Combat Chaos and Win with the Fighter Pilot Debrief

We’ve entered an era of unpredictability, and to combat chaos, you must assess your environment. Chaos is defined as having “behavior so unpredictable as to appear random.” During chaos, our long-held assumptions and behaviors are invalid.

The chaos brought on by the pandemic has reshaped our world, demanding a new approach to leadership and decision-making. In this transformed landscape, the first step to success is assessing our environment with fresh eyes. As businesses grapple with the aftermath of the pandemic, the need for agility and resilience has never been more apparent. The old rules no longer apply, and our assumptions must be questioned in light of this new reality.

Here’s the hard part. We are creatures of habit, and it feels good to continue with a routine, particularly when the world around us is so unpredictable. It will be very tempting to seek false security and just continue along the path that served us so well before.

So, what should we do? As Fighter Pilots, we were taught that there was a difference between peacetime leadership and wartime leadership. Wartime leadership is required during chaos. It’s extremely focused and highly prescriptive. Directions are “Sesame-Street Simple”. Clarity, decisiveness, and simplicity are the keys to mitigating complexities in communication during chaos. You can’t wait for perfect information when you have very little time to assess your surroundings before moving.

How do we assess our environment to combat chaos?

Following every mission flown, Fighter Pilots conduct a Debrief to inspect the chaos of the mission that was executed. They deconstruct the supersonic flightpaths of the aircraft and they gather lessons learned to apply to the future. Your team needs to adopt a similar mentality to quickly and frequently debrief missions during times of chaos and continuously assess your environment.

At Afterburner, we have distilled the Fighter Pilot Debrief into a few key steps that we’ve utilized with thousands of corporate teams to help them rapidly iterate for success.

Start by pinpointing the specific issue or outcome that you want to analyze. Whether it’s a successful outcome that you want to replicate or a failure that needs to be addressed, clarity on the focus of the debriefing is essential.

Assess your execution and honestly determine if the results yielded success towards your mission objective. When analyzing the root cause of success or failure, it’s easy to settle for surface-level explanations. However, to truly understand what led to the outcome, it’s essential to dig deeper and explore the underlying factors at play. Resist the temptation to attribute success or failure solely to external factors like the pandemic. Instead, ask “why” multiple times to uncover the true drivers behind the outcome.

For example, if a sales negotiation resulted in a loss, don’t stop at the initial explanation that the client lacked the funds due to economic uncertainty. Keep probing by asking why they were hesitant to commit financially and what specific concerns or obstacles they faced. By peeling back the layers and examining each factor contributing to the outcome, you can gain deeper insights into the dynamics at play and identify actionable areas for improvement.

We can’t stop once we’ve identified the root cause. To ensure the lessons really stick, they need to become part of the organization’s DNA. That means integrating them into everyday practices and procedures so that they’re not just a passing fad but a lasting improvement. By uncovering, sharing, and embedding lessons learned, organizations can turn debriefing sessions into powerful drivers of growth and improvement, even in the face of chaos and uncertainty.

If the lesson learned is valuable enough, we want to disseminate it to as many people as possible. As a Fighter Pilot, that meant a change to our checklists or standard operating procedures. In a corporate setting, this means updating protocols, refining strategies, and empowering teams to adapt swiftly for sustainable success.

Remember, the true value of debriefing lies not just in dissecting failures but in celebrating victories and lessons learned. By ending each debrief on a high note, teams can harness the momentum of progress and move forward with purpose.

Armed with lessons learned, we can equip our teams with a clear path to victory. But to scale that victory, we must align our teams to a plan. Aligning your teams is the next step in leading through chaos.