Debrief and organisational learning

Most organisations are busy accumulating experience, but often let much of it evaporate. Projects end, incidents get resolved, exercises get run; everyone agrees it was useful and moves on. Six months later the same lessons have to be learned again, often at great expense.

Organisational learning is the discipline of properly collecting and using the lessons of experience. Shared mental models develop into knowledge that has power across the team, rather than being held in a few heads. A common picture builds of how the work actually gets done, and a structured way of turning events into lessons becomes a habit on which continuous improvement can be built. Exercises and games are the way we set the conditions for all three.

Where does your organisation’s knowledge actually live?

Mostly in separate, individual heads, which is a problem, because that allows knowledge to move on, retire and go on leave. A team that has worked through scenarios together can build something better: a shared mental model. Each member carries their version of a shared, common picture of how the work is done, who holds responsibility for what, and how decisions get made effectively. Under normal conditions communication can paper over the gaps. But under pressure there is no time to explain, and the team that understands the models its colleagues are thinking with keeps functioning, while the team that relies on having to ask, or just guess, falls apart. Traditional team-building events and training courses will not build this. Working together on relevant and realistic problems can.

Work as imagined and work as done

Every organisation holds two versions of its own work. There is the work as imagined, created in head offices and on slides, often presented in glorious detail. And there is the work as done: what actually happens on the shop floor, the short-cuts everyone applies under time pressure, with imperfect information, and all the local solutions team members make to keep things moving. The gap between the two is a perennial human factor, but closing it is a real opportunity to enhance the effectiveness of large teams. Plans and audits rarely identify the gap, because they are usually written in the imagined space, but those delivering at the sharp end will know it well. A well-designed exercise with effective facilitation can help prepare the whole team to work better under real conditions. We can flush out the gap, hold it up and talk about it honestly, often for the first time.

What is an After Action Review?

An After Action Review is defence’s way to make sure that once the raised pulses of an effort drop back, the hard-won lessons are captured across the team. People remember the dramatic moments of adrenaline, but the analysis of what worked well and what left room for improvement has to be deliberately drawn out and then shared. A structured debrief can shed light on what was actually decided, in what order and on what information; where communication stalled; which assumptions turned out to be wrong; and what the team will do differently next time. Without an effective AAR, there is a risk that the opportunity to learn as a team is completely lost.

Why do so many debriefs achieve so little?

Many debriefs are really just conversations about how things felt. A debrief that focuses on how much fun something was is worse than no debrief; it gives a team false comfort that they’ve learned, while the organisation takes comfort in a box ticked, without real value. “How did that feel?” is not, on its own, a debrief question. “What would you do differently if you could run the last ten minutes again?” is. The facilitator’s job is to keep the conversation on specifics: which decision, made by whom, on what information. That is a skill we have honed over decades, and it is the part of an exercise we protect most carefully.

Iteration is the unit of learning, not the event

A single exercise is a useful experience. A series of exercises, with structured reflection between them, is a development programme. The military has trained teams this way for well over a century: attempt the problem, fail safely, draw the lessons, attempt it again. Learning is the product of mistakes, so we design exercises where teams can make them without cost. By the third or fourth iteration the reminders of the basics thin out and the good habits have started to form.

Read More >>> “The Complete Guide to Tabletop Exercises”