Peer Assist and After Action Review - Making it happen
Faculty: Nancy M. Dixon and Bruce Kaplan
This one-day workshop focuses on two of the most important knowledge processes. Peer Assist is a meeting of a team with colleagues the team has invited to assist them in dealing with a significant issue the team is facing. It is powerful because it is initiated by a team that has a need - so it is pull, not push (see Peer Assist Guidelines). The morning of this workshop is focused on developing the understanding of how to set a Peer Assist up, who to involve and how to facilitate the meeting. Then we hold a live Peer Assist to give participants the opportunity to actually learning from each during the workshop.
The afternoon of the workshop is devoted to the After Action Review. An AAR is a meeting of team members to reflect on an event or task they have just accomplished. The purpose of the AAR is to learn from the team's experience in order to take the lessons learned into the next phase of the project or to accomplish the team's task more effectively the next time it is done. In the workshop, we provide an overview of the process, success factors and facilitation techniques, and examples of organizations that are currently using AARs for productivity gains (see AAR Guidelines). Participants engage in an actual ARR to experience its value first hand.
The goal of the one-day workshop is to provide participants with two knowledge transfer skills that they can put to work immediately.
We have now delivered this workshop in several organizations and it always draws a large audience and is praised for its practicality. We also offer the AAR portion as an all day workshop to prepare facilitators to conduct AARs. This workshop is a mix of hands-on practice and the concepts that make it function effectively.
Workshop Agenda
Critical Discourse: Frontline Skills for Organizational Change
Faculty: Nancy M. Dixon and Bruce Kaplan
Organizational change depends on the competence of individuals and groups - at the frontline - to reflect critically on their own reasoning and to test their insights in action. But that vital competence is rarely displayed in daily organizational meetings.
The Problem
In such meetings assumptions are rarely challenged, and when they are the attempt is rarely successful. Challengers tend to rely on one of two tactics. The first is an attempt to subtly lead someone else to one's own point of view through all too transparent questions. And the second, born of too long held frustration, often comes out in a flash of anger. The first is recognized as manipulative and the second immediately results in defensiveness. Neither works.
Participant: "I have been surprised a lot. I thought I was asking effective questions, but actually I was using very leading/controlling questions of others - and I now realize they knew it all along!"
The Solution
There is, however, a skillful way to challenge the assumptions of others as well as to become more aware of one' own assumptions - and equally important undertaking. The skill set is based on the research of Professor Chris Argyris of Harvard University. Dr Dixon and Dr. Kaplan have taught these skills to hundreds of military personnel who must daily challenge assumptions in a respectful manner, engineers and corporate professionals who must accomplish their work through influence rather than position power and intelligence analysts who must examine all the available knowledge about critical defense issues.
Participant: "I am now about to get a better understanding of others' positions - I know how and what to ask."
The Process
But it is not a quick fix! Gaining competence requires two kinds of learning, 1) unlearning old patterns of response, and 2) practicing new patterns until they become natural enough to be immediately available. That practice starts with the first workshop day but is only really learned through the daily on-the-job interaction that is then subjected to systematic reflection using databased tools and skillful coaching. Critical Discourse is designed as a workshop/coaching sequence, held in-house over a three month period. The staggered meeting schedule helps participants test out the skills in their own setting and then bring the issues they face to the next workshop meeting.
Participant: "The critical discourse workshop is structured well and gave me time to learn and then apply what I learned over a few months time. It helped me slow down and analyze what I think and what I say to people to allow deeper and clearer communication."
Workshop Agenda
Implementation Relay: Moving Organizational Knowledge
Implementation Relay is a process that diffuses learning gained in a project to similar projects across multiple sites. The metaphor of a relay race frames winning, not just as successful implementation in one setting, but rather as one team eagerly handing off what has been learned to another setting that can take a similar implementation farther yet. Likewise, the metaphor denotes a willingness on the part of new project teams to "reach out" for the baton of newly created knowledge before they take off on their task. The Implementation Relay involves a set of processes that include:
- Innovation Scan – is the process a team uses at the beginning of a project/initiative to seek out other sites or facilities that have already implemented similar projects.
- Peer Assist –is a process for dialogue between the project team and the colleagues the team has invited to assist them. The project team initiates the request when they identify another team (through innovation scan) that is further along the learning curve. During the peer assist meeting, the asking team gains new insights from their peers. The assisters gain as well, learning both from the asking team and from each other. Teams who call for an assist are not required to use the suggestions that others make, although most find the insights of their peers of considerable value to their on going work. This effective knowledge transfer process avoids the pitfalls of best practice and lessons learned initiatives by placing the focus on what the requesting team wants to learn rather than on what the assist team has accomplished.
- Implementation - is a task of adaptation not adoption. It would be extremely rare for any project team to be able to do exactly what another team has done. One of the marvels of an adaptation meeting is that often the new ideas the team comes to agreement upon are something that the assist team would scarcely recognize as having come from them. What has happened is that between the peer assist and the follow-up planning meeting, the members of the team have been assimilating what they have learned from the assist team and that has spurred yet more ideas about how to proceed forward. In the end, it is not the assist team’s ideas upon which they will move forward, but the collective sense they have made of those ideas.
- After Action Review –is a meeting of team members to reflect on an event or task they have just accomplished. The purpose of the AAR is to learn from the team’s experience in order to take the lessons learned into the next phase of the project or to accomplish the team’s task more effectively the next time it is done. Although the AAR is described here as a part of Implementation Relay, it can be utilized for many organizational learning purposes once the skill set has been developed.
- Spread – spread involves the deliberate use of personal networks to transfer the findings of the AAR to other teams. Spread also involves crafting memorable stories about the success that can be carried by both leadership and staff. Knowledge Synthesis described below also accomplishes spread.
- Knowledge Synthesis - Knowledge Synthesis is the multi-media integration of a body of knowledge on a specific topic that has been gathered from peer assists, AARs and interviews. A Knowledge Synthesis represents the organization’s memory of that topic - as such, it grows and changes as more is learned. Rather than being a linear listserve or a series of best practices, it is a synthesis of the knowledge of implementation. As such it is a blend of tacit and explicit knowledge; the tacit knowledge carried by stories, quotes, video clips of interviews, and pictures, and the explicit knowledge carried by documents, charts, process maps and other artifacts. A Knowledge Synthesis allows an organization to not only preserve what it has learned from its experience, but to interpret and translate that knowledge for the benefit of new and often experienced users.
Diagram of Implementation Relay
The Goal of the Consulting/Training process is to prepare a cadre of internal facilitators/coaches with the skills and knowledge to conduct all steps of the Implementation Relay
Consulting and Training Steps for the Implementation Relay
