The Debrief Most Leaders Never Do

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 from Kim ​“KC” Camp­bell recent­ly. And it’s stayed with me.

Because in thir­ty years of work­ing with exec­u­tive teams, I can tell you: most lead­er­ship teams nev­er do this. Not with any real discipline.

They review results. They cel­e­brate wins. They get frus­trat­ed about what went wrong. But the struc­tured, hon­est, ego-aside debrief? Rare.

And it shows.

What a Real Debrief 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? Why was there a 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 Busi­ness Teams Skip It

You’re busy. The next thing is already on fire. Stop­ping to ana­lyze the last mis­sion feels indul­gent when there’s a new one launch­ing tomorrow.

But that’s exact­ly back­ward. Teams that don’t debrief keep mak­ing the same mis­takes — with the same ener­gy and the same cer­tain­ty. Run­ning fast in circles.

The oth­er rea­son is ego. Hon­est debrief requires some­one to say ​“I made a mis­take” or ​“the plan was­n’t good enough.” In cul­tures where being wrong is a career risk, you don’t get a debrief. You get a pol­ished narrative.

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 car­ry forward?

Sim­ple ques­tions. The hard part is mak­ing the answers honest.

The CEO sets the tone. If you go first — share a real miss and what you learned — you give every­one else per­mis­sion to do the same. If you get defen­sive, con­scious­ly or not, your team will too.

One of our core val­ues at Lawrence & Co. is Bet­ter Next Time. Not as a for­mal­i­ty. As a gen­uine ques­tion: what actu­al­ly hap­pened, and how do we do 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.

Most CEOs don’t have this. They have yes-peo­ple, or a trust­ed advi­sor who’s learned to soft­en the edges over time. Nei­ther gives you what a red team gives you.

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.

I’ve done this with my own COO, Kur­tis, for years. We dis­agree all the time. I push; he push­es back. I’ve 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.

How to Start

You don’t need an hour. KC said it her­self: a quick 10 – 15 min­utes walk­ing out of a client meet­ing, or in the car back to the office, 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:

At your next lead­er­ship team meet­ing, spend 20 min­utes on a real debrief of a recent project or quar­ter. 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 with KC 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

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