After-Action Reviews and Tactical Success

VOLUNTEERS CORNER ❘ By JERRY KNAPP

In my July 2023 article, “What’s the Plan? Tactical Planning for Tactical Success,” I covered the critical steps to planning an effective tactical operation:

• Initial planning meeting.
• Current plan.
• In-progress reviews.
• Final briefing.
• Rehearsal/walk-through/tabletop.

Following execution of the operation, an after-action review (AAR) closes out your planning cycle. This important follow-up to the operation sets you up for future improved operational success based on your recent experience and lessons learned. The goal of the AAR is to produce changes and improvements in your team’s mission execution. Often, fire service leaders are well-versed in strategic and tactical fire and rescue operations but often are not so well trained on the planning tools they need for tactical, administrative, and social responsibilities.

Clearly, thorough training on planning is not in any of our leadership programs. Proper planning is essential for success in almost everything officers do, necessary for running a drill, preplanning target hazards, designing a new tanker operation, providing fire protection for a major event, or organizing a memorial service. The final and perhaps most important step to close out your planning process is an AAR. This is also the next step toward success at your next tactical operation. In this description of AARs, the word “step” seems redundant, but it is not. A step describes a specific portion or a tool for you to use in your planning, execution, and evaluation of your operation. The result is that you achieve your goal of constant tactical improvement.

What Is an AAR?

The world changes around us every day. We must have a process in place to ensure our operations continue to keep pace with technology (lithium-ion batteries, for example) and heed lessons learned from our fireground experience to create better, safer, and more effective responses for our next alarm. The AAR is a step-by-step tool used successfully by elite military units, sports teams, and businesses.

AARs were developed by military units to maximize mission effectiveness, minimize casualties, create an avenue for feedback, promote mission evaluation, and improve unit cohesion. In the military planning model, the AAR is focused on improving tactics, techniques, and procedures, affectionately known as TTPs.

In our fire service world, TTPs are what we train for and execute at every alarm. We like to say we are a paramilitary organization, so let’s look at how the AAR helps improve our tactical and nontactical operations.

Although conducting an AAR effectively is the final step in your planning process, it is also the first step in your next operational success. It’s essentially a review that looks forward. The National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) defines AARs as “a professional discussion of an event, focused on performance standards, that enables firefighters to discover for themselves what happened, why it happened, and how to sustain strengths and improve on weaknesses.” It is a tool leaders and units can use to get maximum benefit from every incident or project.

The AAR is now used worldwide by military organizations, governments, and private industry and is considered a valuable tool in high-risk professions where the smallest mistakes can lead to disastrous results. An AAR is aimed forward by looking back over your operation to see what you want to sustain, determine what went well (what you will sustain), and objectively look at what you can improve.

An AAR is not a critique. No one likes to be critiqued, but we should all be constantly looking to improve our operations based on the most valuable and expensive teacher we have: fireground experience. Without AARs, you will continue to make the same mistakes and never improve or upgrade your unit’s performance. An AAR will capture planned or unplanned innovative successes that you can use for future operations.

AAR Levels

An AAR can be personal. Let’s say you were the nozzleman at a significantly involved house fire where two occupants died and three firefighters were burned. What did you do correctly that you would want to sustain? The line was stretched quickly, you donned your mask, you called for water, and you flushed the line and moved in aggressively to protect the search crews who went in ahead of you—all things to sustain.

Your officer and backup man became part of the search and rescue crew when multiple victims were found and truck company firefighters needed help getting them out. Alone on the line, you became fatigued. Next time, consider using a door frame, corner, or wall to help relieve the nozzle reaction so you can operate longer to protect the crews. A criticism? No, it’s an improvement for the future. Use your experience to mold your future success.

The engine company-level AAR for this fire may include sustaining tactics and procedures such as good, fast water on the fire; establishing a reliable water supply; and understanding the importance of a backup line to improve safety. Department-level AARs for this fire could include discussions about striking the second alarm faster.

AAR: Critical Components

According to authors Angus Fletcher, Preston B. Cline, and Matthew Hoffman in their article, “A Better Approach to After-Action Reviews” (Harvard Business Review), “An AAR can fix a failing operation, capture and repeat unanticipated success, and ensure catastrophe never happens again.” Clearly, it’s a valuable tool for fire service leaders.

Fletcher provides three critical points you must understand to conduct effective AARs.

• They are not optional. Your members are going to conduct them individually if you don’t conduct them with your team as a whole. Called counterfunctional thinking, our brains run this process to fill the void between what we expected to happen and what really happened. You want the AAR process to include all participants together. You don’t want it fragmented by individuals or small groups.
• AARs generate a list of lessons learned. However, what you really want is changes in your team’s behavior. These changes require attitude shifts, positive emotions, and specific items to improve your operation. The key is to generate a collective story for your entire team to improve future performance.
• There may not be total agreement among participants. Examining the event and performance will be difficult. Allow disagreement, and do not impose consensus if you are leading the AAR.

AAR Improvements

According to Fletcher, your goal is to influence a community (your team, customers, and others affected by your operation). Another critical improvement is simple but has a tremendous effect on the success of your AAR. “Spend 75% of your time on what happened,” Fletcher recommends. This allows every part of your operation to be examined by all participants. Items to sustain or improve will naturally flow from this detailed discussion.

Telling the complete story as described above will prevent participants from avoiding accountability or, conversely, falling into martyrdom. In short, review the operation in detail and in its entirety by asking all participants to share their version of the events. Again, improvements will naturally flow.

Hot Wash

This is the most basic and often most useful type of AAR. If we wait hours or days, human nature will sanitize our shortcomings and modify our reality.

Immediately after the tactical actions subside, get the crew together on the back step (a bottle of water or a cup of coffee helps make it less formal) and walk through the call from beginning to end, step by step. Members will openly share what worked and what needs improving.

Don’t belittle, chastise, correct, make fun of, or disturb this critical flow and discussion. Stop crew members who also look to take this path. Control the positive flow and direction of the discussion. Let your own comments/actions show that this is important for the future. What’s past is past. You may need to remind your crew that this is not personal but only aimed at being better the next time.

A good tactic for leaders is to discuss one or more of your actions you want to sustain or improve from the call. It opens the door to improvement while closing the door to blame. Focus on the call and drive the crew’s discussion toward what happened and how they reacted.

Another great way to start out and close out a hot wash (after you have gone through the call step by step) is to summarize and ask members for three “ups” (what to sustain) and three “downs” (improvements). Starting with three ups gives members confidence that they did a lot right on the call. Finishing with three downs points the way toward needed training and areas to improve for future operations.

What?/So What?/Now What?

The NWCG has developed an ingenious, practical, and firefighter-friendly approach to an AAR that uses these simple questions: “What?”” So what?” and “Now what?” These simple, effective questions capture lessons learned from your most recent response (see box below).

What?

Ask the group to describe the event, desired outcomes, and original plan.

So what (happened)?

What worked (sustain)? What did not (improve)? Why? Also, talk about friction points during the operation.

Now what?

What did we learn? How do we follow up? Talk about priorities for improvement actions such as standard operating procedure changes and improved training. Be sure to include what will happen if you do nothing.