The Army We Need

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In my early years we had limited money, . . . , but it "seemed" that we trained more, and in many ways trained more effectively. We had training distractions then, but not to the extent that we do now. The training was less structured then, so there was more "time" for mentoring, which is when the real learning takes place. That also meant that leaders were being more effectively developed.

In my LT days, we had both limited time and limited personnel; we also had a huge number of training distractors. I was in a tenant unit in USAREUR's VIIth Corps area where we ran a real world intelligence mission 24/7 with an organization at about 60% strength (on a good day). We did our jobs and were still able to do all the training the Army, USAREUR, my MACOM, and VII Corps required of us as well as all the valuable (and silly) stuff my troops needed to learn to be able to pass their MOS tests (and later their SQTs). How did we do it? Bill has the answer partly right.

Commanders need to observe more training, and spend less time in briefs. Talk to the troops, they'll tell you if they're confident.

All "leaders" need to observe more training. Real leaders will observe day-to-day performance first, recognize what training their subordinates need, and then develop and conduct the appropriate training to fix those performance shortfalls.

The wild card is wartime OPTEMPO. It means that the available time to train has to be scrutinized better. There is certainly risk associated with it, but there may be some training models out there we could look at for MTO&E units which would reduce the amount of friction we have.

Wartime OPTEMPO is an excuse for not doing the right thing. Rob is correct about making sure to use the right kind of training to get the desired results though--that is what training management is really all about.
Caution war story follows:
I was a platoon leader and the Bn training officer (as an additional duty) when Skill Qualification Tests (SQT) were coming into existence. My Bn Cdr's pucker factor was getting huge because he knew his OER would be affected by the performance of the Bn's soldiers on their SQTs. He tasked me to develop a training program for the SQT. In my plan, I proposed what my NCOs and I were already doing in my platoon: a great amount of on-the-job training, executed by the NCOs and me during normal duty following "pre-testing"--an assessment by the NCO of soldiers' job proficiency. (As noted above, my unit was maybe 60% strength and we were doing real world Cold War intel Indications & Warning work, not some garrison training, annual live fire at a range on Graf, and maneuver wargames as part of a REFORGER--but we supported those and Autumn Forge exercises too.) When I briefed the plan, the Bn Cdr's concern was with the lack of classroom training and any ability to verify that the training had occurred. He wanted sign-in sheets and post tests after the classroom instruction--the check the box mentality mentioned by Bill Moore predates PowerPoint and Harvard Graphics (2 tools that I have grown to loath over the years, but they still are better than the old hand drawn charts we had to use in the "brown shoe Army" of the Carter years and earlier.) Being more concerned with doing the right thing than with presenting the right appearance, I used some well placed expletives about his proposed approach to training and convinced the commander to forego that kind of nonsense. The troops did great on the first round of SQT (and subsequent ones too, so I was told). At the same time, my platoon increased its Bn-leading mission productivity. Other platoons actually got better at their missions because of the additional scrutiny given to their soldiers them by their NCOs and LTs. And, overall Bn morale improved (as indicated by a drop in drinking related incidents and other MP blotter reports involving my Bn's troops).
End of war story