AARs, and when integrated, the process is typically bottom-up,
starting with reports from the platoons. The usual outcome to an
AAR is that the unit stops doing things the same old way. Mistakes
will be made in the future, but not the same ones; errors are rarely
repeated.
Early civilian adopters of AARs in the 1990s were Shell Oil,
Fidelity, IBM, and Harley-Davidson.^4 These adoptions were within
certain business units, not usually across the entire corporation.
Nevertheless, successes have been achieved in the corporate sec-
tor, and lessons have been learned. For example, some pitfalls to
avoid include the following:^5
- Not having sufficiently clear goals for an AAR
- Having too many people for the review, that is, not everyone
having the real “ground truth” knowledge of the project - Doing an AAR through individual interviews instead of
bringing the whole group together - Allowing a leader to misuse the review information by
punishing someone who was involved
An AAR can concretize organizational learning and knowl-
edge management at their best. However, to properly serve in this
role, it must become an endemic part of an organization’s culture,
a fundamental way of doing things, and a normal everyday compo-
nent of doing business.
Tacit Versus Explicit KnowledgeThe late Herbert Simon, economist, cognitive science researcher,
and Nobel Prize recipient, studied master chess players at one stage
of his illustrious career. He was interested in their thought processes
and also in whether or not he could “teach” a computer to play
chess. He wanted to learn from the players so that he could then
program the computer. He found that when he asked these master
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