action +10/15 mins

Individuals take a Lesson Tracker template & complete it

– State when this lesson will have been applied by (for scheduling an completion tracker email from Lessons Learnt Team)!

– List the key steps required to deliver the lesson, using the phrase “so that” to state outcomes for each Key Step and necessary detail for implementation.

– Photocopy lesson, and give copy to LL Team.

– Share lesson commitment in outline (broadly what you will do and how you will do it) with your colleagues/ workshop audience.

Baton Pass Lesson Tracker

Owner (Who is going to make it happen?)_____________________

Email: _____________________

Lesson Donor (Whose lesson was it originally?) ________________

Completion Tracker Date: _______________________

Name of Lesson (What do you want to call it?)

Key Steps Involved (How will you make it work?)

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Try to include the “so that” phrase in each Key Step to focus on clear

outcomes.

Signature: _______________Date of signing:________________

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Stop/Start/Continue +10/ +60 mins

– for facilitator leading workshop

STOP

• Identify items that are unnecessary!

START

• Suggest ideas or actions that might improve baton building sessions!

CONTINUE

• Identify promising practices or techniques that should continue to be applied in the future.

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Conclusion

Thank you for your participation in this workshop.

If you have further ideas for improving this

workshop process please provide feedback to the

Lessons Learnt Team.

“Learning has occurred only when behaviour has

changed"