Managing Organizational Behavior 2nd Edition by Timothy Baldwin,Bill Bommer,Robert Rubin

Exercise 2

Learning From Past Decisions
You belong to a local service club and have been asked to serve a three-year term as chair of the club's annual fund-raiser. However, the club has decided to scrap their traditional fundraiser and "start a new chapter" with you as the leader. This means that many, many decisions have to be made and you have very little past history or precedent to go on. In an effort to manage expectations (and not let them get too high), you tell the club that "this year is a pilot and we will learn from it and certainly have greater success in the next two years."
How do great managers ensure that such learning really occurs? What questions will you ask and what types of information will you collect? What mistakes are typically made that get in the way of such learning from experience?