Corporate Debriefing

"Here at our company, we prefer to repeat errors and avoid learning."

That's something I'm sure you won't hear from anyone in today's business world, and yet that has exactly the same meaning as "We don't have the time or the corporate culture to accommodate debriefing."

In the world of military aviation, the consequences of failure are profound. A "bad day at the office" isn't simply the loss of an account, or even the loss of a job-it could very well be the loss of life, not to mention the loss of multimillion-dollar airplanes. Out of necessity, this community developed a culture of learning that is exemplary. The pilots' formal process of debriefing has, at its core, the mandate to learn from (and avoid repeating) errors, as well as to share successes. The implementation of this process has allowed for the continuous improvement of each individual--and the entire community--over the course of the last 40 years. The results are self-evident:

• accident rates have dropped dramatically;
• significant savings have been realized in human and financial resources;
• mission success has become the norm.

As military pilots moved from their fighter jets to commercial airline jobs, their culture of learning also migrated to the civilian aviation community, in the form of programs such as Crew Resource Management (CRM), Threat and Error Management (TEM), and NASA Aviation Safety Reporting. The latter is a program designed to solicit information from civilian pilots about events that are of concern for operational or safety reasons. That information is used for statistical analysis and recommendations for change, with the understanding that the individual contributors are protected from punitive action for any non-criminal mistakes that may have occurred. The results of these programs in civil and commercial aviation have been equally dramatic. America's aviation system is arguably the safest on the planet.

A formal process of debriefing can be of tremendous value to the corporate world as well.

First, an organization's leadership has to establish an environment of "non-retribution" - employees must feel confident that they won't risk their jobs by reporting their own errors or those of seniors. An obvious distinction is made here between mistakes and crimes (intentional violations of rules or laws). Such an environment will help prevent recurring errors across the Organization if challenged insights derived and implemented.

The next step would be recognition for those who share not only their fault, but their success stories will be extended. Rewarding this behavior encouraged to share the future and accelerates the learning process. This in turn strengthens the team and enhance continuous improvement.

Why not give the companies a formal process of debriefing? It seems pretty intuitive that such a process would be positive and long-terminfluence on the bottom line, right? There are plenty of excuses: "There's simply not enough hours in the day;" "the egos around here couldn't bear that kind of openness;" "no one around here is going to risk his or her job by admitting mistakes." The single most obvious reason that organizations don't debrief (regularly or formally) is that they simply don't plan to debrief. There has to be a commitment from the very top on down to develop a culture of continuous learning.

By adopting a process that is standardized, familiar, repeatable, and scalable, organizations can gain an important edge on the competition. They can reduce their time to insight, in terms of themselves, their customers, and the market. They can adapt more quickly to changes, identify opportunities earlier, and avoid recurring errors. In short, they can Survive, Improve, and, ultimately, dominate!

Debriefing equals learning. Companies should never be "too busy to learn"!