The After Action Review (AAR) was originally developed by the U.S. Army to analyze and report on training exercises. Today the military uses a range of formalities (as do countless industries and organizations), but the essence is to capture two elements: what went well and what can be improved in the future.

Socrates uttered the immortal phrase, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Examining professional events may seem less dramatic, but it’s a critical component if you wish to improve. Also, keep in mind that an AAR shouldn’t substitute for a comprehensive program evaluation. (In fact, an AAR only partially measures to Level 1 on the Kirkpatrick Learning Evaluation Model.)

Here are several simple tips for performing high quality after action reviews.

Ask the Two Key Questions

What went well? What could be improved?

Your AAR needs to focus squarely on these two questions. The first captures the successes, breakthroughs and positive elements of the event. You aren’t looking for perfection, just positive performance. The second isn’t meant as an indictment, but should capture both the negative elements and possible alternatives for the future.

Ask in Advance

If you openly state you will be performing an AAR following the event, you prepare your audience to take mental (and hopefully actual) notes throughout the session. Sometimes this is appropriate for everyone involved, sometimes just for a subset (e.g. team leaders). Regardless, if you play a program leadership role, make every effort to create the expectation upfront.

Compile, Share, Archive

During an AAR, it’s crucial to compile all the feedback shared for possible follow-up. Share it with the appropriate parties – a report for the boss and action items for the process owners. Perhaps most importantly, save it in an archive where it can be easily accessed in the future. Ideally, you should consult a previous event’s AAR before you begin planning a new one.

Say Thank You

It’s hard to get good feedback – especially if you’re combative. Resist the urge to give unnecessary feedback on the feedback. You don’t need to argue or explain. If your team is evaluating the performance, it may make sense to go deeper, but with a large group, simply say thank you.

After action reviews might seem like extra work, but it’s critical work. Improvement is much harder without it.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or follow him on Twitter.

There’s no question that setbacks are a part of business – and a part of life. We can minimize some of them, but we won’t be able to avoid them completely. Once they happen, it’s what comes next that is the crucial part. If you find yourself encountering a setback, here are some next steps.

Talk About It

It’s important to give a voice to disappointment. The bigger the setback, the more important it is to put it into words. The counselors for the Pam Am Flight 73 hijacking advised the survivors to write down their experience as part of their treatment plan. Words have power. Don’t tell everyone about your setbacks; find someone you trust and who is a good listener. Share what happened, your thoughts or feelings about it and thank them for listening. It’s a lot easier to take the next steps when you’ve put your thoughts into words.

Acknowledge the Hard Work & Sacrifices

It’s enough of a challenge to pause and celebrate success. How much more do we overlook the investment that went into a setback? But ironically, most of the disappointment comes from the waste of the investment (especially the emotional investment). Acknowledging the hard work does not mean celebrating failure. It simply validates the worth of the effort that was given.

Count the Wins AND Lessons Learned

Whether you succeed or fail, there are ALWAYS positive and negative takeaways. If you don’t capture these at some level, you’re doomed to repeat the same outcomes. Evaluate what went well as well as areas that could be improved to increase the likelihood of success next time.

Acknowledge the Lack of Control

In any setback, it’s easy to focus on the factors outside our control and just move on. But it’s likely that many are within our control as well. Acknowledging a lack of control helps with managing future expectations, but don’t stop there. Think of ways you can improve the areas where you have control – and ways you can creatively influence the contributing factors where you don’t. There is usually much more we can do than we initially realize.

Take a Breather

Sometimes we need to take a step back before we jump start our next big thing, especially if there was a sense of loss. So take a creative day off. Schedule a down week. Clear your head and gear up for what’s next. But don’t let time get away from you. There’s a difference between taking a timeout and calling it quits. If you take too much time off, you risk getting in a rut.

Redirect & Reengage

When we’re coming off a loss, we usually come back with something to prove. So we throw ourselves twice as hard into the work as a way to make up for the setback. Be careful. You could go down a different path to the same destination. Let the strategy dictate what comes next. If the strategy is uncertain, invest the time to hash it out. They reengage with a sense of purpose.

Get a Quick Win

Finally, once you’ve reengaged following a setback, find something you can celebrate quickly. It doesn’t have to be big. Just get something quantifiable to demonstrate your new progress. Your team needs it and so do you.

At the end of the day, remember that most setbacks aren’t final. They’re only temporary. As NFL coach John Fox is fond of saying, “Sometimes setbacks are setups for better things to come.” Hang in there!

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.

Success is a lousy teacher. The best leaders know this and are always on guard against complacency. I recently received a question from a leader who has just completed a season of success. She is concerned her team won’t stay motivated.  How do you keep your team fully engaged in the wake of success?

This is a very thoughtful question. Most leaders are focused on “What’s next?” as we should be. However, the leader who posed this question has an intuitive sense that a let down could be around the corner. Without her leadership, she may be right.

Success can take a toll on people – mentally, physically and emotionally. It’s good to be aware of the risk; and like any other risk, you need to manage it. Here are a few ideas to help your team cope with success and use it as the springboard for greater things to come.

Stop and Celebrate

Have you ever noticed, work never ends? This endless stream of activity can be exhausting if not debilitating. One of the ways we can manage the pace, energy and engagement of our team is to ensure frequent, appropriate celebrations. These can provide microbursts of enthusiasm for the cause and remind people: they matter and so does the work.

Capture Learnings

Even when your team wins, there are lessons to be learned. If you’ll cultivate the discipline of conducting After Action Reviews (the term the U.S. military uses for the briefing that occurs after every mission) to be sure you think deeply about what worked; what didn’t and what can be improved, this will create energy in the moment and momentum for your next challenge.

Set a New Goal

There’s tremendous power in setting a goal. Work without a goal can seem fruitless. Think of a time you were fully engaged in your work. I’m guessing several factors were present: You were doing work that mattered; you knew how your work contributed; you were operating in an area of strength if not passion. The list could go on. I’m also confident, there was a goal. You knew what you were trying to accomplish.

Pay Attention

Often, our teams will tire before we will. And, individual members of the team have unique needs. If we get too focused, we’ll miss the clues that someone is struggling. Whatever works for you to stay connected with your team members is a good approach. Don’t make too many assumptions regarding the energy and engagement of the team. One of my favorite ways to stay in touch over the years is one-on-one time with individual team members. The time investment always returns big dividends for the organization and me.

Success doesn’t have to serve as the preamble to decline. With focused effort, you can use each victory as a stepping stone to your next accomplishment.

Mark Miller, Vice President of Organizational Effectiveness for Chick-fil-A, believes that leadership is not something that’s exclusive; within the grasp of an elite few, but beyond the reach of everyone else.  In the tenth anniversary edition of The Secret, Miller reminds readers of a seemingly contradictory concept: to lead is to serve. With more than 600,000 books in print, Mark has been surprised by the response and delighted to serve leaders through his writing.

The 10^th anniversary edition of The Secret will be released September 2, 2014.

This may be how you feel about evaluation… unless you have a built-in evaluation plan. In that case, you’ll be ready to hand over the results of your training before management even asks for it.

So how do you evaluate learning programs? In this post, I’d like to summarize the Kirkpatrick Four Levels of Learning Evaluation.

Donald Kirkpatrick is the founder of training firm Kirkpatrick Partners and a past president of the American Society of Training & Development (ASTD). In 1954, Kirkpatrick developed what is now known as the Kirkpatrick Evaluation Model as part of his doctoral dissertation. The comprehensive guide is presented in his book Evaluation Training Programs: The Four Levels. Here are the four levels:

Level 1: Reaction

This level measures the initial reaction of training participants to the content and event. It focuses both on their thoughts and feelings. Were they actively engaged? Did it seem relevant to them? Did they get to participate in the learning process? The Level 1 evaluation is most easily conducted onsite at the conclusion of the learning event, or at least very soon afterward. A short form or survey is usually the easiest tool to use.

Level 2: Learning

This level measures the increase in knowledge or capability as it relates to the course’s content. The ultimate goal is for participants to learn the material, develop the necessary skills, believe it is worthwhile, and be both confident and committed to using what they’ve learned. Depending on the course subject, evaluating this level may be a bit tricky. To measure an increase, obviously there ought to be a pre-event and post-event assessment. One method is to have practical exercises at the conclusion of the training to measure learning. Another is to use a test or observe on the work site afterwards.

Level 3: Behavior

This level measures the application of the learning in the participants’ work roles over time. The crucial part of this level is that the course’s learning goals must to be supported by the organization’s infrastructure, processes & systems in order to provide the sustained motivation for application. In other words, it needs to be easy for the participants to practice what they’ve learned without interference, and there should be visible rewards. One way to measure this is to interview managers who have been encouraged to observe their teams’ behavior after the learning event has taken place. (This is one reason it’s so important to involve managers in the course development).

Level 4: Results

This level is the ultimate measure of learning effectiveness: improved business results, such as increased sales, decreased turnover, higher employee engagement, etc. The great thing about this level is that management already measures these business results. The important thing for you is to be able to link the training to the results it ought to affect. Next, identify the performance of the participants for the next time period. Then you’ll be able to report that, “the average training participant had a 30% sales increase in the year following the training” or “customer service satisfaction levels for participants were 20% higher than for non-participants.” The more you can measure results, the better a case you make for your learning program.

Learning evaluation can at times seem complicated but it can also be provide immense clarity. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be. If you aren’t currently doing any evaluation of your learning programs, simply pick one level and start with that. The feedback you get will let you know if you’re on the right track.

Which level do you focus on the most?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

“Well, I’m a consultant.”

“A consultant? But what do you actually do?”

This is a typical conversation whenever I meet anyone new – and not just me, but for most folks in my profession. I don’t know why, but it’s always been a little tricky to explain what, in fact, I do for a living. “I solve problems,” or “I help people clarify what they want,” or “I build management solutions” are typical responses. A past employer taught us to say, “I help clients move from issue to outcome, with pace, certainty and strategic agility.”

The truth is that I help management understand their needs and then help build solutions to meet those needs. Since my specialty is organizational and talent development, the types of needs I address are usually related to the people and leadership side of organizations. My colleagues in other specialties do the same thing, but with finance, marketing, customers, supply chains, technology or countless other areas.

Whether you are officially a “consultant” or are a specialist, program manager, project manager or just plain responsible for some type of organizational change, I’d like to introduce you to a basic consulting methodology. I often tell college students in a class I facilitate to “think like a consultant” and I believe this methodology can assist just about everyone. Here are the basic components with a basic synopsis for each one.

Analyze Phase

The first step with any new project is get the requirements. Whether your client or boss wants a new management program or a new software program, you need to figure out what specifications must be included. If you are tasked with building a new car, you need to know the requirements for fuel efficiency, safety features, speed, cost, and many other variables before you even think about beginning. For a people program, you need to know who will be a part of the program, budget, and desired outcomes of their experience – among other things. Once you get the requirements, you need to do what is referred to as “gap analysis” – which means you determine the current state and how it measures up with the desired future state. The solution will bridge the gap.

At this point, you’ll need to develop a basic approach plan that proposes such elements as options for potential solutions, steps you plan to take to build the solution, costs, timelines, and additional resources or people who will need to be involved. The main client will then provide input or make the necessary management decisions – and then you can proceed.

The penalties for skipping the Analyze phase are monumental: high probability of wasted effort, wasted time, wasted resources, rework, missed deadlines, broken promises, loss of engagement, cost overages and client (or customer) ire.

Design Phase

During the design phase, you essentially build an outline for the entire project. As with a writing project or presentation, you will likely begin with a rough outline from your basic plan and then progress to a detailed design outline for the project. When management wants to know what the solution will look like, you can show the design plans. Just like writing, it is much easier to make changes in the Design phase than down the road in the Develop phase.

Develop Phase

In the Develop phase, you take the design plans and start actually building out the content or application of the solution. If you are building a training course, you take the course outline and start building lesson plans. For a technology solution, you start writing actual code or building applications.

The Develop phase isn’t finished until the solution is essentially complete. Don’t forget to include user support materials, such as job aids, reference guides, manuals or online portals, as appropriate for the project.

Test Phase

Once the Develop phase is finished, the temptation is to rush to the Implement phase and finish up. But first, the solution needs to be tested. You wouldn’t want to own a smartphone that had never been tested before it was released to market. Your solution needs to be tested as well. For a learning solution or new management process, an appropriate test could be a pilot group. For a technology solution, it could be scenario testing with dummy (or real) data. Take the results from the tests to address outstanding issues so that you (and more importantly, your client) can have full confidence in a successful implementation.

Implement Phase

Implementation takes place when the solution is finally released. It can be referred to as “Delivery” or “Go-Live” as well. Once solutions are implemented, they can be extremely hard to change (depending on the type of solution). Depending on the type of solution, this phase may be a blanket switch or may be implemented in multiple degrees. Occasionally, consulting teams are not involved in delivery, which makes the transition process and reference materials that much more important.

Evaluation

Evaluation isn’t a stand-alone phase. It must be done for each step and on an ongoing basis. At the very least, you will want approval from your client to finish each phase, but there will likely be more evaluation than that. You’ll want to quantify the expected benefits before the solution and measure the actual benefits afterwards. Focus groups or validation by SMEs may be needed during the Design and Develop phases for large or complicated projects. For solutions that can be adjusted on an ongoing basis, continual feedback is helpful (that’s why we have customer surveys). For learning solutions, Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation is a good place to start.

An evaluation plan is usually created as a part of the Analyse phase.

I realize that many of my readers may not have an immediate need for a consulting methodology. But once you do, it’s here for a reference.

For those who have built new solutions, what would you add?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.