The After Action Review Technique Helps Lawyers Measure Results and Make Continuous Improvements
As a lawyer or leader of a law firm, you are always thinking about ways you can measure and continuously improve your results. That’s true whether you’re looking at ways to improve litigation results, negotiate deals, close transactions or lead your team. When it comes time for straight talk to candidly look at what you set out to do, what actually happened, why it happened and what you plan to do next time to produce a better result, there’s nothing that produces measurable results like the After Action Review (“AAR”).
The AAR technique is designed to make learning routine and create a state of mind where people are continuously assessing themselves, their group, and their organization with a focus on how they can improve. The AAR bears a striking resemblance to the “chalk talks” successful coaches use in sports, where players and coaches gather around a blackboard or view screen shortly after a game to discuss the team’s performance.
History of the After Action Review Technique
The U.S. Army is one of the few organizations to have institutionalized reflection and review processes at a group level. AARs are now standard operating procedures in the Army, and for good reason – they work.
AARs were originally designed to capture lessons from the simulated battles of the National Training Centers. The AAR technique was first introduced in the mid-1970s and slowly gained traction within the organization. According to the Army’s Chief of Staff, it was a decade before the process was fully accepted by line officers and became embedded in the culture—and only in recent years have AARs become common practice.
The turning point for AARs was the Gulf War. AARs sprang up spontaneously as small groups of soldiers gathered together, in foxholes or around vehicles in the middle of the desert, to review their most recent missions and identify possible improvements. Haiti marked another step forward. There, for the first time, AARs were incorporated into all phases of the Army’s operations and were used extensively to capture and disseminate critical organizational knowledge.
How The After Action Review Technique Works
The AAR technique is relatively straightforward. The process may be employed formally or informally, may involve large or small groups, and may last for minutes, hours, or days. The discussion process for an AAR always revolves around the same four questions:
How Much Time Should Be Devoted to Each Question?
According to Army guidelines, roughly 25 percent of the time for conducting an AAR should be devoted to the first two questions (what did we set out to do and what actually happened), 25 percent to the third (why did it happen), and 50 percent to the fourth (what are we going to do next time).
Let’s Take a Deeper Dive Into How the After Action Review Process Works
Step 1: What did we set out to do?
The first AAR question is deceptively simple. Group members must agree on the purpose of their mission and the definition of success. Otherwise, there will be no basis for evaluating performance or comparing plans with results. Objectives are normally defined with great precision. They include three elements:
- Tasks involved,
- Conditions under which each task may need to be performed, and
- Standards for success.
An Army objective might be: at a range of 2,000 yards, hit an enemy tank moving at 20 miles per hour over uneven terrain at night with an 80% success rate. With this objective, there is little ambiguity, and it is easy to determine whether a job has been done well or poorly. Such clarity also avoids confused, inconclusive reviews. What might an objective be for you as an attorney or leader of a law firm team or department? As you think about that question, remember clarity about the objectives is critically important.
Unsuccessful AARs are often those where the person in charge of a project, program, or team has the attitude, “I don’t know what I want, so I can’t tell you exactly what to do. But I’ll recognize it when I see it. So just go out there and do good things.” That’s not helpful. The Army insists that its leadership, from the very top officers to those in charge of three to five men, give soldiers clear guidance and establish standards.
As a lawyer or leader of a law firm, are you intentional about giving the people you work with clear guidance and establishing clear standards or are you falling into the trap of giving vague or perhaps confusing instructions? Likewise, are you giving instructions regarding your expectations and assuming others understand them or are you making sure the people you lead have a clear understanding regarding what you want them to do?
The AAR is a great way to test your assumptions about how your guidance and instructions are being received by others.
Step 2 – What actually happened?
The second AAR question requires that participants agree on what actually happened. On the surface, this seems like a relatively straightforward question. In practice, however, this too is more difficult than it first appears. As a lawyer, you know firsthand that getting to the “facts” can be slippery and elusive, especially when stress is high and events move rapidly. All too often, biases engage and memories are flawed, leading to competing or inconsistent stories. Realit, or what soldiers call “ground truth”—becomes difficult to pin down, resulting in gridlock and AARs that progress slowly if at all. But these problems can be overcome. At the National Training Centers, facts are verified by pooling information from three diverse, objective sources: observer-controllers, instrumentation, and taping.
Observer-controllers are skilled, experienced soldiers who shadow individual officers throughout their training exercises. They also provide on-the-spot coaching and lead AARs. Typically, their time in service makes them a bit senior to the officers they are observing, providing both credibility and clout because observer-controllers have complete access to battle plans, are intimately familiar with the terrain, and are constantly present during maneuvers; they can effectively arbitrate debates when facts are in dispute.
As a lawyer, who within your law firm can you use as an observer-controller? Maybe a partner or senior associate? What about a mock jury or a trust investigator or paralegal?
Technology, in the form of instrumentation and videotaping, provides an additional source of objective information. Audiotapes convey the exact timing and content of communications both within and across units. The resulting record is extremely detailed and leaves little room for argument. As one officer put it: “If a picture is worth a thousand words, a motion picture must be worth a million.” Together, these tools and approaches ensure that facts are reconstructed with considerable accuracy.
Can you use video, audio recordings, or other technologies to capture information or activities that you want to create a record of to review later? We understand that at times this may be problematic for confidentiality, attorney/client privilege, and other reasons, but when these issues are not in play or when you already have recordings, perhaps you can use them for more than just creating a record for trial or motion practice and repurpose those recording for training or AARs?
Immediacy and wide participation are crucial to AAR success. To minimize memory losses, AARs must be conducted as soon after the event as practical—preferably the very same day or as soon after that as possible. They should include, whenever possible, all key participants, as well as unbiased, third-party observers, members of staff and supporting units, and even senior officers, partners or associates. Participants should agree on some mechanism to resolve disagreements and ensure that the discussion does not grind to a halt when differences emerge. Once the facts are established, diagnosis can begin.
Unfortunately, many groups start their reviews at this stage, assuming that the prior steps can be omitted without problems. Agreement on both the standards to be met (question one) as well as actual performance (question two), however, is essential to avoiding endless and unproductive debates. It is critical (based on our’s and the Army’s experience) that the first 25 percent of every AAR should be devoted to these topics.
Lawyers and law firm leaders can also benefit by devoting time up front to clarifying goals and targets and setting unambiguous standards—expected levels of customer satisfaction, milestones for project completion, penetration rates for new practice areas, etc. — and then comparing them with results during the review process. By deferring diagnosis, these two steps vastly improve the odds that ensuing discussions will be grounded and productive.
Step 3 – Why did it happen?
The third AAR question begins the process of analysis by asking for an examination of cause and effect. At this stage, the goal is to tease out the underlying reasons for success or failure. In the Army, a tank unit expected to reach a critical checkpoint at a certain hour but was twenty minutes late; what caused the discrepancy? A scout set out to inspect a position to the north but ended up five miles east; how did he become lost? A commander planned to coordinate artillery attacks with two other battalions but never communicated his intentions; what caused the breakdown? Answering these questions requires problem-solving skills, as well as a willingness to accept responsibility. As lawyers, we are trained to think critically and analyze situations. That training is a benefit in this part of the process. Be careful, however, that you don’t launch into an aggressive cross-examination of your colleagues. If you do, it’s pretty much assured that the process will grind to a halt.
Groups must brainstorm possible explanations and then find ways to choose among several plausible alternatives, often in the face of limited and conflicting data. They must also be ruthlessly honest. Individuals need to face up to their own deficiencies, avoiding the all-too-common tendency to turn a deaf ear when personal errors or weaknesses are uncovered. This is particularly true of leaders. As one leader observed: “If you’re not willing to hear criticism, you probably shouldn’t be doing an AAR.”
At times, analysis is simple, and cause and effect are easy to untangle. Missed opportunities or roads not taken are usually obvious to both individuals and groups.
On other occasions, challenges are more complex, and a series of AARs may be required to hone in on the problem. Then, a process of progressive refinement is useful for teasing out explanations and developing possible solutions.
Step 4 – What are we going to do next time?
This last question suggests that the final step in an AAR—deciding what to do next time—is often inseparable from diagnosis. Participants are usually eager to propose solutions, and many arise naturally once problems are well understood. It is particularly important that participants focus on things they can fix, rather than external forces outside their control. Otherwise, the process is likely to have little immediate impact.
This stage has another goal as well: identifying areas where groups are performing well and should stay the course. In Army lingo, these are activities to be “sustained.” Surprisingly they are often difficult to identify. When standards are met, variation is limited and there are few obvious clues to the sources of superior performance. Failures are far easier to diagnose. Yet, if successes are to be repeated, the underlying causes must be clearly articulated.
Summary
The After Action Review Technique is a powerful, appealing review and assessment tool that can produce huge benefits for lawyers and law firms. The concept is easy to grasp and inexpensive to apply. The four questions provide a simple roadmap, appropriate for any situation. The process demands few skills other than careful observation and systematic problem-solving. Even so, success is not guaranteed. A number of conditions must first be met.
