After Action Review: A Simple Habit That Builds Smarter Teams
In high-stakes military operations, failure is not an option—and yet, failure is expected. That’s not a contradiction. It’s a mindset rooted in continuous learning, and one of the military’s most powerful tools for turning experience into improvement is the After Action Review (AAR).
Fortunately, you don’t have to be in uniform to benefit from it. Whether you're leading a project team, running a meeting, managing a sports program, or coaching your own performance, the AAR is one of the most adaptable and effective tools for accelerating growth, strengthening relationships, and improving results—without blame, bureaucracy, or burnout.
What Is an AAR?
An After Action Review is a structured, reflective discussion that helps individuals and teams understand what happened, why it happened, and how to do better next time. It revolves around four deceptively simple questions:
What was supposed to happen?
What actually happened?
What went well and what could have gone better?
What will we do differently next time?
That’s it. No PowerPoint decks. No excuses. No finger-pointing. Just honest, open reflection with a focus on learning and improving.
Why It Works: The Power Behind the Simplicity
The AAR works because it transforms learning from something accidental into something intentional. It interrupts the cycle of “do–move on–repeat” and replaces it with a cycle of “do–learn–improve.”
A few things make it especially powerful:
It’s fast. Most AARs take less than 30 minutes—and some as little as 5.
It’s inclusive. Everyone involved gets a voice, which builds psychological safety and strengthens team bonds.
It’s applicable anywhere. From boardrooms to hospital teams to school projects, the AAR fits any setting with a beginning, middle, and end.
It’s habit-forming. When used consistently, the AAR helps build a culture of reflection and adaptation—not perfectionism.
From Military Precision to Everyday Leadership
The U.S. Army developed the AAR to foster learning in real time—not months later in a post-mortem, and not just from top-down briefings. As one Army training circular puts it: “An AAR is not a critique. It is a professional discussion focused on performance and improvement.”
What makes the military's use of AARs so compelling for organizations of all types is this principle: every activity, no matter how routine, is a learning opportunity.
They practice three types of learning:
Before: Who's done this before, and what can we learn from them?
During: Are we on track? What are we noticing now?
After: What just happened, and how can we use it to get better?
This approach turns operations into a living, breathing learning lab. And when adapted to civilian settings—startups, schools, nonprofits, coaching sessions—the results are no less profound.
Applications Across Contexts
Leadership Development: Leaders who use AARs regularly are seen as more credible and more coachable. Why? Because they model humility, curiosity, and continuous improvement. AARs also help surface blind spots in communication, delegation, and decision-making—without the fear that often surrounds performance feedback.
Team Performance: Teams that conduct AARs frequently report:
Better alignment on goals
Faster identification of breakdowns
Greater trust and collaboration
Higher satisfaction with outcomes
Research shows that teams that learn together outperform those who don’t—even when talent levels are similar. The AAR is a low-friction way to embed that team learning in everyday work.
Individual Growth: Personal AARs—just a quiet reflection on your day or a recent challenge—can be transformative. They help clarify your intentions, recognize emotional triggers, and extract insights from both success and failure. Over time, this reflection cultivates self-awareness and emotional intelligence.
Tips for Facilitating an Effective AAR
Whether formal or informal, a few best practices help AARs succeed:
Create psychological safety. Make it clear the goal is learning, not evaluation.
Stick to the questions. Keep the structure simple and consistent.
Encourage honesty. Invite all voices and model vulnerability yourself.
Avoid blame. Focus on systems, decisions, and conditions—not people.
Document key lessons. Share them in ways others can access and reuse.
If you're facilitating, remember your job is not to judge or fix. It’s about drawing out learning, asking thoughtful questions, and creating space for others to think out loud.
What Makes AARs Different From Other Reviews
Unlike post-mortems or performance evaluations, the AAR:
Happens close to the action—when details are fresh
Focuses on reflection, not judgment
Elevates process over personality
Can be done by anyone, at any time, with any team size
And perhaps most importantly, it allows teams to fail forward—to mine failure for insight without shame, and to move on more intelligently and more confidently.
The Real Goal: A Learning Culture
A single AAR can generate insight. But making it a habit can create a culture—one where people take responsibility for improvement, invite feedback, and seek excellence over ego. That’s the culture high-performing organizations share, whether in the military, medicine, sport, or business.
In today’s world of rapid change, the advantage doesn’t go to the team with the perfect plan. It goes to the team that learns fastest.
Closing Thought: The Most Powerful Question
If there’s one question every leader should ask their team, it’s this:
“What did we learn, and how will we get better next time?”
The AAR gives you the courage—and the structure—to ask that question regularly. It won’t take much time. But it will build the muscle your organization needs most: the ability to reflect, adapt, and grow.
Reference:
Keiser, N., & Arthur, W., Jr. (2020). A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of the after-action review (or debrief) and factors that influence its effectiveness. Journal of Applied Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000821