Lessons Won't be Learned

'Lessons will be learned' is one of the modern mantras, along with profuse apologies, spun by those with authority when something has been bollocksed up.
Naturally the Hound is sceptical. My jaundiced impression is that organisations tend only to do what they are forced to do, and thus things like benchmarking, standards, codes and laws come from outside, usually from another bunch of unaccountable nutters who will be revealed to have covered up wholesale corruption, when records are released after their death.
Just as we can know a person's quality by their standards, aspirations and actual behaviour, we can extrapolate from an organisation's behaviour. Does the organisation have standards it has set itself, aiming for how things ought to be, or does it do what it has to to meet outside standards? Does it make a frank inventory of what it is doing? Does it compare to others or seek to live by its will?
These standards will show up many an organisation, and incidentally cause the discerning onlooker to be even more cynical. But that's another subject.