The TRADOC leadership is leaning forward in the saddle, and they are ensuring that their subordinate leaders are leaning forward as well. The Army Learning Concept just took one giant leap toward implementation at the recent TRADOC Senior Leaders Conference. GEN Dempsey set the stage with impassioned personal guidance and informative presentations by three members of academia.
The first of the three was John Rendon, a veteran of government service and consulting who has an in-depth understanding of our technologically driven culture and how it has impacted governments and militaries.
The second presenter was Ori Brafman, who spoke on the power of decentralized organizations, their genesis, and how a centralized organization might effectively combat them.
The last of the presenters was Tony Wagner, a lifelong educator and advocate of redesigning the entire educational system in the United States to focus on learning vice teaching.
Armed with the CG’s guidance and the ideas and information of the three speakers, the attendees broke into working groups to address various aspects of Army learning. Technology, blended learning, initial military training, captains courses, and even the Army War College were all put under the microscope and subjected to intense scrutiny by motivated leadership who are eager to improve how soldiers learn.
As we sat listening to the backbriefs from those break-out groups and heard about programs already underway, efforts already completed, and new ideas, you got the sense that this is not a flash-in-the-pan change effort. This is not something that will die on the vine when GEN Dempsey PCSs from Ft Monroe. This is institutional.
For instance, Initial Military Training (IMT) has already redesigned aspects of their training program to maximize short- and long-term learning of certain warrior skills, and this redesign has shortened Training Support Plans (TSPs), Terminal Learning Objectives (TLOs), and Enabling Learning Objectives (ELOs) documents. While this pilot program is just starting, and the first results will not be seen until June 2010, the Army has learned how to more effectively communicate what it wants of its students and instructors as evidenced by the shorter documents.
In another instance of the Army taking the bull by the horns is the pilot program which will put handheld devices (iPods, for example) into the hands of individuals in the Delayed Entry Program. These iPods will be filled with apps for warrior tasks and skills. The theory is that these individuals will learn the skill or task more quickly and completely than an individual who did not have access. If the pilot program is successful, it will become more widespread. Moreover, it will pave the way for the Army to include handheld devices as part of the basic issue in order to perpetuate the use of mobile technology as a battlefield multiplier.
TRADOC leadership understands the responsibility placed upon them by the American people: to train and develop soldiers and provide the necessary doctrine to allow America’s all-volunteer force to defeat its enemies. Anyone who sees the focused activity of these leaders will realize quickly that the Army is adapting in ways heretofore unprecedented. GEN Demspey said it best when he said, “Institutional adaptation is more than an aspiration; it’s an imperative.”