I am often asked to facilitate an after-action review (AAR) upon the completion of a project.  It's a bit more formal than a standard debriefing and allows the participants to truly understand what happened and create some preventive and mitigating strategies for the next project.

AAR typically occurs when the project went south...but can also be applied to glorious projects that we wish we could clone and replicate!

Want your teams to stay focused?  Capture and post key information for all to see – on a whiteboard, on flipchart paper, or on the screen.  By writing down what has been said, team members will stay focused and on track as well as remember and act on the information well after the meeting.

If your team is like most, it relies on two or three strategies to make decisions: consensus, team input with the team leader making the final decision, or the loudest voice wins. Effective teams use MANY different decision-making strategies, such as these.