There are two kinds of intelligence: innate ability and effort. The former is an inborn advantage; the latter comes from effort over time. A small minority have the innate kind, while most develop it afterward. Innate ability is beyond our control; the key to developing through effort lies in how deeply we reflect on what we learn after the fact. Put plainly, people who want to become smarter are good at drawing lessons: they learn more from each experience than others do. Before the next time, they can recall more lessons from what happened last time, and make decisions that are more beneficial to them. Each decision works more in their favor. To ordinary people, they seem very smart; to smart people, they don't seem too foolish; and to fools, they always seem lucky. So if you want to seem smarter, less foolish, and luckier every time, develop the good habit of reviewing each experience afterward.
The GRAI review model is a very standard framework for structured reflection.
Goal, Result, Analysis, Insight
Goal means first clarifying your original intended objectives, such as annual goals, stage goals, project goals, core goals, and so on.
Result means assessing how much of the goal has been achieved: how far short you fell if you didn't meet it, or how much you exceeded it by if you did.
Analysis means identifying the key factors that influenced an outcome. What went well, and what were the strengths? What went poorly, and what were the shortcomings? People often say, “I just don’t know how to analyze it. I don’t know where to start.” Take another close look at the MECE principle and the Pyramid Principle. For example, you can first examine the subject of your review from static and dynamic perspectives, then from internal and external perspectives. From a static perspective, what areas does it consist of? Who oversees each area? What resources, equipment, and materials are needed? This breaks things down into people, activities, and resources. Then, from a dynamic perspective, what do the processes connecting them look like? Now you have a system. Once you have examined it internally, look externally at the outside forces that support and influence it. For economic policies and entertainment trends, use PEST analysis. For competitors and disruption from other industries, where might Porter’s Five Forces apply? Doesn’t that give you a starting point? The more perspectives you use to break things down and the more granular your data, the deeper and more thorough your understanding of the problems will be.
Insight means identifying patterns through analysis, retaining strengths, avoiding mistakes, and preparing better for the future. This is the most important and most advanced stage of the entire retrospective process. The DIKW framework shows that the results stage corresponds to data and information, while the analysis stage corresponds to knowledge about connections (DIKW stands for Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom). Insight, in turn, requires finding patterns in that knowledge and corresponds to wisdom.
That is why every flower contains a world, and every leaf contains enlightenment. By understanding a pattern through several events, we can then apply the same pattern by analogy to many other situations. That is what wisdom is: the more mental models you learn, the fewer you need to use. This is what it means to have wisdom, grasp patterns, and learn to apply insights by analogy. Those dazzling mental models, when reduced to their essence, all come down to a few basic elements and fundamental principles.