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This page is a mirror of Big Dog's Leadership Page under permission from the copyright holder, Donald R. Clark.
Some links and material are still left in the original site.
Our high appreciation for the writer for permitting HR Indonesia to publish this valueable materials.

Big Dog's Leadership Page - After Action Review

Managers are people who do things right, while leaders are people who do the right thing. - Warren Benniss, Ph.D. "On Becoming a Leader"

Introduction

An After Action Review (AAR) is a review conducted after a project or major activity that allows employees and leaders to discover what happened and why. Examples of when to use it are: introduction of a new product line in a production facility, after a holiday season in a retail store, new computer system upgrade, training activity, a change in procedures, etc.

The AAR is a professional discussion that includes the participants and focuses directly on the tasks and goals. It is not a critique. In fact it has several advantages over a critique:

It does not judge success or failure.
It attempts to discover why things happened.
It focuses directly on the tasks and goals that were to be accomplished.
It encourages employees to surface important lessons in the discussion.
More employees participate so that more of the project or activity can be recalled and more lessons can be learned and shared.

As a leader, you are responsible for training your workforce. The AAR is a tool that can assist you with developing your employees. It does this by providing feedback. Feedback should be direct and on-the-spot. Each time an incorrect performance is observed, it should be immeditally corrected so that it will not interfere with future tasks. During projects or major activites, it is not always easy to notice incorrect performances. Indeed, in many cases, the correct performances will be unknown for these projects or activities as they are learning activites for all the participants. Thats why the AAR should be planned at the end of such activites...so that feedback can be provided, lessons can be learned, and ideas and suggestions can be generated so that the next project or activity will be an improved one.

Steps for Conducting the AAR

Gather all key players.
Review events leading to the activity.
Give a brief statement of the specific activity.
Summarize the key events. Encourage participation
Have junior leaders restate portions of there part of the activity.
Do not turn it into a critique or lecture. The following will help:

Ask why certain actions were taken.
Ask how they reacted to certain situations.
Ask when actions were initiated.
Ask leading and thought provoking questions.
Ask employees what happened in there own point of view.
Relate events to subsequent results.
Explore alternative courses of actions that might have been more effective.
When the discussion turns to errors made, emphasize the positive and point out the difficulties of making tough decisions.

Summarize.
Allow junior leaders to discuss the events with their people in private.
Follow up on needed actions.

Notes
Created May 11, 1997. Last update - July 7, 1997.

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Donald R. Clark
donclark@nwlink.com

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