Closing the loop between planning and action: Using the After Action Review
Contemporary emergency response agencies pose what, on first blush, might seem to be an intriguing organizational conundrum. Fire and EMS organizations, for example, are enterprises that are strongly and very visibly accountable for preparedness respecting the big, the bad and the ugly, those major incidents that can subject a community and its leadership to truly undesirable variations on Andy Warhol’s famed 15 minutes.
On the other hand, their daily operations are driven by “bread and butter” encounters that typically occur between one citizen and one responding company: putting ice on ankles and Band-Aids on boo-boos, putting Aunt Tilly back into her trundle, or helping Chester into his chair. Even where fires or rescues are involved, they’re still most likely to be room-and-contents fires or extrications involving a car or two on the highway.
The paradox is that these distinct types of encounters require different and distinct structures for preparation and management. Those daily encounters are the types that get their best results where organizations are flatter, communications horizontal and decisions are driven to the “proximal provider” level (to the person closest to the customer).
See Closing the loop between planning and action: Using the After Action Review, by Richard Gist, Ph.D. for Homeland1.
Tags: AAR, after action review, Emergency Response
