Capturing the Learning – after action review

When we hold events, workshops, conferences, or just bring people together for a key meeting that will shape our work for the future, it is so easy to just move on to the next piece of work without reflecting on the experience.

How often have you been involved in running an event, and then at the end set off for home with an uneasy feeling as to whether it went as well as you think it did? And by the time you are on your train, or in the car, it is too late to check with anyone else.

This is why After Action Review is so important. It’s an opportunity to pull together everyone’s views about how the event has gone, and to do so in a positive way.

It is based on a practise that was developed by the US Army. Their approach is a bit more detailed than mine, covering the following:

1. What was supposed to happen?
2. What did happen?
3. What are some improvements?
4. What are some sustainments?
5. What can be done to improve the training next time?
6. Closing comments (summary).

(No, I don’t know what “sustainments” means either!) I first came across this approach when I was working for the NHS Modernisation Agency in 2003. Since then, I have been working with a simplified version. If you read this blog regularly you will know that I like lists of three as they are easy to remember and focus the mind.

As soon as an event or a discrete piece of work has finished we gather together in a circle in the room and spend about 40 minutes considering the following three questions:

1. What worked, what went well?
2. What could have gone better and why?
3. What have we learnt?

We capture all of this feedback and make sure that we feed it into future planning. Everyone in the group has the chance to input to this process, and we also make sure that we capture anything that we have been told through the day by delegates. There are plenty of opportunities for this sort of feedback in queues for coffee, for lunch and during the course of the day.

It is a very simple process, but it works really well as a way of capturing the learning. Above all else, it can be a great place to appreciate the hard work that has gone into a piece of work and to have a “virtual group hug” before dispersing at the end of the day.

It doesn’t replace more formal evaluation and there should be a more formal debrief once the dust has settled on a piece of work. But it is a perfect way to capture things in the moment “on the battlefield” so that things are not forgotten.

Also published on Medium.