On the PMI Blog, a short article on the role of Executives in Lessons Learned and how to engage them.

You, the project manager, must engage upper management in the discussion. Review the timeline and other milestones that took place on the project. Upper management could talk about how the goals of the project and the team’s successes intertwined with the strategic goals of the company.  The team would appreciate this perspective on the significance of their activities.

It goes beyond talk, share and listen. With regards to Executives lessons learned can be split in two:

• Learnings that can be applied without the support of Executives: incremental improvements to processes, recommendations, tools we are using, way we deal with requirements, information, reporting…
• Learnings that need Executive support – learnings that suggest radical changes to the way and why we do projects: your lessons learned session would identify those learnings and develop possible actions. You’ll have to sum them up in a concise  summary and go and engage the Exec with it.