I had a great time last week talking with the local chapter of North American Young Generation in Nuclear. With their enthusiastic agreement my topic was ‘Dirty Laundry’. Too often we let emotion direct our response to failures, both personal and from the team. A rational approach is to examine failures for lessons that can be learned, and better still for others to learn too.

As humans we are very experiential, ‘once bitten, twice shy’ is a truism for a reason. OPEX is the next most powerful way to learn, as long as it can be conveyed as a meaningful story. We have been story-tellers since the stone age.

I tried to sum up what I have learned from projects that I was personally involved in, not trying to untangle the big reason a project failed, but to speak to my experience, and perhaps shine light on that piece of the bigger puzzle.

Thanks to Mimi and the NAYGN organizers.