It has always amazed me that an institution that produces so many bright, innovative young officers was so incapable of actually brightly innovating. That is, until I passed from my life as a 'regimental' officer to work at higher levels. Then I discovered that it is virtually impossible to bring bright ideas - of which we had rucksacks full - to the attention of decision makers.
The fundamental problem is that leaders are far too busy. Therefore, their immediate staffs make sure that their time is never wasted. The typical chief of staff would count as time wasted presenting the commander any idea that - in the judgment of the chief - the commander would reject or disapprove. Therefore the bright, young thinker has a huge numbers of hoops to jump through before his idea can reach the ear of the decision maker. In the process, the idea is chopped, graded, returned for editing, and all nuance and depth stripped away. If it gets through, it is no longer innovative or bright or very different from the staus quo.
As an example, the typical planner in, say, Afghanistan, has at least three and possibly four levels of bureaucracy to get through before he can lay his scheme before the commander. At every level he will hear how the commander won't like this, has already rejected that, doesn't want to hear the other. After a while, most bright, young thinkers just start censoring themselves.
SO the problem is not our military education system. We do teach critical thinking; we do stress the importance of independent thought, and we do so with a great deal of skill. We educate our officers to be thinkers; the problem is we train them to be groupthinkers.
I agree with the previous post, however. Things will get better when today's generation of majors and captains become generals, but not before.
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