YOU JUST MADE A CHOICE.
While it doesn’t measure up against some of history’s legendary choices – like Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” and Patrick Henry’s “give me liberty or give me death” – but you did choose to read this message and I’m thankful for your decision, and assure you it will be well worth your time and attention.
I long ago discovered an important strategy that has allowed me, and my clients to continually improve performance and generate more revenue (personal and business) every year for the past 20 + years.
It’s called an After Action Review (AAR), and it’s all about reflecting on past performance, reviewing the relationship between intended versus actual results, and responding in a way that makes your life bigger and far more fulfilling in the coming year.
To experience consistent growth you need to leverage you past experience for all it’s worth…and in this lesson, I’ll show you how to do it.
To make 2017 the best it can be, you need to perform an AAR and analyze what took place in 2016. You need to identify every nugget of knowledge your past performance offers and leverage it for all it’s worth.
Unfortunately the vast majority of people and companies don’t learn enough from their mistakes or their accomplishments. It’s like everyone is simply plugging along with their heads down and its Ground Hog Day all over again.
But, instead of repeating the same day over and again, too many people continue to repeat the same outlook, same approach, and same strategies. Is it any surprise as to why they would continue to get the same results?
You and I both know that no matter how good or bad your results were in 2017 – you can always do better.
Yet, the single biggest key to improving both your performance and your results seems to go ignored by almost everybody.
If you want to perform at the top of your game…you absolutely must reflect, review, and respond to the information obtained through the AAR process.
AFTER ACTION REVIEW
There are seven steps in the AAR process, and you must begin implementing the ideas that you are about to generate immediately.
Step 1. Identify Your Three Greatest Accomplishments In 2016?
Even if 2016 was a challenging year for you, odds are if you look close enough there’s something somewhere to be proud of.
Step 2. Analyze What You Learned from Each Accomplishment?
Now that you have identified your three greatest accomplishments, go back to each one. This time though identify exactly what you learned or were reminded of by each of them.
Step 3. Identify Your Biggest Disappointments Of 2016?
Practically every company and individual resists analyzing their mistakes. That’s a shame because this is where the best learning comes from.
Step 4. Analyze What You Learned from Each Failure or Disappointment?
No matter how great everything in life is going – we all make mistakes. The trick here is to really analyze them, what preceded them, what could you have done differently, and how can you prevent them in the future.
Step 5. Identify How You Limited Yourself Last Year and How Can You Stop?
Were there certain actions you took or didn’t take that came back to haunt you? In order to make sure you don’t limit yourself again – you need to bring these self-defeating actions to the surface, confront them, and most importantly determine what you must do differently to make sure you don’t make the same mistakes all over again.
Step 6. Pragmatically Review the Information You Have Gathered?
The goal of this exercise is not simply to know yourself and your business better but to actually use the information to make certain 2017 far surpasses 2016.
What are the big takeaways from answering each question?
What do you know about yourself or your business that you didn’t realize or weren’t thinking about?
Obviously, having this list isn’t going to do it all, you still need to take this new knowledge and USE IT!
Fortunately, that’s what the last question is centered around. And here it is…
Step 7: Use This Information to Astound, Astonish and Amaze Yourself in 2017?
The purpose here is to build into your schedule, your interactions, your management style or whatever else you’ve surfaced in the previous questions and build yourself a new, better approach.
Ok, now that we’ve uncovered a lot of useful information, the final step is to incorporate it into a fast start plan for 2017.
If you’ll allow me, I’d like to show you how as I’ve put together a comprehensive game plan which will show you how to start the New Year fast, focused and fired up and the best part is that’s free.
Use it to make 2017 the best year of your life…and you are welcome to pass it on to others.
Gary Ryan Blair
Comments are closed.