Management - After Action Review Report Writing Assessment Answer

Management Review Report Writing

Assignment Task

• After Action Review Report –(this essay asks you to think about POLC concepts in relation to groups, reflecting on your group assignment experience) (30%)

The purpose of this assignment is to write anafter-action reviewreportof your group work. Think about the time that you spent with the team working on the group assignment. Your report should reflect on how well you think your team performed. In particular, you should focus on: (1) what you did well and what you achieved, (2) what you could do better next time. In writing this report, you should draw on concepts and theories ofplanning,organising,leadingandcontrolling.

Introduction

The aim of feedback in learning groups is to offer the information needed for members to bolster processes and outcomes. The most common form of feedback is one that evaluates performance and provides the team with results to let team participants know what happened. However, as Eddy, Tannenbaum and Mathieu (2013, p. 980), this sort of feedback fails to give the information needed to enable learners to change their conduct. Descriptive feedback provides examples of how to ameliorate in various aspects of the aspect in order get more effective outcomes. Although this form of feedback includes what the learner should do in order to improve, its results may be short-term. Therefore, there is a need for a more effective tool for feedback, especially among the group. One such kind of feedback is a group refection technique known as after action review. This essay will examine how AAR can be used in order to provide insight into the team's process and performance. The basis of the AAR will be an academic group meeting, and the parameters for the assessment will be the roles of management namely planning, organising, leading, and controlling.

After Action Review (AAR)

Reflecting on the relationship between intentions and outcomes is a fundamental practice of a learning organisation. The AAR is a befitting reflective leaning technique. An AAR is a systematic analysis of the performance of group after a recent completion of a task or event (Eddy, Tannenbaum & Mathieu 2013, p. 987). It is a debrief that permits those who took part in the task or event to discover for themselves what actually transpired, what needs to be kept or fixed, as well as how to ameliorate for the next time. The aim of an After Action Review is thus not to judge success or failure; instead, its sole purpose to improve processes and help in preventing problems in future engagements. In carrying out an AAR, Tannenbaum and Cerasoli (2013, p. 233) argue that it is also not wise over analyse issues since the practice waters down the effectiveness of the reviews. However, it is recommended to get to the root of a particular problem.

The first phase of the review process is to determine what was expected to happen (Tannenbaum & Cerasoli 2013, p. 233). Our team was supposed to a hold discussion for a group task at the library. Members were supposed to arrive at the meeting after classes. Each member was already apprised of the topic of discussion and was supposed to conduct their own individual research and then bring the ideas and knowledge gained to the table. This approach was meant to make the discussion livelier since all team members will have something to contribute based on their research. In addition, the prior research was envisioned to make the discussion time shorter, since members would already have gone through the topics themselves and the meeting, was meant to compile the various ideas and address any contentious issues before coming up with a write-up.

What Actually Happened

The discussion was supposed to begin 15 minutes after class. However, it was not after an hour or so that all members were assembled at the venue. Each time member arrived with their own excuse as to why they could not make it to the discussion at the agreed time. Although we managed to complete the task and present a write-up, it became evident that all members were not on the same page regarding what we were supposed to do. The expectation was the meeting would last for at most an hour and a half but we ended up spending more than three hours, which inconvenienced those members who had arrived early. Some had become so impatient that they contemplated postponing the discussion to another day. However, given the urgency of the task, this option was ruled and instead, we had to put up with a few late-comers.

Moreover, during the discussion, most members mistook the opportunity to research on the topic on their own as a licence to get their part of the task done and then leave the deliberations for other members. While each team member was supposed to research on their own, they were also expected to air their ideas during the discussion and not provide a written discussion. Contributing during the meeting would have given others members to participate actively by providing additional opinions. However, this did not happen. Instead, the discussion was dominated by some members who felt that their research deserved to go into the final write-up. The rest of the members thus felt they had not done enough hence kept quiet for almost the entire session.

What We Did Well / What We Would Do the Same Next Time

From our experience, I agree with Tannenbaum and Cerasoli (2013, p. 235) that an After Action Review is meant to be a problem-solving procedure. Its aim is to enable participants to unearth their strengths and weaknesses, propose remedies, as well as come up with a course of action in order to solve the problems. An AAR can be carried based on the chronological order of events, major events/themes or a blend of both techniques (Tannenbaum & Cerasoli 2013, p. 236). For our discussion group, I will use the theme technique where the discussion will centre on how the team fared with respect to planning, organising, leading, and controlling. From the planning point of view, our team had made some commendable efforts to schedule the discussion at a time when no student would be having classes to avoid absence issues. According to Griffin (2012 p. 176), decision-making is the catalyst that drives the planning process. The goals of an organisation follow from decisions made by different managers (Daft & Marcic 2016, p. 182). Our plan to have team members discuss the topic at hand also proved to be helpful to a certain extent because each member was well apprised of the subject of discussion hence it took less time to bring everyone on board. In terms of organising, our performance was mixed. Organising entrails deciding how best to bring together organisational activities and resources (Griffin 2012, p. 296). We ensured the team was composed of members with different abilities and interests.

What We Did Not Do Well / What We Would Do Differently

Although our main objective of completing the task was accomplished, there are a number of issues that we would do differently next. In terms of planning, we would include a strategic plan. While our team had an operation plan that spelt out what was needed to achieve our mission, we did not have a strategic plan spelling out the steps needed to reach our objectives. We also lacked a contingency plan, which according to Griffin (2012, p.283), specifies alternative courses of actions to be implemented if an intended arrangement does not work out. More importantly, we did not effectively identify contingency events such as late-comers or plan for a successful integration of the different points raised by members form their discussion.

Incidentally, in future, we would ensure that we handle discussions earlier enough so that members are not pressed. However, to handle the root cause of lateness, we will put forth ground-rules for the group so that violators are dealt with accordingly. Our team also did not handle the controlling aspect of management adequately. Controlling, according to Griffin (2012, p. 570) entails regulating organisational activities such that some intended aspect of performance remains within acceptable boundaries. Control keeps the organisation moving in the right direction (Daft & Marcic 2016, p. 636). The control of our team was insufficient. Although we had a group leader, his powers were not well-defined. Thus, it was challenging to establish a chain of command and ensure all members are dealt with if they deviate from the ground rules.

Ultimately, having an effective control system can aid in ensuring that organisational goals are attained. According to Griffin (2012, p. 574), however, executing a control system is a systematic procedure that goes through four inter-linked phases. These stages include the establishment of standards, measurement of performance, comparison of performance against standards, and determination of the need for corrective action. While our group had a goal in mind, we did not set standards from which to gauge the attendance and contribution of each member rather than mere presence and decision to attend. In future, we should come up with a kind of benchmark in order to keep track of the members’ group contributions and punctuality. This will curb against the tardiness experience last time and also ensure each group’s contribution is appreciated. Moreover, rather than allocating the whole topic to the group members, next time, we will be more organised by allocating each group member handles a certain aspect of the topic. Just as organisation entails bringing together various building blocks of the organisation, the approach to subdividing the topic into various interrelated sub-topics would ensure that each contribution is not only valid but also one we cannot do without.

Conclusion

In summing up, an After Action Review provides a methodical assessment of what to sustain and improve after an event or task. Its overall objective is not to pass judgment of who erred on what or who performed well but rather to determine what worked and what did not. The focus is on processes rather than individuals. On the basis of the various roles, an AAR of our group discussion reveals that we need to sustain the group diversity but improve on control and planning. From the lesson of lack of a contingency plan, we can rise above the challenges we faced and be more prepared. More importantly, the lessons learn from the AAR can only be worth if they are implemented thus we will seek to hold other review sessions to gauge whether we have executed any points of improvement.