The debrief, and what to do next

Four days later, one hour, six questions. Groups that skip this run the same event four times and get the same result four times.

Nobody has to give you permission to call a debrief and it needs no chair, no minutes and no agenda beyond the six below.

Not on the night

On the night everybody is exhausted and either elated or deflated. Wait three or four days: long enough to have slept, short enough to remember.

Invite everybody who had a role, and two groups usually forgotten. The security volunteers, and whoever was on the door of the building. Keep it to an hour and say so at the start, or it becomes a grievance session.

The six questions, in this order

1. What was harder than you expected? Not “what went wrong”. This accuses nobody, and the useful information is in the friction. Somebody spent forty minutes looking for the person with the key. Somebody had no idea who to ask about the sound.

2. What would you do differently with the same people and the same money? The constraint matters. Without it you get a list of things that would have been nice with fifty more volunteers.

3. What did we learn about the people we were trying to move? Did the target respond. Did press come and did they get it right. Who came who had never come before, and what brought them.

4. What was filmed, and where has it turned up? One person, named tonight, checks for four days: the place name, the date, and whatever your event was called. Give them a finish time, because this job expands into somebody’s midnight.

5. Has anybody been identified, contacted at work, or messaged since? Ask each person rather than the room. People do not raise this unprompted, because they assume they are the only one and that it was somehow their own doing. Anybody who says yes needs when it comes at you that evening, not eventually.

6. What did the door and the security volunteers see? They were watching the street while everybody else watched the front. In many communities they keep their own written log. Ask for it.

Check the measure, not the feeling

Go back to what you wrote down beforehand about what success would look like. Read it out loud. Then say plainly whether it happened.

That is uncomfortable, which is why you wrote it down in advance. After an event everybody wants it to have worked, and the measure drifts to fit the outcome unless somebody holds it still.

Fell short: ask why, without hunting for somebody to blame. Exceeded it: ask why too, because that is the part you can repeat.

Report it upward, or it is not counted

If anything happened, two reports, not one. The police, with a reference number written down. And whoever compiles antisemitic incident figures where you live.

Say explicitly that you are reporting it as an antisemitic incident. Without that sentence it is logged as criminal damage or a public order matter and never appears in any figure about antisemitism. The annual numbers your community argues from are built out of reports individual people made.

The procedure for the note itself is in capturing evidence properly.

Write down what will happen again

Not a report. A short list, kept where you will look next time. The timing we would change. The kit we were missing. The role nobody filled. The thing somebody said to press that we had not agreed.

Then look at it when you plan the next one. A list nobody reads is worse than no list, because it creates the impression of learning without any.

Thank people by name

Individually, saying what that person actually did. Not a group message.

This sounds like a nicety and it is the most practical paragraph here. Volunteers almost never stop coming because it was difficult. They stop because they did something hard and nobody appeared to notice. Thank you for staying at the back the whole way and making sure nobody was left behind will bring somebody back six months later.

The two most often missed: the people in the vests, who worked throughout and attended nothing, and whoever unlocked and locked the building.

Then ask the people who worked hardest whether they want more, less, or something different. Some are waiting to be asked and will not volunteer twice unprompted.

Fix the next date before anybody leaves

Momentum is lost to a gap far more often than to a defeat. The event went well, everybody felt good, and six weeks passed.

So agree the next thing and when, even small and provisional. A date in the diary holds a group together better than enthusiasm does.

If there is no next thing, say that too, and say why. A group that knows it is pausing is in a far better state than one that quietly stops and leaves everybody assuming they alone lost interest.

Chase the ask

Whatever the action asked for, chase it. Delivered a letter: note the date and diarise a chaser. Somebody promised a reply: hold them to it.

An ask that is never followed up teaches the target they can wait you out.

Name the six without looking

Fill in the blanks101 words

From memory, before you close the laptop. Which of the six is the one people will not answer unless you ask them one at a time?

If the event was this weekend, then I will put the debrief in the diary for Wednesday and message everybody who had a role, including the door.

If somebody says they have been contacted at work, then I will stay behind with them afterwards and open the hostile-contact guide with them that evening.

If nothing at all went wrong, then I will still ask questions four and five, because that is when nobody thinks to.