In my research for more information. on “continuous improvement”; I came across an excerpt from David A Garvin book, “Learning In Action, A Guide to Putting the Learning Organization to Work.” , it talks about the U.S. Army After Action Reviews (AARs). The AARs is simple to explain, basically, after each mission, there are four questions to be asked
What did we set out to do?
What actually happened?
Why did it happen?
What are we going to do next time?
Time criteria according to Army guidelines, roughly 25 percent of the time should be devoted to the first two questions, 25 percent to the third, and 50 percent to the fourth.
What caught my attention was the way they defined their objectives and success, and I decided to post about that. How defining Objectives and Sucess can make all the difference, and here I quote, [ In the Army, objectives are normally defined with great precision. They include three elements: “the key tasks involved, the conditions under which each task may need to be performed, and the acceptable standards for success.]
So imagine that you want to tell a soldier to hit a tank, what would you say to him? how would you explain the mission and the target?.
I would suggest you take a minute and write what would you tell him, my guess is that most of us would say “Over there, a tank will appear, hit it!”
Now compare your answer to the below
“ At a range of 2,000 yards, hit an enemy tank moving at 20 miles per hour over uneven terrain at night with an 80% success rate.”
[With objectives like these, there is little ambiguity, and it is easy to determine whether a job has been done well or poorly.]
Now think how defining an object as the above would affect every thing. For most of us, our life time targets will never include blowing up anything. Yet the same clarity level is not only important but essential to success and the continuation of it, this clarity will cascade into selecting the right person with the required qualification, training, resources, rewards for achievements, and many other elements.
Success on a personal or professional level is the goal of everyone. However, investing time and effort in identifying how success will look like, and how to measure it, is as important as execution planning.
Written by
Bader AlShathry
