Much has been written about "organizational learning" and "learning organizations." This continued and growing attention on these topics in the software world is encouraging and warranted! However, creating conditions for people to genuinely and effectively learn from the incidents they experience is difficult to do, never mind sustain over time.

The frequency, severity, and even absence of these events do not represent what is learned, who has learned what, or how learning might be taking place in an organization. This talk is about the "messy" and practical realities of learning effectively from incidents, including a number of paradoxes and ironies that technology leaders face as they work to make progress in their organization.