ABSTRACT
A new levee system was installed by the Army Corps of Engineers. There are many Lessons Learned, resulting from the levee failure during Katrina, as well as many years of data from previous storms and computer simulations. In the course of assisting project teams and Program Management Offices with developing project Lessons Learned, the author have often encountered a resistance to taking the time to develop and capture Lessons Learned and to share this information with others. Emotional entanglement—as well as a lack of motivation in the sense that no immediate reward will be forthcoming—often dictates the action or inaction. Leaders become true leaders when they continually disallow their own thinking in favor of the more qualified thinking of their peers and associates; they have learned over time that their own thinking provides merely one perspective of a scenario.
