Article
Debrief/After Action Review: The Discipline That Separates Elite Teams from Everyone Else
June 15, 2026
Debrief Like a Fighter Pilot
After every single mission, fighter pilots debrief.
Every one. Textbook or near-disaster. Exhausted or wired. 2am or 2pm. They sit down, set rank aside, and go through exactly what happened: what worked, what didn’t, what changes next time.
I heard this recently from Kim “KC” Campbell, a decorated A‑10 “Warthog” fighter pilot who flew combat missions and now teaches leaders how elite squadrons keep getting better. It’s stayed with me. Fighter aviation and business are both high-performance worlds, and so much of what works in the cockpit translates directly to the boardroom.
Because in thirty years of working with executive teams, I can tell you this kind of disciplined reflection is rare. Not because leaders don’t care, but because it’s genuinely hard to do well.
We review results. We celebrate wins. We get frustrated about what went wrong. But the structured, honest, ego-aside debrief? That’s the rare one. Some teams do it beautifully. Some of us are still building the habit. And all of us can do it better, which makes it one of the biggest opportunities I know of.
What a Real Debrief (After Action Review) Looks Like
In a fighter squadron, the debrief is almost sacred. Rank doesn’t matter in that room. The most junior pilot can challenge the mission commander. The goal isn’t blame. It’s understanding exactly what happened so you get better.
There’s a specific structure:
- What was the plan?
- What actually happened?
- What was the gap?
- What do we do differently next time?
Not complicated. Just disciplined. And that discipline, compounded over thousands of missions, is how elite units become elite.
Why It’s Hard to Make Time
You’re busy. The next thing is already on fire. Stopping to analyze the last mission can feel indulgent when there’s a new one launching tomorrow.
But that’s exactly backward. Teams that don’t debrief tend to repeat the same mistakes, with the same energy and the same certainty. Running fast in circles. The teams that pause are the ones that compound.
The other challenge is ego, and it’s deeply human. An honest debrief asks someone to say “I made a mistake” or “the plan wasn’t good enough.” When being wrong feels risky, you don’t get a debrief. You get a polished narrative. The good news: the leader sets the tone, and that’s entirely within our control.
How We Do It With Clients
Before anyone looks forward, we look back.
What did we commit to? What actually happened? What drove the gap: the plan, the execution, or the environment? What do we do better next time?
Simple questions. The hard part is making the answers honest.
The CEO sets the tone. If you go first, sharing a real miss and what you learned, you give everyone else permission to do the same. If you stay open rather than defensive, your team will follow your lead.
One of our core values at Lawrence & Co. is Better Next Time. A genuine question: what actually happened, and how do we do it better next time? From my perspective, this builds learning into the thinking of our culture. It’s always learning and always iterating to get better, and it makes it more natural and easy for people to share where something wasn’t ideal and help make it better.
The Red Team
KC mentioned something I immediately wrote down: the red team.
In military planning, you designate a team whose entire job is to challenge the plan. Find the holes. Ask the hard questions. Poke at the assumptions. Institutionalized devil’s advocacy.
Few of us have this by default, and that’s understandable. It’s natural to surround ourselves with people who tend to agree, or with a trusted advisor who has learned to soften the edges over time. A red team gives you something different and powerful: someone whose explicit job is to make the plan stronger by stress-testing it.
You don’t need a formal structure. You need to explicitly give someone permission to challenge you. Tell them that’s their job. Reward them when they do it well. And mean it.
How We Build This Into Our Team
I’ve done this with my own COO, Kurtis, for years. We disagree all the time. I push, he pushes back. I’ve even had to check in specifically to make sure my pushback doesn’t shut him down, because if he stops speaking up, I lose my best instrument.
And honestly, this isn’t just Kurtis. It’s strong across our whole team, and we want it that way. Our team is full of smart, experienced, driven people who genuinely love to learn. They’re working with different clients in different environments on a regular basis, and they bring all of that perspective back to the table.
At the root, our belief is simple: the more different perspectives we bring together in an efficient way, the better the final decision will be. I would far rather have people poke holes in something in advance, while we can still do something about it, and make it far more likely to succeed. Challenge isn’t a threat to a good plan. It’s how a good plan becomes a great one.
How to Start
You don’t need an hour. KC said it herself: a quick 10 to 15 minutes walking out of a client meeting, or in the car back to the office, or a few minutes after a Zoom or Team meeting, is better than nothing.
Three questions are enough:
- What did we do well?
- What didn’t work?
- What’s one thing we do differently next time?
Build it into your meeting rhythm. Make it structural so it doesn’t depend on someone remembering to do it.
The leaders I know who are consistently getting better, in their companies, in their judgment, in their capability, almost all have some form of disciplined reflection built into how they work.
That’s not a coincidence.
Challenge
Pick a project or important meeting and spend 10, 15, or 20 minutes to do a real debriefslash after action review. Not a results review, an honest post-mortem. What went well, what didn’t, what changes. You go first. Share a genuine learning of your own. See what it opens up.
Watch the full interview below.
Additional Resources:
Articles
- The Meeting Rhythm That Actually Runs the Business
- The 90-Day Sprint: How Quarterly Themes Transform Execution
- If Not You, Who? The One Thing Only the CEO Can Do
Webinar
Book: The 4 Forces of Growth
Book: Scaling Up
Book: Your Oxygen Mast First
About Lawrence & Co.
Lawrence & Co. is a growth strategy and leadership advisory firm that helps mid-market companies achieve lasting, reliable growth. Our Growth Management System turns 30 years of experience into practical steps that drive clarity, alignment, and performance—so leaders can grow faster, with less friction, and greater confidence.
About Kevin Lawrence
Kevin Lawrence has spent three decades helping companies scale from tens of millions to hundreds of millions in revenue. He works side-by-side with CEOs and leadership teams across North America, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and Europe, bringing real-world insights from hands-on experience. Kevin is the author of Your Oxygen Mask First, a book of 17 habits to help high-performing leaders grow sustainably while protecting their mental health and resilience. He also contributed to Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0). Based in Vancouver, he leads Lawrence & Co, a boutique firm of growth advisors.