After Action Reviews: An Essential Method to Accelerate Your Team’s Improvement
/I think avoidance is the enemy of great. Avoidance – particular avoidance of discomfort – is even the enemy of good. It’s the enemy of the growth and change that lead to flourishing.1
In all organizations, mistakes are guaranteed to occur. What’s not guaranteed to occur is learning from these mistakes. The one positive that comes out of failure - the ability to reflect and correct mistakes, ends up neglected by the organization. Avoidance of intellectual discomfort is usually the preferred route.
There are several reasons organizations avoid learning from mistakes:
• Organizational ego prevents honest discussions about what went wrong
• Busyness means that people immediately move onto the next project
• A rush to judgment centers on superficial issues, rather than deep-seated problems
• Blame is quickly directed at external factors, absolving any need to discuss internal responsibility
Learning from mistakes requires more than just empty promises to do better in the future. We need to find practical techniques to enhance the learning process. One technique that’s useful is the After-Action Review (AAR), primarily used by U.S. Military and Special Operations Forces.
There’s nothing magical about the AAR. The principles of effective AARs are straightforward and obvious. The real magic comes from the consistent, disciplined implementation after a major decision or training routine.
The biggest challenge for any organization is not understanding the method. The biggest challenge is actually committing time to the AAR. It’s about slowing down and reflecting about what went right, what went wrong, and what should be done differently in the future. If that commitment can be made, real learning will occur. If not, the organization will keep bouncing from one mistake to the next, never understanding the root causes of their problems.
Daniel Coyle, author of The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups, describes the AAR environment within the world’s most respected special operations group, the U.S. Navy SEALs:
At the Navy SEALs, such uncomfortable, candor-filled moments happen in the After-Action Review, or AAR. The AAR is a gathering that takes place immediately after each mission or training session: Team members put down their weapons, grab a snack and water, and start talking….the team members name and analyze problems and face uncomfortable questions head-on: Where did we fail? What did each of us do, and why did we do it? What will we do differently next time?
“They’re not real fun,” said Christopher Baldwin, a former operator with SEAL Team Six. “They can get tense at times. I’ve never seen people fistfight, but it can get close. Still, it’s probably the most crucial thing we do together, aside from the missions themselves, because that’s where we figure out what really happened and how to get better.”2
As Coyle describes, “AARs can be raw, painful, and filled with pulses of emotion and uncertainty.” Real learning isn’t always fun or enjoyable, especially when emotions run high. It’s challenging to develop the trust to speak directly and honestly. But it’s essential to identifying mistakes. Teams have to buy into the philosophy and commitment to getting better. If people just show up and go through the motions, AARs will never work.
Principle #1: Develop Situational Awareness
AARs develop situational awareness. People are so caught up in the day to day that they miss the overall picture. They can’t see how their actions have gone off plan because they don’t have any outside perspective.
AARs force people to see things from different perspectives. This won’t happen on its own. We can’t evaluate our own actions. We’re too biased to see things our own way. We need to break down our internal tunnel vision with outside feedback. Not always easy, but absolutely necessary.
Bill Driscoll, former fighter pilot and instructor at TOPGUN, describes how situational awareness was created for student pilots:
During the ten-week course, students receive approximately forty flights and 100 dogfights. Each flight and dogfight is thoroughly debriefed by the students and then critiqued by the instructors immediately after the fight. Student situational awareness (SA)—what the students said they thought was happening—is compared with what was really happening. On almost every occasion, when a student’s SA is good, the results are good, and when a student’s SA is poor, the results are poor.3
Principle #2: Detailed Feedback
AARs must include detailed analysis and reflection. Vague recollections provide zero learning and wastes time. It fools teams into believing they are actually learning. They’re not. Vague ideas need to be turned into actionable and discrete takeaways:
• We didn’t do well. Let’s do better next time
o What exactly didn’t go well? Who was responsible? What kind of training/coaching will make people better next time?
• We need to work harder
o Work harder at what? Is it really hard work that is missing? Or is it communication, decision making, or some other factor?
• We need to do a better job of focusing and keeping our eye on the ball
o Focusing on what? How should people focus if they have other competing priorities? Is management constantly changing what should be focused on? Is it clear to the team?
• We need better leadership and faster decisions
o What exactly can leaders do better? How do we change the culture or environment to enable faster decisions?
Every time a vague idea is suggested, the lack of clarity and specifics need to be raised immediately. Not at the end of the meeting. Not a week after. Right away. Teams need to develop an ability to detect vague suggestions and force it to something tangible and actionable. The review must be broken down into individual actions and decisions. AAR’s work because individual actions are evaluated, not kept anonymous to protect egos. Participants need to identify the tangible actions behind the results, not fall back on generalized summaries.
Driscoll explains the level of detail necessary to learn:
All debriefs begin by comparing student prebriefed plans with airborne results. The students meticulously reconstruct each dogfight, including: Who shot whom? When did it happen? How did it happen? Was it a valid shot? Was the shot taken from the observed or unobserved position? What evasive action, if any, did the students under attack take? What happened next? Why? Were the tactics used by their attackers effective? Why did they succeed or fail? The students and instructors also meticulously review the planned versus actual goals for each flight.4.
Does your organization take the time to dig into actual mistakes? Is the team comfortable identifying mistakes, especially those of superiors?
Steve Kerr, former chief learning officer at Goldman Sachs, reiterates the importance of feedback:
…practicing without feedback is like bowling through a curtain that hangs down to knee level. You can work on technique all you like, but if you can’t see the effects, two things will happen: You won’t get any better, and you’ll stop caring.5
Principle #3: Learning is an Iterative, Continuous Process
Learning only happens if previous lessons are converted into actual behavior change. AARs are a long-term, continual learning process. No one gets it right after the first review. That’s why AARs can’t be done on an ad-hoc basis. It’s no different than training for any other sport. Random training doesn’t work. It has to be a continuous process that evolves based on how people respond.
Ander Ericsson, one of the biggest proponents of learning and deliberate practice and author of Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, describes the continual evolution of feedback, learning, and implementation:
...both during and after the grilling the instructors would offer suggestions to the students on what they could do differently, what to look for, and what to be thinking about in different situations. Then the next day the trainers and students would take to the skies and do it all over again. Over time the students learned to ask themselves the questions, as it was more comfortable than hearing them from the instructors, and each day they would take the previous session’s lessons with them as they flew. Slowly they internalized what they’d been taught so that they didn’t have to think so much before reacting, and slowly they would see improvement in their dogfights against the Red Force.6
Principle #4: Eliminate Passive Learning
AARs convert passive learning to an active process. It’s no different than sports or music – you learn more through practice than you do reading about the techniques.
It’s the same for organizations. Active learning involves discussing and rehearsing what went right and what went wrong. It’s not done over email, a random CEO speech, an occasional workshop, or by letting team members figure it out on their own. It’s an engaged process.
From the perspective of deliberate practice, the problem is obvious: attending lectures, minicourses, and the like offers little or no feedback and little or no chance to try something new, make mistakes, correct the mistakes, and gradually develop a new skill. It’s as if amateur tennis players tried to improve by reading articles in tennis magazines and watching the occasional YouTube video; they may believe they’re learning something, but it’s not going to help their tennis game much.7
Principle #5: Remove Ego/Defensiveness
AARs work only if there is honest feedback with the team. People are naturally defensive when critiqued. However, it’s a reaction that can be managed and trained over time. It’s the responsibility of the leader to set the expectation and remind the team of the purpose and benefits of AARs. This will not happen on it’s own. Accepting feedback is a learnable skill, but it doesn’t happen naturally. AAR’s will provide zero value if people hold back criticism or let ego’s interrupt the process.
Leaders need to explicitly point out defensiveness every time it occurs. Since it often goes unnoticed by the individual, the leader needs to acknowledge when it happens so teams can start to normalize the goal of removing defensiveness. Nothing shuts down discussion and learning like a defensive reaction:
…the vulnerability is less about the sender than the receiver. “The second person is the key…do they pick it up and reveal their own weaknesses, or do they cover up and pretend they don’t have any? It makes a huge difference in the outcome.”8
Leaders at TOPGUN were careful about the language they used. For example, they would often use the third person to describe an action, rather than identify the actual person. In addition, instead of using “good” and “bad”, they used “good” and “other”. “Other” was meant to avoid triggering a defensive reaction that “bad” might create. These may seem like inconsequential changes, but effective AAR’s require a supportive environment to make the process fluid and open.
For example, acknowledging that fighter pilots (and RIOs) were at the very least somewhat egotistical, Topgun attempted to remove the personal aspect from debriefs as much as possible by using the third person. Rather than, “I then performed a great maneuver and shot you,” Topgun taught us to say, “Then the fighter pulled to max instantaneous turn rate, sacrificing airspeed for a valid AIM-9 shot. The A-4 did not react and was called a kill.”…the effort added civility to the debriefs and forced us to examine our actions more objectively. This in turn contributed to the learning value of the flight and helped keep debriefs from degenerating into ego-fueled arguments.9
TOPGUN uses the word others, instead of the word bad, for one simple reason: the instructors don’t want students, whose decision making and tactical flying they are trying to influence, listening defensively to the takeaway points.10
Principle #6: Reinforce Expectations of Great Performance
Setting high standards naturally encourage people to meet those standards. Teams will usually meet whatever standard you set. If you don’t have high standards, people will regress to the lowest standard you set. For most companies, that’s not good enough in today’s competitive environment.
AAR’s set the expectation that the challenging process of learning and adaptation is not negotiable. Even though it’s difficult in the short-run, teams evolve and rise to meet the higher standards demanded. This creates a self-fulfilling cycle of performance improvement:
The army has found another benefit of the after-action review: that when people really understand what happened, they’re eager to try to do it better. This reinforces the principles of great performance. As the army training circular says, when an after-action review is done right, “not only will everyone understand what did and did not occur and why, but most importantly will have a strong desire to seek the opportunity to practice the task again.” The after-action review “is a very powerful process,” Kolditz says. Its potential value to companies and other organizations is obvious. A number of firms have tried using it, usually with mixed results, and the problems are cultural. But cultures can be changed over time, and the best organizations will do the work necessary to change them in order to get the benefits of truly deep and broad feedback.11
If the idea of a military-style AAR scares you, Toyota has a similar approach that might work:
At Toyota, even if you do a good job successfully, there is a hansei-kai (reflection meeting)…Hansei-kai is really much deeper than reflection. It is really being honest about your own weaknesses. If you are talking about only your strengths, you are bragging. If you are recognizing your weaknesses with sincerity, it is a high level of strength. But it does not end there. How do you change to overcome those weaknesses?... It also explains why we (Toyota) spend little time talking about successes. We spend more time talking about our weaknesses. If anything, perhaps a weakness for Toyota is that we do not celebrate our successes enough.12
Confronting mistakes isn’t popular and may cause pushback from your team. But leaders have to remain firm in their approach until the team’s embrace the new process. It’s not going to happen by itself. And it’s certainly not going to happen without some pain and uncomfortable conversations.
Sources:
1. Susan David. Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life
2. Daniel Coyle. The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
3. Bill Driscoll. Peak Business Performance Under Pressure: A Navy Ace Shows How to Make Great Decisions in the Heat of Business Battles
4. Bill Driscoll. Peak Business Performance Under Pressure: A Navy Ace Shows How to Make Great Decisions in the Heat of Business Battles
5. Daniel Coyle. Talent is Overrated
6. Anders Ericsson, Robert Pool. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
7. Anders Ericsson, Robert Pool. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
8. Daniel Coyle. The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
9. Dave Baranek. Top Gun Days: Dogfighting, Cheating Death, and Hollywood Glory as One of America’s Best Fighter Jocks
10. Bill Driscoll. Peak Business Performance Under Pressure: A Navy Ace Shows How to Make Great Decisions in the Heat of Business Battles
11. Daniel Coyle. Talent is Overrated
12. Jeffrey Liker. The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles From the World’s Greatest Manufacturer