The Critical Practice for Growth: QMN048

Martial Mental Models: The Quartermaster, Monday, 1 July

(Today’s report is a 5 minute read)

BLUF: The After Action Review (AAR) is perhaps the most critical tool for organizational improvement that exists. Calling on its participants to review an event that's just concluded, and to identify a number of areas upon which to improve or sustain performance, in the Army AARs can happen many times in one day or can cover the actions of multiple days or weeks. No matter the time or event, there are two important things that need to be done in order to make these AARs really work. To use AARs to effectively transform your organization into the team you want it to be, read below

Brady here. Nine sweaty, dirty, stinking infantrymen sat around a chalkboard in the west Georgia forest in the summer of 2000. We’d been in the field for weeks learning battle drills - day after day, hour after hour of dry-fire and blank fire attacks. Around the board we discussed all the events that had taken place in the previous hour of situational training, and there were shared memories, claims, and accusations. Doctrine was reviewed, missteps and mistakes called out, and following it all was a group resolution to improve. I found out that day that I'd skipped steps in the process of attacking an enemy machine gun position and resolved not to in future drills. This was the first time I'd learn about the value of the After Action Review - upon which I’d build a decade more military experience. 

The After Action Review (AAR) is perhaps the most critical tool for organizational improvement that exists. Calling on its participants to review an event that's just concluded, and to identify a number of areas upon which to improve or sustain performance, in the Army AARs can happen many times in one day or can cover the actions of multiple days or weeks. No matter the time or event, there are two important things that need to be done in order to make these AARs really work.

The first important thing about AARs is that you get good, honest, timely feedback on what to sustain and improve. Every organization is different - in size, composition, personality and goals - so there can be many ways of conducting an AAR. I’ve seen good AARs last 15 minutes after a situational training exercise like the one I described above, and I've seen AARs happen over the course of several weeks as well. (With a larger group it can be harder to make the AAR fit a fast operational tempo, so the tasks of gathering Sustain and Improve points were given to participating leaders immediately following an operation. Staff would compile the points in Issue-Discussion-Recommendation format across a week and publish a draft Group AAR Script that could be reviewed in advance of a larger meeting with all participants.) The point is to get honest, relevant and important feedback in the time it takes to effectively change your organization’s behavior. Participants need to feel comfortable discussing mistakes, shortcomings and bad decisions among their leadership and peers. If you don't have this, you won't get good ‘Improves’. Leaders must create an environment where participants can discuss these things without fear of penalty.

The second thing that's key to valuable AARs is a Lessons Learned mechanism. This is laid out really well by Alcera Consulting with their flow chart. 

The results of an AAR are a set of “things we need to do better” and “validated practices” and if there's not a way to actually change the way your organization is doing things, the AAR will be wasted time. The very best teams at making AARs work, that I've seen, have an individual whose whole focus is to turn AAR points into published Lessons Learned -which then get injected into Standard Operating Procedures and distributed to other teams who may come across similar issues. Learning requires doing - actually carrying out the new, learned practice - and so AAR results should show up in new training events and rehearsals. Marilyn Darling, Charles Parry and Joseph Moore discuss how the US Army’s National Training Center does this with Opposing Forces (OPFOR) in their Review cycle. 

Eight years and two deployments after I did my first AAR, I’d a little learn more about the origins of the AAR in the forests of North Carolina during the Robin Sage exercise. While many point to the AAR’s first appearance in US doctrine as the early 1980s, I had retired Green Berets who acted as our instructors, guides and role players in Robin Sage call the AAR a “Chinese Self Criticism drill” - a reference to Maoist political discipline also known as a “struggle session”. And as Chris Erickson noted a couple weeks ago, the personal AAR practice found in the Ignatian Daily Examen goes back much further. I myself noted a few months ago when reading Peter Pan to my kids that Peter and the Lost Boys remind me of an organization that doesn't use AARs or Lessons Learned - in fact that's what keeps them eternally children in Never Never Land. They forget everything and never learn lessons. Brad Leithauser made that connection to Alzheimer's patients in The New Yorker a few years ago.

If leaders can ensure honesty and openness in AAR discussions, and then emplace a mechanism to employ and shared Lessons Learned, AARs can transform your organization into the team you want it to be. If outcomes aren't insightful and aren't employed and shared, it's wasted time and can become very frustrating. (BJM)

CONSIDERING TECH IMPLICATIONS: Facing Big Brother’s Stare (5 min) “Facial recognition technology, as a category, is best described as any system that algorithmically and automatically “analyzes video, photos, thermal captures, or other imaging inputs to identify or verify a unique individual,” according to testimony provided to the Committee by Joy Buolamwini, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The negative implications are easy to grasp: the misuse of this technology could inhibit or chill the free expression rights of Americans who may decide not to show their support for one cause or another if they believe their attendance at a meeting or speech is being recorded by the government.” (BJM)

Remarks Complete. Nothing Follows.

KS Anthony (KSA) & Brady Moore (BJM)