After-Action Reviews

I teach an MBA elective course called “Organizational Learning.” It has become a popular course because MBA students, many of whom are mid-level executives, have heard senior executives proclaim “the knowledge of our people is our most important asset.”

While this proclamation typically makes people feel warn-and-fuzzy, it does not reveal how senior management plans to develop this “most important asset.” Unfortunately, many senior management teams don’t know how to enhance organizational learning and knowledge.

Every knowledge-driven organization should have a plan to create/acquire, capture, and disseminate organizational knowledge. The creating/acquiring function can largely be accomplished with the use of after-action reviews (AARs).

In my “Organizational Learning” course, my students watch a 20-minute video about how the U.S. Army uses AARs. Immediately after every army action the entire team stops wherever they are (in the field, if it’s a field exercise) to review what happened. They ask themselves:

∙ What went right?
∙ What went wrong?
∙ Why?

Since the video gives the impression that the Army AARs (they use the term “AAR” as both a noun and a verb) everything, I asked a retired-officer friend if the Army, in reality, AARed everything. His response, “Mike, the Army even AARs its AARs.”

While AARing everything is not practical in most business organizations, the process of after-action reviews should play a part in the organizational learning efforts of every organization.

Earlier this week, Preston Yarborough (a colleague of mine here in North Carolina) sent me an academic article entitled “Learning From Successful and Failed Experiences: The Moderating Role of Type of After-Event Review” (Journal of Applied Psychology, 2006, Vol. 91, No.3, pp.669-680). The three researchers (Ellis, Mendel, & Nir) concluded, “After successful events, the most effective review is that of wrong actions; whereas after failed events, any kind of event review (correct or wrong actions) is effective.

While I appreciate the researchers’ desire to maximize the AAR process, I’d be happy to see organizations doing any kind of systematic after-action reviews. The AAR process is time-consuming, but it’s time that’s well investing.

For more information on this and other organizational learning issues read my book, “Strategic Organizational Learning,” available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble bookstores, or my website www.mikebeitler.com. There are also many free resources available on my website.