The Art of the Debrief

Among the greatest things the U.S. military has going for it in today's tight budgets and multiple war fronts is the ability to squeeze massive amounts of efficiency from a single event or series of events. Each occurrence, from target practice at the firing range to a multi-plane offensive into enemy territory follows the same sequential flow of: planning/briefing – execution – debriefing/lessons learned. While you might think most of the time is spent in the planning and execution, the reality is that the vast majority of time allocation is put toward the debriefing/lessons learned. Resources are scarce, and while planning and execution are important, the lessons learned from the debrief are what carry over to the next event's improved planning.

Business organizations and teams need to ensure they are debriefing each project they undertake. They should dedicate time and space where they routinely look at decisions, even small ones. Where they ask what the process was like? What were the failures? What should we have done differently? What kind of information didn't we have that we should have had? Only then can the next project have a chance at being better by incorporating the answers into the next planning meetings.

Beyond that, organizations also need to ask broader questions, like, what are we doing? Does it make sense? What if we were taken over? Or what should we be doing that we are not doing? These are the kinds of "debriefing" questions we should ask on a regular basis, but don't.

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