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This is an enhanced edition of HBR article R0507G, originally published in July-August 2005. HBR OnPoint articles include the full-text HBR article plus a summary of key ideas and company examples to help you quickly absorb and apply the concepts. The US Army's Opposing Force (OPFOR) helps prepare soldiers for combat. Created to be the meanest, toughest foe that soldiers will ever face, OPFOR engages units-in-training in a variety of mock campaigns under a wide range of conditions. The force being trained - called BLUFOR - is numerically and technologically superior. It possesses more resources and better, more available data. It is made up of experienced soldiers. And it knows just what to expect, because OPFOR shares its methods from previous campaigns with BLUFOR's commanders. In short, each BLUFOR brigade is given practically every edge. Yet OPFOR almost always wins. Underlying OPFOR's consistent success is the way it uses the after action review (AAR), a method for extracting lessons from one event or project and applying them to others. AAR meetings became a popular business tool after Shell Oil began experimenting with them in 1998. Most corporate AAR's, however, tend to be pro-forma wrap-ups, drawing lessons from an action but rarely learning them. OPFOR's AAR's, by contrast, generate raw material that is fed back into the execution cycle. And while OPFOR's reviews extract numerous lessons, the brigade does not consider a lesson to be learned until it is successfully applied and validated. It might not make sense for companies to adopt OPFOR's AAR processes in their entirety, but four fundamentals are mandatory: (1) lessons must benefit the team that extracts them; (2) the AAR process must start at the beginning of the activity; (3) lessons must link explicitly to future actions; and (4) leaders must hold everyone, especially themselves, accountable for learning.