Learning in the thick of the action

On the face of it, the After Action Review is the simplest of practices. A leader gathers their team after a significant action, compares what was intended with what was actually achieved, then asks what they will sustain and improve going forward. What could be simpler?

In Harvard Business Review, we described the AAR practices of a nimble, winning organization, the US Army's Opposing Force (OPFOR). We then reviewed the experiences of a range of companies as they attempted to build "lessons learned." Companies that succeeded did not simply ask people to try AARs. Rather, for them AARs became a way to lead; a way to learn; a way to execute, and a way to tie it all together.

The discipline of an AAR strengthens and integrates learning, leading and execution—all in the course of doing normal work. That makes investing in AARs a very powerful way to organically reshape the culture of your organization toward ever greater accountability, coherence and resilience.

But getting teams there - using AARs on an ongoing, sustainable basis - requires some expertise and an investment of time and energy. When the real purpose and practice of AARs is not understood, it leads to over-investment in the wrong things and under-investment in the right ones. Worse, it can lead to teams justifiably feeling that AARs are just checking a box and a waste of their time. If your aim is to embed a sustained capacity to excel across your operations, you need to understand the art and the science behind the tools, such as how the AAR meeting is part of a cycle. That’s where Signet’s years of research and practice come in. Please feel free to contact us for further information about the article or how we can assist your organization in using the Action Review Cycle.

“That Sounds Great, But We’re Not the Army…”

True enough. Few organizations have a culture that goes back 200 years, are able to provide the level of time and resources the Army normally devotes to training, or have lives on the line in the same way that the Army does. On the other hand, many organizations have advantages that the Army does not.

Signet surveyed and held dialogues with early adopters in a wide range of organizations to understand their experiences in adopting AARs: Their assumptions, disappointments, barriers to learning, and early successes. We looked carefully at some on-ramp questions, for instance: Do you think that you need a climate of trust and openness before you can make AARs succeed - or do AARs actually substantially create such an atmosphere? How do leaders and their teams make the time to hold AARs? How do you get to a deeper level of learning? How do we assure that a Lesson Learned is actually learned? How do we disseminate lessons learned from one team to the rest of the organization?

Our years of study, translation and practice with the AAR regimen have given us a deep understanding of how the AAR evolved over decades of daily use at its source, what it takes to make it work in civilian organizations, and what kinds of results, choices and challenges to expect along the way.

The impact of the AAR cycle is both pragmatic and cumulative. AARs build and validate insights based on results, which, in turn, translates into agility - the ability to excel in any conditions. An organization’s culture is not transformed overnight. Introducing AARs in a way that the practices take root is a bit of an art that we have refined over years of practice in a wide range of conditions.

How Signet Can Help

We work with leaders of operational, project, functional and executive teams—through consultation, workshops, coaching and co-facilitation. We help them:

• Identify the places that will return results
• Get the right metrics for tracking performance
• Set the stage for learning to occur from the outset of planning
• Decide when and how often to conduct AARs, BARs and rehearsals
• Foster openness, trust and personal accountability for learning
• Link past lessons forward to impact today’s results
• Find the lessons that are “ready for prime time”

Senior leaders play a crucial role in shaping the climate – by their own willingness to acknowledge mistakes, by taking action on lessons learned, and by fast-tracking subordinates who do the same. We support senior leaders in building the expectation in word and deed that “We are an organization that holds itself accountable for learning.”

Is your organization ready to win in any conditions? Signet’s free one-page on-line Agility Assessment allows you to quickly benchmark your organization against a world-class standard. We find that this assessment serves as a great conversation-starter about agility.

Please contact us for further information about how we can assist your organization.

Click here to purchase a copy of the article, Learning In The Thick Of It, at the Harvard Business Review website.

A Place to Start

A Signet Site Visit is an easy way to explore the fit between Signet’s approach to using AARs to build competitive advantage and the specific challenges, objectives and vision of your organization. Over the course of two days, we will present our research findings on After Action Reviews and the link between leadership, learning and execution to achieve competitive advantage. We will meet with a few teams and stakeholders in order to listen to their business needs, answer their questions or concerns, offer advice on how to apply the whole AAR cycle, and share the experiences of other organizations as they have traveled down the AAR adoption path. We can also coach a leader through doing a Before Action Review for an upcoming action.

If you have a specific business challenge or opportunity in mind, we can conduct an AAR Launch. We help you clarify your business and learning objectives, design an effective AAR solution, and launch the practice by co-facilitating a Foundation AAR.

For senior executive teams, we can conduct a two-day Senior Alignment Session to move from vision to execution on your most compelling challenges and opportunities to create immediate and long-term competitive advantage. These sessions result in a set of resourced priorities with metrics and a plan to use the AAR cycle to improve results and begin to truly integrate leadership, learning and execution.

Let us know if you would like more information about what a Signet Site Visit might do for your organization.