Emergency Preparedness—Moving from documentation to learning lessons

“Preparedness refers to actions that strengthen the capacity of government, citizens, and communities to respond to disasters.”

Is your organization taking full advantage of learning opportunities in order to reach higher levels of preparedness? Many organizations conduct Emergency Preparedness (EP) exercises and produce After Action Reports at the end of the event.  But with this approach too often lessons are merely documented, not truly learned. Embedding frequent “hot washes” throughout the EP exercises is a powerful way to increase learning. Building full cycles of After Action Reviews (AARs) into both the planning and execution of the EP strategies and processes that your organization is using can dramatically improve actual preparedness. 

The key question: Are the "Lessons Learned" actually learned?

The U.S. Army Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) proposes that a lesson is “learned” when:
            1.  It results in a change of behavior, and
            2.  It is validated—the change in behavior produces results predicted by the team’s thinking.

Signet helps EP organizations go from documenting lessons in After Action Reports to actually ensuring that lessons are truly learned, using the full set of tools that support learning-through-action in exercises and in actual emergency response situations.

Compare the two approaches to Lessons Learned

Signet works with government agencies and other emergency preparedness organizations to ensure that lessons get learned. Specific services:

Please feel free to contact us for further information about how we can be of assistance, or for more information on how Action Review Cycles enhance the effectiveness of Emergency Preparedness efforts.