So how did you do? Really. No "nicey nicey" banal comments please on how it was "great". What really worked - and why? And what really didn't work - and why not? What role did you have? In the success? In the failures?

After a project or an event, it's rare that anyone, either individually or as a team, sits down to reflect on what has unfolded.

Ironically, the learning from an event comes primarily from the debrief rather than from the event itself. That's worth repeating because it is so profound and so often overlooked: the learning from an event comes primarily from the debrief rather than from the event itself.

It's a delicate art to conduct a retrospective that's powerful and useful and not a destructive critique.

Most of us don't bother with a post-event analysis. But even when we do, they can be painfully horrible affairs: a combination of passive-aggressive politeness with no one willing to mention the "dead moose" (or "dead elephant" or "dead kangaroo", depending on your country of origin) that is in the room. (For those unfamiliar with the phrase, we're talking about the thing that's big and rotten and getting in the way of everything).

An After Action Review (AAR) is focused primarily on learning and building community. It is founded on two related principles: