Turning every project into a lesson the company can use

In a consultancy, the most valuable knowledge lives inside projects. What the client really needed. Why the team chose one approach over another. What went sideways and how they recovered.

And almost nobody outside the project could find it. It was spread across project docs, decks, decision logs, and people’s heads. If you wanted to learn from another team’s work, you had to know who to ask, and then find time on their calendar.

A program, not a meeting

Orium used to hold launch parties when projects shipped. They had faded. Our VP in Delivery proposed bringing them back as something closer to a lunch and learn, and handed me the program to design and run.

I built it as a learning program rather than a celebration:

• Monthly, on a standing slot: the second Thursday at 11:00 Mountain, so nobody has to ask when the next one is.
• Forty-five minutes, open to everyone, optional, and always recorded.
• A real project phase, presented by the people who did the work.
• A learning page for every session, so the knowledge outlives the meeting.

The learning page does the heavy lifting

Before each session, I go through every knowledge source on the project and turn it into one page. A TL;DR for anyone who has two minutes. A deeper review for anyone who wants the detail. Links to everything else: the recording, the deck, the project docs, and who to ask.

Launch Lab: Retail replatform, Align phase Illustrative example, fictional project

TL;DR, in two minutes

• What the client needed, and why this phase mattered
• The three decisions that shaped the plan
• What we'd reuse on the next project

Deeper review

• How the team ran discovery
• What went sideways, and the fix
• Lessons for delivery, product, and engineering

Everything else

• Session recording
• Deck
• Project docs and decision log
• Who to ask

After the first session, I flipped the order of work. The page gets built first, and the presentation is generated from the page. The page stays the source of truth. The deck exists for the forty-five minutes.

1. Project workA team ships a real phase of client work
2. Wiki page firstWhat happened, what they learned, what they would reuse
3. Share-backSecond Thursday, 45 minutes, always recorded
4. ReuseThe next team starts from the page, not from scratch

And the next project feeds the next session

Where it’s going

The first session ran in October 2026, on the Align phase of a retail replatform. Launch Lab is set to progressively replace delivery town halls as the main way the company shares what it knows, and every session adds to a library that new hires can learn from on day one.

It sits alongside the other learning work I lead: training for leaders on interviewing, inclusion, and engagement, the weekly Lightning Talk, and an AI for Managers program that helps leaders bring AI into their own teams.

A company that ships projects should get smarter with every one of them.