I’m writing this at the beginning of a year (2021), but this practice is something I’d recommend for anything you do or at the end of any time period.

Developing an after action review (AAR) habit can have a powerful effect on everything you do. Whether you’re evaluating your day before you climb into bed, breaking down a major project at work, or contemplating how to make your marriage better, an AAR will help you build on or grow from your previous experience.

What is an After Action Review?

An after action review represents an evaluation of any time period, project, or mission where you identify what went right, what went wrong, what you learned, and how you can do things better the next go around.

I first heard this concept from Michael Hyatt, but since then, I’ve heard it from a million other voices in the productivity, leadership, business, and personal development space.

The purpose of the exercise is to encourage your intentionality around your goals and projects and disciplines. Many of us try things – to lose weight, to make more money, to improve a relationship, to grow spiritually – and either fail or succeed. Typically, we just roll with whatever feelings we have after success or failure.

An after action review encourages growth and continual improvement.

What are the Elements of an After Action Review (AAR)?

While you might run into variations (and I’m sure there’s an official military process for an AAR), what follows works for me – when I remember to work it.

What was the mission and was it accomplished?

The first and most important question is whether or not you achieved the goal you set out to achieve. For my annual review, I have a list of goals and the painful task of seeing how far I got. I do the same on a weekly and quarterly basis.

If I’m evaluating a project or a specific goal, the simple question is if the project was successful or if the goal was achieved.

Pro tip – you might realize you didn’t clarify your goal. The AAR might reveal that you need to take more time to identify what you’re trying to achieve.

What Worked? What Didn’t?

After determining success – complete, partial, or complete stinking failure, ask these two questions:

• What worked?
• What didn’t?

Even in the most egregious, gut wrenching failure, you did something right. What was it? Celebrate even the smallest of wins.

If it was only deciding to try, that’s still a win.

I know that sounds like a participation trophy, but you must keep yourself motivated if you tanked it yet want to keep working at finding success.

Similarly, even in the most amazing success, there were some areas that you really flubbed up. We can always improve.

As a matter of fact, that is exactly how successes turn into failure: you don’t take the time to poke holes in what you did to see where the weaknesses were.

A powerful example from the business and tech world is the failure of Blackberry or Kodak. Do you think Blackberry – who owned the smartphone world – spent enough time finding what didn’t work or what might not work in the future? Did they consider how a competitor might come at them?

Or in the case of college football juggernaut University of Alabama. Do you think he doesn’t consider what worked so he can double down there while at the same time finding every tiny mistake and diagnosing how an opposing team could capitalize on it?

Figure out what worked. Figure out what didn’t. Learn.

What Will You Keep, Improve, Start, or Stop?

In some ways, these questions are redundant to the previous questions. Frankly, if you stopped at what worked and what didn’t, you’d be miles ahead of most people.

But to dive further, identify the following:

• What will you keep doing?
• What will you improve about what you’re currently doing?
• What will you start doing?
• What will you stop doing?

Give yourself a couple minutes to think through each of these questions.

Pay particular attention to what you should STOP doing. Oftentimes, addition is only possible through subtraction in the world of self and project improvement.

Remove distractions. Remove tasks that are really just procrastination in various disguises.

Keep doing the incisive, effective habits, tasks, and practices.

Start doing the thing that you have been hemming and hawing about for the last 3 years.

Improve your morning and evening routines. Improve your communication. Improve your processes.

What Did I Learn? What’s My New Goal?

End the review with these two simple questions:

• What did I learn?
• What’s my new goal? (or how should I adjust my current goal?)

Jot down the big ideas. This “what did I learn” question is coming back around on the previous questions. That’s okay. You might pick up a few more things or you might just be able to summarize everything you learned throughout the AAR.

Finally, your new goal.

Do you need to set a new one?

Do you need to adjust an old one?

Or do you just need to apply what you’ve learned to the current one and get back after it?

After Action Review for the Past Year to Prep for the New Year

Cut and past these questions into a document and answer them:

1. What were my goals last year?
2. How far did I get in accomplishing them?
3. What worked this past year?
4. What didn’t work this past year?
5. What should I keep doing into the new year?
6. What should I improve about how I’m handling my health, my relationships, my relationship with God, my finances, etc?
7. What should I start doing?
8. What should I stop doing?
9. What did I learn?
10. What should my goals be for this next year?

Remember – you can take these same questions and evaluate any project or task or time period.

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An excellent resource for staring a new year (that can be used for starting any new time period or project): Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals – Michael Hyatt

Most mornings, I write out this bullet-pointed reminder:

I’m a steward of…

1. Relationships
2. Roles
3. Resources

Sometimes I add ‘Responsibilities’ even though most of my responsibilities are wrapped in relationships, roles, and resources.

These three – Relationships, Roles, Resources – are written in this order on purpose.

Every decision I make will affect the relationships that I’m in. How I act and conduct my business at work affects my relationships with my wife, my kids, my colleagues, my customers, my vendors.

I’ve learned over time, that it is more important that I maintain perspective on the actual person I’m interacting with and affecting than it is the role I play in their lives.

When I’m tempted to assert my role or my position, i.e. ‘Because I’m your dad’. Or ‘Because I’m your supervisor’ (one that I’ve never actually asserted toward someone). Or ‘Because I’m the chairman of the fundraising committee’….. it’s an indication that I might not have done a good job building a relationship.

Your role isn’t a privilege. It’s a responsibility and a steward only insomuch as it allows you to positively influence an outcome for another person or organization.

The relationship is the important thing. The role is the tool to build the relationship.

Relationship Building vs. Role Assertion

Consider keeping ‘relationship-building’ vs. ‘role-assertion in mind whenever you feel like you’re not getting the results you want or you’re not seeing the results you want to see in the folks that you’re leading or working with.

Where you have ‘power’, are you asserting your role or are you building relationships with those who you’re working with?

Are you making sure they understand what their responsibilities are? Are you providing the resources they need? Are you responding with kindness and patience? Are you clear?

You’ll be able to pull rank a couple times, but pretty soon, there will be mutinies – emotional or otherwise – if you’re not proactively and humbly building relationships.

Do you care more about the outcome for the other person or organization or are you more concerned with the way the situation reflects on you?’

Why Prioritize Relationship-Building

Prioritizing relationship, in the end, allows you to steward your roles better.

If you focus on building your relationship with your children – in light of your role (as a mom or dad) – then you realize building your child up, helping him or her make good decisions, and slowly teaching them to do for themselves what you won’t be able to do for them forever, then you won’t have to resort (too often) to the ‘because I’m your mom / dad’ nuclear option.

Same thing at work… If you are clear on the goals of a project and genuinely check in with honest concern about how thing are going, then things move in the right direction without needing to reference your title even once.

Plus, in each instance, the person you’re in relationship with grows. And that’s the purpose. You’re helping others grow and achieve their goals and clarifying their visions.

How to Make Sure Relationships Are the Top Priority

Here are a few suggestions to help you prioritize relationship-building over role assertion.

• Be clear on expectations: Make sure that everyone knows what is expected. Lack of clarity leads to confusion and butting heads. The best way to help others when you’re a leader is to give clarity.
• Be honest: Learn to be truthful. Building trust by being honest about circumstances, statuses, failings, etc. will only serve to grow the relationship, even if it sacrifices your role. In the long run, it will work out.
• Be humble: Whether at home or at work or in your civic service, be humble. Ask questions. Be curious.
• Ask yourself: Am I lazily trying to be The Guy or The Gal or am I working hard to help other individuals or the organization accomplish a mission? Am i more worried about my position or my relationship? Good self-reflection always works!

In the end, relationships remain even when roles change. You’ll want to have built strong ones with the assistance of the role you play. You don’t want to use relationships to put yourself in a role.

I’ve had a decision maker filter that I’ve been trying to master for a couple years now.

Two of the three parts of my filter came from Andy Stanley sermon series:

1. What does love require of me in this situation?
2. In light of my past history, my present circumstances, and my future hopes and dreams, what is the wise thing to do?

The third (What does unmitigated discipline in all things look like in this situation?) comes from Mr. Jocko Willink.

Mr. Stanley just released a book (or if you’re reading this in the future, he released it on 10/20/20) that teases out those two questions along with three additional questions.

In Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets: 5 Questions to Help You Determine Your Next Move, the pastor of North Point Community Church draws from Scripture and experiential wisdom to offer a paradigm for effective decision-making.

This is one of those books that is striking in its simplicity. He writes in a very conversational style. I could almost hear him speaking from the stage (or the large projector screen) as I read.

Yet the 5 questions he poses as a decision making filter are powerful and air-tight.

While the questions might not help you with every decision, i.e. “Should I use this vendor or that vendor?” or “What college should I go to or job should I choose?”, they will help you be a lot more honest with yourself when you’re facing many a typical dilemma.

Even those decisions I just mentioned – which vendor, school, job, etc. – would be well-served to put through these questions.

Just in case you don’t grab the book, here are the questions….

1. Am I being honest with myself… really?
2. What story do I want to tell?
3. Is there a tension that deserves my attention?
4. What is the wise thing to do?
5. What does love require of me?

I hate giving away all those goods and not teasing this thing more, but on the off chance you made it to this blog post / book review and won’t buy the book, you might just need to read those questions and apply them to something you’re dealing with right now.

So many times we decide in the moment, based on what makes us most comfortable or what causes us the least amount of pain or provides the most pleasure – in that very moment.

Unfortunately, that type of on-the-fly decision-making can and does lead to regrets.

You and I have both been there. We can immediately go to the place of that one decision that wrecked a relationship or created more stress than needed or even ruined a career or caused someone else emotional or physical pain.

This little book is for those of us who desire, above all else, to make decisions with our relationships, our health, our faith, and our legacy in mind.

I highly recommend it. You can pick it up at Amazon or anywhere else books are sold.

You can also go to Andy Stanley’s website to find out about early order bonuses!! Woot! Click here for all that.