We’ve all seen it on TV or in the movies.

Usually the plot includes a military or police agency.

And then some big event happens.

And what’s the first thing they do after the event?

They have a debriefing.

They get one or more of the witnesses in a room and ask them all sorts of questions about what happened.

Debriefings are a type of after action review (AAR).  AARs, which were originally developed by the U.S. Army, are reviews that determine what happened, why it happened, and how performance could be improved the next time the same or similar event happens.

Does your business conduct debriefings?

If not, you might be missing out on a huge opportunity.

Why? Well there are a few reasons.

The first is that the easiest way to be more successful is to figure out what you’ve done that has been successful, and simply repeat it. So, when you debrief after a project, spend time determining what went right. And then make sure to repeat that in the future.

And with regards to what went wrong, this is an opportunity to improve performance in the future.

Importantly, conducting after action reviews discipline your organization to continually learn and improve.

They’re not just about what went wrong. Nor should they only focus on what went right. It’s about both. And once you determine both, you can repeat your successes, fix your mistakes, and make future projects much more successful.

It's really easy to make fun of big businesses. With all their bureaucracy, they tend to move slowly. And they tend to be difficult to work with.

But there's one thing that big businesses typically do much better than smaller companies. And that is conducting employee performance reviews.

In fact, many smaller businesses focus so much on solving day to day crises, that conducting employee reviews falls by the wayside.

Which leads to problems. Lots of problems.

Here's why:

Companies that succeed have strategic plans.

And, when you conduct periodic employee performance reviews, you ensure that your employees have objectives that are congruent with your company's strategic plan.

So rather than employees focusing on tasks that they think are right, you ensure that they accomplish the tasks that really allow your company to grow and profit.

Without performance reviews, you get lots of problems. Management gets frustrated because employees are not achieving key objectives. And employees get frustrated because they don't know if they're doing a good job or not.

Interestingly, when I recently interviewed Mike Carden, co-founder of performance management review company Sonar6, he told me that most employees really like performance reviews, even when they are underperforming.

He said, "It's sort of like playing golf. Even if you don't play great, you want to know your score at the end."

Carden gave me some other great tips on conducting performance reviews to ensure that you get the most out of your employees and your company achieves its objectives.

Among other things, Carden mentioned that reviews should typically be done monthly and should take no more than 20-30 minutes per employee.

By getting into the habit of conducting monthly performance reviews, you ensure that your employees remain focused on the RIGHT objectives and that you reward them and/or improve their performance more quickly.

To hear a short clip of the interview, click the blue triangle on the player below:

Growthink University members can download the full interview here: http://www.growthinkuniversity.com/members/384.cfm

Yesterday I had the privilege of interviewing Matt Ocken, one of the founders of Kindred Partners.

Kindred Partners might be the best at recruiting executives for high-growth technology companies. In fact, some of the top venture capital firms continuously use Kindred to find executives for the companies they fund.

If that’s not enough, consider that Kindred was responsible for placing CEO Meg Whitman at eBay as well as key executives at Google, Amazon and Facebook.

So, Matt was obviously uniquely qualified to answer my questions about how to expertly build your company’s management team.

Matt started by going through the four tactics for building a great management team. Surprisingly, the first tactic was pretty simple and should be used by virtually all entrepreneurs.

The tactic? Figuring out who you already know that could be a good addition to your team. As Matt pointed out, there is a proven correlation between success and a team having worked together in the past. So, if you have successfully worked with someone in the past, your chances of successfully working together again are high. And investors know this and are keen to fund companies led by teams with history of successfully working together.

So, a first step is for the entrepreneur to do an audit of who they have worked with successfully in the past. You could have worked with them in school, at a job or at an organization. Create this list and then narrow it down to include the individuals you truly respect and would like to work with again in the future. Then, contact these individuals to see if they are interested in joining your team.

Note, Jay Turo, Growthink’s other co-founder, and I met at business school. We worked together successfully on a couple of projects during school and were friends. So, Jay was the first person I approached after I had the idea for Growthink. We’ve now run Growthink together for 10 years, so I can personally vouch to Matt’s approach!

Click here to download the interview as an MP3 file and the PDF transcript.

And here is a preview of the first few minutes of the interview (click the blue triangle to play):

• Training manuals that document key tasks performed by key personnel, so that someone else could take over their job requirements in the event that they were out of the office temporarily or long-term


• A hiring plan that allows you to efficiently recruit and train new personnel


• Constantly networking and telling people the exciting aspects of your business so that there is a pent-up demand to work at your company

A recent article from the Wall Street Journal suggests that companies are becoming more productive in response to the downturn.

The WSJ noted that in Q4 the decrease in the number of hours worked might have been greater than the contraction in overall economic output. In other words, businesses appear to have increased their productivity. 

Improvements can come from shifting marketing budgets to more easily measurable media (such as internet marketing) as opposed to print and television, renegotiating more favorable contracts with vendors and suppliers, and eliminating redundancies and waste across departments. 

An uptick in productivity would contrast favorably with previous slowdowns in the 1970s and 1980s when productivity lagged.


How are you reacting to the downturn?  What measures have you taken to improve your firm's productivity?

In times of economic crisis, far too many business owners revert to “safe mode” as panic spreads. A "responsible" course of action typically includes one (or more) of the following:

• Tightening purse strings
• Laying off key employees
• Putting growth plans on the backburner

"It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it."  -- Benjamin Franklin.

Fannie Mae.  Freddie Mac.  Bear Stearns.  Countrywide.  IndyMac.  Lehman.  Merrill.  Once strong and even great corporate and financing nameplates now sullied by significant business reverses.

On the flip side: Apple.  Google.  Berkshire Hathaway.  Goldman Sachs.  Firms with gilt-edged reputations and prestige, admired the world over.