The Army is probably one of the world's largest hierarchical and bureaucratic organizations, yet when it comes to training it has managed to flatten itself out and become more of a horizontal organization. By performing After Action Reviews (AAR) after a training activity, it turns it into a learning process that involves all the participants, from the lowest-ranking soldiers to commanders to interested outsiders and observers. It focuses on the tasks and goals to discover why things happen. . . never to judge success or failure. An AAR is perhaps one of the ultimate performance improvement tools because it encourages all stakeholders to share and learn in order to have continuous improvement.
An AAR is an assessment conducted after a project or major activity that allows employees and leaders to discover (learn) what happened and why. It may be thought of as a professional discussion of an event that enable employees to understand why things happened during the progression of the process and to learn from that experience. Examples of when to use it are: introduction of a new product line in a production facility, after a busy holiday season in a retail store, introduction of a new computer system upgrade, after a major training activity, a change in procedures, etc.
Video: Conference Conversations: KC UK 2007
One thing a chairperson can easily do at a conference do make them more engaging and interactive is to allow the participants to have a short conversation with each other after a speaker has finished their talk but before entering the Q&A.
Here is a short video of people doing this at the Ark Groups KC UK Conference in London in June 2007.
It works amazingly well.
Media Information:
Link
If you are interested in Knowledge Management, the
Knowledge Café
or the role of conversation in organizational life then you my be interested in this online book I am writing on
Conversational Leadership
The Gurteen Knowledge Community is a global learning community
of over 21,000 people in 160 countries across the world.
The community is for people who are committed to making a difference:
people who wish to share and learn from each other and who strive to see
the world differently, think differently and act differently.
Membership of the Gurteen Knowledge Community is free.
/VIEW-IMAGE/$File/view-image.png "Media information"){kind=small}
