Problems of debriefings in the IDF

Summary report of the State Comptroller found that the periodically repeated events due to non-implementation of the lessons of the past . The auditor also mentions several reports and tests conducted by the military and pointed to deficiencies in learning the lessons .

Today, in pursuit of "organizational excellence," many organizations are taking steps to manage organizational excellence and strive to improve.

One of the actions that needs to be taken to improve is to learn lessons from failures (both private and organizational) and from successes. Learning lessons is a process in which you have to admit mistakes and pay the personal and organizational costs. In order to draw comparative lessons between what was planned and what was actually done - and accept the gap.

In order to learn lessons, we must first research the activity ( preferably immediately upon completion), so that the lessons will be internalized and will prevent recurrence of the gaps or similar gaps next time. In addition, the investigation must be performed by a level supervisor of the function leading to the activity.

According to the State Comptroller's report, the quality of the investigation is not meticulous - there are deficiencies in the real-time reporting of events, and in addition, the commanders are in charge of conducting the debriefing, and often prefer not to investigate events, which substantiates the claim in the article that people refrain from personal or organizational exposure , Mainly from the fear of taking responsibility for the mistakes they made. The avoidance of personal exposure ultimately harms the organization because the lessons are not taught and maintained throughout the organization. For example, when a veteran pilot and a senior flew with a young pilot there is an investigation of the flight at the end. The veteran pilot receives respect and appreciation for exposing his mistakes and thus contributes to the learning of the young soldier.

Only real lessons derived from personal exposure will contribute to improving individual and organizational excellence.

Another example is the helicopter disaster. After the disaster, a comprehensive investigation was carried out and finally different lessons were learned. The error in this research was that the lessons were specific and focused and not inclusive. The lesson must include all similar cases, including the specific case.

In order to be excellent, you need to improve and in order to improve, you need to investigate and to investigate, you need an organizational culture that allows this. The flaws that exist in the conduct of debriefings in the IDF attest to the lack of internalization of the organizational culture that must be created by conducting debriefings in the IDF, as stated in the State Comptroller's report.

According to the article, an organization must maintain an organizational memory in which all research and lessons are kept, and thus an IDF database of investigations is conducted. On an ongoing basis, investigations of operational events are presented to all relevant levels in the IDF..