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Debriefing as Continuous Improvement
If there was one trend in the last decade of the twentieth century that anyone would recognize as important, it would be continuous improvement. Whether it was branded the Deming Method or Six
Sigma or a host of other models, ‘continuous improvement processes’ found their way into organizations large and small and have made a major contribution to improving quality worldwide.
In an environment of instant and unpredictable change, most of these models are statistically based and unwieldy. They can bog down a company and delay actions and reactions so much that they become ends instead of means. To survive, thrive, and remain on the cutting edge, organizations must learn to adapt rapidly, which means they need feedback loops that are nearly instantaneous and a process for feeding lessons learned back into the company in near-real time. They must close the gap between what was true about the market yesterday and what the new truth is today.
[wcm_restrict]The new paradigm: Time is your enemy.
The new paradigm: Speed is everything.
When you think about it, aviation, whether military or commercial, is by necessity a culture of learning. In one flight alone we can go through three time zones, four weather fronts, and make a dozen changes in altitudes or headings.
We may take off in Greenland and land in the heat and humidity of Panama. We train and retrain on the aircraft systems, the regulations, the standards, the normal procedures and the emergency procedures.
It’s our job to get the plane down safely, whether riddled by bullets or with two dead engines snuffed out by birds over the Hudson River. So we aviators seek cultures of learning. Cultures of learning are marked by questions such as “Can I get your opinion on this?” and “What do you think about that?” and “How did you handle the problem?” In a culture of learning, we don’t believe it’s a sign of weakness to make a mistake; we think it’s a weakness to hide our mistakes. That’s what we mean by a culture of learning. In that type of culture, continuous improvement is just that – continuous.
As pilots, our DNA goes back to those romantic barnstormers that flew dangerously close to a crowd, broke all of the rules, wowed the audiences, and sported a razor-thin Rhett Butler mustache. Flying was a seat-of-the-pants business. Turn-and-burn, yank-and-bank; show me how to start the engine and get out of my way. But then we sobered up. We were forced to change. There were too many accidents, too many crashes, too many fatalities. The training intensified and basic skills such as instrument flying and navigation replaced the prerequisites of dash-and-charm as a pilot credential. Still, we had a long way to go. During World War II, the success of a mission was measured by how many people got back alive, and the debrief was largely the battle damage report. Crews were interviewed by the intelligence officers to identify new anti-aircraft emplacements or new enemy tactics, but little heed was paid to the execution of the mission, how tight the formations were flown, if the navigational waypoints were correct or if the proper landing procedures were used to penetrate thick ground fog during an instrument landing. Bone-weary pilots simply hungered for sleep and that was that.
It wasn’t until Vietnam that we started to take debriefing seriously, and that came about only because we were suffering terrible casualties in the sky. During the early part of the war we were losing one aircraft to every 3.7 enemy aircraft shot down, and at some points it was as low as 2:1. At first that might sound like a successful statistic, but in truth it was abysmal. Considering the training our pilots had and the superior jets they were flying, the kill ratio should have been much higher.
But it wasn’t. The problem was the first 10 missions. We quickly discovered that on-the-job training in real combat has tragic results. Our pilots were so overwhelmed, so Task Saturated by real combat that by the time they got up to speed, half of their buddies were gone. We had to accelerate their learning curve, get them combat-wise fast, get pilots battle hardened before they flew their first combat mission.
We went back to the basics. If our pilots were too green going into combat, then our training had to change until they were too good to be shot down during their entire tour of duty. The answer was to marry an academic approach to an intense, near-combat flight training regime followed by a rigorous analysis of the results. We were going to train our pilots to fly hard. We were going to force them to make mistakes. And then we were going to help them understand their mistakes. We were going to create a culture where there was no place to hide, where mistakes led to winning, where everything would be analyzed, a place where there were no points for second best, a place these pilots could train until they were better than their instructors. The Air Force created the Fighter Weapons School, followed by the Navy’s famous Top Gun school.
It was in these schools, born of necessity, that the debrief entered military aviation as a deadly serious tool of executional excellence. A group of pilots would be given a plan for a sortie; they’d fly it, then they’d get in a room and analyze it, and that was where the breakthroughs came. The post-flight analysis was as hard and as unforgiving and as brutally honest as it could be. First, the mission leader would restate the mission objectives and the results. Did we accomplish our mission objective? If yes, how? If no, how? Every detail of the mission would be analyzed, from the briefing, start, taxi, takeoff, route and the tactical mission, to the return to base, landing and taxi in. And we wanted to know why things occurred. Why did you stack high in the formation with the sun high on the horizon? Why did you perform a reversal instead of a ditch maneuver? Why did the #3 aircraft in our four-ship come back with 1,000 pounds less fuel than the others?
We wired the training areas and gathered telemetry so we could recreate the engagements on big screens. No one could hide; mistakes were bigger than life. We broke every minute of a mission down to its fundamental parts, until we had pilots who were deadly serious about flying and surviving.
From there, it spread. Pilots went back to their units and instituted debriefs. Missions never ended at the bar, they ended in the debriefing room. The debrief became a place where everyone could hash it out in detail, what went right, what went wrong, and what could be done about it next. It became open and honest, nameless and rankless. It was refined, tweaked and improved until how a debrief was run was as important as what the debrief covered.
Pilots got a lot better. The debrief led to continuous improvement and accelerated learning across entire squadrons and entire wings. We learned to apply strict time limits and to manage the process so information moved into the debrief quickly. In the end, our pilots started to survive their first 10 missions and the kill ratios improved six-fold, from 2:1 to 13:1. The debriefs that fighter pilots now hold are places where participants freely admit their mistakes and make absolutely sure they understand their successes. They develop lessons learned, lessons that can immediately improve existing processes and can be stored and transmitted to any other pilot, anywhere in the world, to improve their planning and execution. Debriefs dig deeply into root causes, where powerful organizational improvements can be made.
You may think you’re too small or too hierarchal to debrief; it may sound like a tall order for your company. But consider this – formal debriefing takes place in the most hierarchical institution of all, the military, where rank is quite literally worn on everyone’s shoulder or sleeve. If the military can do it, any organization can.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]
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About the Authors
James D. ‘Murph’ Murphy, the Founder & CEO of Afterburner, Inc., has a unique and powerful mix of leadership skills in both the military and business worlds. Murph joined the U.S. Air Force where he learned to fly the F-15. He logged over 1,200 hours as an instructor pilot in the F-15 and accumulated over 3,200 hours of flight time in other high-performance aircraft. As the 116th Fighter Wing’s Chief of Training for the Georgia Air National Guard, Murph’s job was to keep 42 combat-trained fighter pilots ready to deploy worldwide within 72 hours. As a flight leader, he flew missions to Central America, Asia, Central Europe and the Middle East.
Will Duke is Afterburner’s Director of Learning and Development. His duties include coordination of the development of intellectual property, training programs, and educational materials. He also serves as a consultant to process and continuous improvement management programs. With Co-Author James ‘Murph’ Murphy, he wrote the 2010 release The Flawless Execution Field Manual.
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