The After-Action Review

Picture this scenario, you are tasked with a new territory launch.

Months in planning, numerous budget rounds. Countless stakeholder meetings and nudging people along to get a decision. Finally, you get the approval to make the investment required to enter a new market territory.

You begin executing the plan, mobilising the people and partners to make this long-awaited project a success.

The results come in from the first phase and you are excited to see how it's going. You feel the pressure from above and with fingers crossed you review the initial results. Has it gone better than you planned for?

The review highlights some points which could have been better and some which have gone well. A couple of course corrections and you reset the plan and move to phase 2. Repeating the review cycle as you go.

The final phase completes and it's time for a full debrief. Your organisation favours a drains-up walk-through. Powerpoint slides produced by a cottage industry inside the business unit, spend analysis from finance, operations input the elements measured and sales confirm what happened on the ground.

At this point, most organisations walk through and see what worked and what didn't and then move on.

The After Action Review is different. It gets the team responsible for the overall program together and asks 4 questions. All are designed with learning in mind, removing the name and shame, blame game. Extracting all the insights available in an open and safe space.

You can read about what to ask and how to implement a battle-tested approach and ensure you extract all the learnings available from each phase or project/action as you go. Quick to read and implement. I've seen it save lost deals which were in the £10m bracket, move failing projects and initiatives to succeeding and provide assurance to programs which are trending Orange to Red.

If you'd like a copy, just drop me a DM and I'll get a copy over to you or visit seanlinehan.uk and download a copy there.