The Army Capstone Concept: the Army wants your comments

[Bill Jakola]

is engendered by 1919 Personnel and Force Structure system.

Thus you are trying to train an organization that is really not well organized and one that has to adapt on an ad-hoc basis for every war.

Ken,

Spot on with your observation of our Army encumbered with an out of date and unresponsive Personnel and Force Structure system; which is exactly why we are focusing on leader development. As Marc pointed out organizatinal change is difficult to bring about in the short run; however, leadership is within our grasp; and, well developed leaders can overcome systemic short commings.

We may never maximze the promotional or organizational designs, but there is no reason we can't maximize the way we train leaders. To do this requires a strategy, similar to the ALDS, that esablishes a framwork within which we can begin to understand what types of leaders we will require and then agressively build them.

Personally, I'm just assuming that the ALDS is (roughly) what I outlined and I'm waiting for the real meat to come out - the operationalization of it.

Marc also forshadowed our next step to release operationalization annexes that will provide the answer to how we plan to implement the ALDS.

Bill Jakola

"Keep your powder dry!"

[SJPONeill]

however, leadership is within our grasp; and, well developed leaders can overcome systemic short commings.

Bill, isn't that shortcutting the system? Yes, good leaders will essentially circumvent a system that is not working properly but at their risk, not the organisation's and in fact have done so for decades. Surely if TRADOC recognises that there are things that desperately need fixing, then it should be looking to fix them and not be slapping on a band-aid?

I've only just downloaded the ALDS document and had a quick read through it. My first reaction is that this has come from the side of TRADOC that specialises in buzzword bingo and not simple soldier speak - that same folks who brought us the draft ACC and Pam 525-5-500 to name a couple - great ideas in them but they have to be sifted out of wordy and cumbersome prose.

It's been my experience that leadership is not something you develop in a classroom - it is something that is developed and nutured but getting out and doing. This includes, as has already been mentioned, senior staff getting out and doing as well - possibly at the expense of their doctoral studies. There are some good points on this raised in the PME thread. There is a danger than in trying to learn and adapt we are leaning way to far towards corporate structures that might be all very nice in peacetime, save bucks, and look great in doctoral theses but which actually do little to develop and maintain capabilities.

Twenty years ago, we had an Army where the soldiers did not have many tranferable skills, qualifications or certifications (all the stuff that looks good on a CV) but they had an incredibly high level of practical soldier skills. Pretty well every soldier was not just trained but also able to think on their feet, make decisions and assume responsibility if Plan A went a bit awry on their watch. They didn't get this way by sitting in a classroom, or painting rocks - they got that way because they trained, trained and trained, normally under the junior leaders.

In the wave of AARs after the end of the warfighting phase of OIF, I remember reading an extract from a colonel's debrief - of course, Murphy's Law says I could never find it again but it went something like:

“…never again will we do admin moves from our home base to training locations. From now on, when we roll out the gate at home, we will be gunned up, no one sitting back reading their book or focussed on their Walkman or Gameboy, and moving tactically all the way. When we get to a overpass or chokepoint, we’ll dismount, go forward and clear it just as we’ve learned to do here [Iraq]. Sure, it might takes a day or two to make the move, and we’ll have to do a lot of coord with the towns we move through, local police, Highway Patrol, etc but that’s what we need to do anyway. And, every once in a while there’ll be an incident along the way that we’ll have to do deal with – it might not be an attack or an IED, it might be a pregnant lady on the side of the road…”

I think the message was something like training as you fight...if you want to introduce complexity and incertaintly into training, rather than an artifical training environment, as much as possible take the raining out to 'the people' - that'll introduce enough complexity and uncertainty to lay a firm foundation for doing that training that has to be done in a close environment. Get your people out into other environments, the more varied and uncomfortable/challenging the better...

As an outsider looking in, I think that perhaps the US Army has cracked this one more than it realises yet, maybe there is a lag between new doctrine coming onlien and its implementation but the new FM 7-0, -15 and -1 (when it comes out) are great, more so when combined with the frameworks in the SMCT series. Why? Because they focus on the essentials, they are easy to read and they make sense....

[Bill Jakola]

I like your idea of training complexity by training in the real world; the idea has merit and such real world training would be difficult to replicate in a classroom or other artifical training area, like the Army's combat training centers. However there are things that are difficult or impossible to train in public areas, like things that involve lethal force or unique cultural differences. So a combination of these types of trainiing seems right.

Also, as far as short cutting the system; well developed leaders, I believe, would not only circumvent the systems shortfalls, but also improve these systemic weak areas. That 's what good leaders do.

Bill Jakola

Keep your powder dry!

[Elric]

Also, as far as short cutting the system; well developed leaders, I believe, would not only circumvent the systems shortfalls, but also improve these systemic weak areas. That 's what good leaders do.

Bill, I have to love your attitude. Unfortunately, hope is not an approved Army planning method (but it seems to be extensively used). How long must we circumvent the shortfalls? I don't have the "luxury" of the 200+ training days available to the active component. Until the big guns clean the Augean stables, many Guard and Reserve units struggle with the growing list of mandatory training, soldier readiness, and, oh, almost forgot, missions...

IMHO, the Army has changed to self service, where the individual soldier is expected to monitor their records, medical status, DTS, and oh, don't forget your professional reading! Except we are not trained in records or medical or finance. The system IMHO, requires too much immersion by every soldier in non-mission tasks. Need to get ready for a mission? Quick, everyone run to a system and bang out your DTS voucher! The DD 1351-2 got me paid in less than a month, fax or scan it in. No computer needed. Plus, I didn't need a government CC, and I could control my credit rating (if DTS does not pay your CC, you will be counseled!)..

Computer access is a sore point. The centralized "support" system seems to be better at denying access to soldiers with a valid CAC card than Chinese hackers. Without access, a soldier is unable to access all these self help things for the weekend. (my record is three months). The S6 shop has had it's ability to actually help drastically reduced.

Take care of the ordinary things while fixing the big things...

[Rob Thornton]

Bill,
Are there going to be any specific qualifications of functions the Army wants its leaders of a given rank or position to be capable of doing? Are we going to see for example what the Army wants out of a DIV CDR or MG? Will we be able to walk that back through one or more developmental paths and look at what possible assignments or experiences might produce that leader?

An example question might be what prepares someone to take on being a COCOM CDR or a service chief? If we can't qualify what it is we expect that leader to be capable of at a given level, I'm not sure we can really get to how we develop them to do so.

Best, Rob

[Bill Jakola]

Bill,
Are there going to be any specific qualifications of functions the Army wants its leaders of a given rank or position to be capable of doing? Are we going to see for example what the Army wants out of a DIV CDR or MG? Will we be able to walk that back through one or more developmental paths and look at what possible assignments or experiences might produce that leader?

Best, Rob

I do not claim to be all things TRADOC and do not know the answers to your many excellent questions. What I say here is only the view from my foxhole. But, I can tell you that the ALDS is a base document that will have annexes that should help answer at least some of your questions.

Also, you and others in this discussion may benefit from reading the "Global Achievement Gap" book by Tony Wagner--and no I don't get a commission. This educator dissects learning and some of the shortcommings in our education system. Many of Mr. Wagner's observations can apply to leader development and the methods we use.

Bill Jakola

Keep your powder dry!

[marct]

Hi Rob,

Are there going to be any specific qualifications of functions the Army wants its leaders of a given rank or position to be capable of doing? Are we going to see for example what the Army wants out of a DIV CDR or MG? Will we be able to walk that back through one or more developmental paths and look at what possible assignments or experiences might produce that leader?

I do not claim to be all things TRADOC and do not know the answers to your many excellent questions. What I say here is only the view from my foxhole. But, I can tell you that the ALDS is a base document that will have annexes that should help answer at least some of your questions.

This is, of course, one of the most crucial things. I've already emailed Bill with a suggested POC from the CF who has done that for us (shoot me an email if you want same ).

The ALDS is, from what I can see, a political document - a strategy for competing in the bureaucratic battlespace. The appendices - and why is TRADOC using the French Annexes (?!) - should contain the actualities of it. Personally, I would hope that they have a good theoretical model of leader development, but I doubt they do which, BTW, is not a slam at TRADOC. The best ones I've seen, coming out of both the CF and the management literature, are still pretty sparse in terms of really thinking through implications and connections and they are, IMO, based on demonstrably false metaphysical and ontological models.

My musings at this point in time lean towards the idea that what TRADOC should seriously consider doing is to develop such a theoretical model using a variant of red teaming with an extremely interdisciplinary crowd of people before they produce cast in stone operational outlines. The analogy I like to use is that you would want to plan out a campaign until you had a map of the battlespace, so why are you doing so in this instance?

What bugs me is that there actually are a decent collection of methodological techniques for developing such a model, but they don't appear to be used. Building a map of the campaign territory isn't that hard, but it is complex and requires some very odd ways of looking at things (e.g. imagine trying to design mapping conventions for a terrain that is constantly changing; you know how much fun that is ).

[Bill Jakola]

the Army has changed to self service, where the individual soldier is expected to monitor their records, medical status, DTS, and oh, don't forget your professional reading!

Great point! Yes, self serve is a big part of it. Also, I too have reserve experience and can empathize with the extra challenges Citizen-Soldiers face. And don't even get me started on the difficulties of DTS; you are preaching to the choir there.

However, back to self serve; the Army has always required Soldiers to monitor their records, medical status, travel, and conduct professional reading. Although Soldiers rely on bureaucratic systems to assist in these areas, those who aggressively manage their own are more prepared and tend to be ready when called to duty. More importantly, the skills required to overcome poorly made systems, like DTS, are the type needed for complex problem solving. I am not saying that it we should provide Soldiers with a broken system just to train them on working within a suboptimal bureaucracy; but that fixing the system will not remove the requirement for developing those skills. Success in the operational environment requires adaptive, resilient, Soldiers who are constantly looking for innovative way to solve problems and know how to ask the right questions.

Bill Jakola

Keep your powder dry!