This Easter weekend I managed to drag my three teenage(+) boys out of bed to do a lovely long country walk in the Kent countryside. When we arrived at the village start point, I parked the car, turned and handed the walking book to one of them: “why do I have to do it?” was […]
I would like to finish my current run on AAR blogs with a short story which I hope will show you how powerful it is and the benefits of both applying the system and embedding it throughout your organisation. It is one of the many times that AAR has been of demonstrable benefit to me […]
You may have read in the past that I spent about 6 weeks on exercise in Canada with my Regiment (described in my blog: “I Learned about leading from: that Rock Star”). There is a very structured approach to the timetabling on such an exercise: the participants complete large live firing exercises and then undertake […]
I was so pleased to hear that BD were Highly Commended at the PF awards for the way in which they have both embraced and embedded After Action Review (AAR) into their organisational learning and continuous improvement culture. One of the reasons that I was so pleased was that the words After Action Review got […]
On a recent trip to far away lands, I found myself with some daylight time to kill. So without too much thought I took myself off in a car to a (reasonably) local tourist spot; the top of a very large hill named “Mount Erie”. The top of this mount promised 360-degree views of the […]
Quite early on in my career, I discovered that our Commanding Officer was known as “The Head”. I thought that this nickname might reflect the authority of his position at the top of our organisation – the Headmaster or the Head Honcho, if you like – but over the next few months, the full nickname […]
Something happened to me last week that, to my recollection, has never happened in my life before! I was on an early morning train in to London and we were on the last couple miles of the journey, when the train came to a halt away from any station and the driver made the following […]
I support Stoke City Football Club and I must admit it has been a challenging ride for the past 12 months. We seemed to lose our direction, were rather shambolic on more than one occasion and appeared to lack heart and togetherness. The run of poor results led to a change of manager and suddenly […]
Several years ago (longer than I care to recall!), when I was first made a director and member of the country leadership team, I was driving along the M20 one day to attend a meeting of one of the teams that now reported in to me. The fact is, to this day (over 15 years […]
I worked for an absolutely charming but rather disorganised boss for 2 years in a multinational office where I was his de facto chief of staff (although that was not in my job description or job title). He appeared one day asking me to set up a video conference with a partner organisation which was […]