After Action Review – analyse and improve crisis behavior

Your expert for questions

Jens Greiner
Director, Forensic Services at PwC Germany
Tel.: +49 69 9585-5831
Email

Learn from your company’s response to the last crisis

Organisations that have experienced a major disruption recognise that no matter how effective their response was, they can always do better. An After Action Review will allow you to learn from previous crisis situations both from your mistakes and from positive experiences – and to benefit from these insights in future crisis situations.

The After Action Review enables two perspectives – each an opportunity to improve your understanding of the business and other functional areas:

• In-flight review
  During a crisis that requires a prolonged response, the in-flight review helps you assess your performance and make corrections in real time.
• Post-incident review
  With a review of how well your response capabilities and processes performed, you can identify actionable areas for improvement and bolster your confidence for the next crisis.

What is the purpose of an After Action Review?

Moving forward from a crisis, a company that invests time and energy into considering upcoming risks – and determining the right actions for each – is more likely to turn potential surprises into strategic opportunities. Our crisis experts will help you collect data and insights from lessons learned to help you identify and prioritise actionable areas for improvement.

Following a crisis, an organization that,

• invests time and effort in an After Action Review, 
• focuses on upcoming risks, and
• invests in the right measures, 

will be optimally prepared for potential new surprises and disruptive events. Examining one’s own actions is a very useful exercise for your crisis management team. It is also a signal to your stakeholders that you are committed to continuous learning.

Confront challenges, maximise strengths

The After Action Review produces actionable insights you can apply to your organisation, with a focus on promoting continuous learning and accountability. Another important focus of the After Action Review is on the strengths of your organisation: With our crisis experts you will learn to apply these strengths even more fully the next time around.

How PwC can help you with your After Action Review

Our experts in the area of crisis management have extensive experience in preparing for, responding to, and overcoming crises and have been working side by side with our clients for many years – both during acute crises and for crisis prevention.

The PwC After Action Review is fully scalable and will be adapted by our experts to your needs and relevant variables such as the severity of the crisis. Our goal is to provide you with implementation tools that you can use to independently boost your crisis resilience through a process of continuous learning.