LEARNING IN THE THICK

OF IT

A US ARMY PERSPECTIVE
ON AFTER ACTION
REVIEWS
BLUFOR and OPFOR
 OVERVIEW
 Opposing Force or OPFOR is a brigade of 2500 US soldiers who
are regularly trained to face the most difficult of situations.

 Blue Force or BLUFOR is a larger, and technically superior force of

members.

 These two teams fight it out for creating the best militia in the US
and honing the skills of soldiers joining the special forces

 Even when the BLUFOR has a ground level advantage, a totally

new OPFOR team also has reigned in these fights for more than a
decade

 We will see how they achieve it.

 OPFOR’s AAR
 OPFOR’s AAR is not just a mere report
submission
 It is more than on the job training.
• Train every moment
• Gather all experiences
• Learn from your faults
• Implement necessary changes
• Never repeat your faults
 Operational
orders

AAR report Brief back

Steps in AAR
Comparison of
intended vs Rehearsals
actual results
5 ways to put AARs to work at work
In Practice Payoff

Emergency Response
5 ways to put AARs to work at work
In Practice Payoff

Product Development
5 ways to put AARs to work at work
In Practice Payoff

Entering new business or market

5 ways to put AARs to work at work
In Practice Payoff

Sales
5 ways to put AARs to work at work
In Practice Payoff

Mergers and Acquisitions

Why do AARs Fail in most Organisations
 Why do AARs Fail in most Organisations
 Although reviews are conducted, learning outcomes are
few.

 Overly detailed and frequent reviews, with several

corrections and new practises being suggested, leads to an
overall drop in efficiency.
 Quite often leaders tend to rely
on memory in order to
reproduce information for a
report, this is highly unreliable.
 Why do AARs Fail in most Organisations
 Not practised as an ONGOING PROCESS.

 Flawed assumptions are the most common cause of flawed

execution (it is important to correct things, but it is more
important to correct thinking)

 The revised and improved plan must be tested in completely

different conditions also... (Conditions change, results shouldn't)

 The units/team must not be exposed to too many lessons, otherwise

they will tend to become overwhelmed. The focus must be on 2 or 3
important lessons.
 AAR Objectives
 Lessons must first and foremost benefit the
team that extracts them
 The AAR process must start at the beginning
of the activity
 Lessons must link explicitly to future actions
 Leader must hold everyone, especially
themselves, accountable for learning
“…Instead of producing static knowledge, to
file away in a management report or a
repository, OPFOR’s AAR generates raw
material that the brigade feeds back into the
execution cycle…”
Thank you!