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Thread: Educating Special Forces Junior Leaders for a Complex Security Environment

  1. #21
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    Your words are encouraging to this civilian tax payer, Bob's world.

    Oblong, I think of all the 18 yr olds that went down stepping off Higgins boats at Normandy. Odds are most trainees would take the easy road out in at least one of the environments, i.e. get to a shelter in the urban environment and stay put, or, hook up with the VFW/Vets on the reservation and stay put. I wouldnt want a man on my team who took both easy roads out.

  2. #22
    Council Member marct's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by oblong View Post
    That's an interesting idea. But how bad of a bad neighborhood would you drop them off in? In today's world, I would imagine the reaction from Congress and the media would be pretty intense the first time one of these individuals is seriously injured (or killed) or injures someone in self defense if he gets mugged or assaulted during one of these exercises.
    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    Where far worse is guaranteed -- to far more people.

    Oh, you're probably correct but you should not be -- that says something about priorities of a lot of folks. Not anything good...
    The cynic in me agrees with Ken . Personally, I think it is an excellent idea, although they should be given $1 in coin so that they can call for an extraction if necessary (and get an F on the exercise ).

    If we step back from this for a moment, what is "out of the box" thinking? What is "the box"? And, assuming that people do start thinking outside of it, how will they be able to communicate to those still held in the boxes thrall?

    It strikes me that the idea of an MA is not so much about out of the box thinking as it is about thinking in another (disciplinary) box. Granted, you can cover more ground with two boxes than with one, but that is still limited.

    If we (partially) drop the metaphor, what we are really talking about is several different issues: disciplinarity (1 box), interdisciplinarity (2+boxes), transdisciplinarity ("Boxes? Don't need no stinkin' boxes!"), organizational culture and organizational communications. This is the stuff I teach every Fall term, so it's near and dear to my heart.

    From what I have seen, there is a fairly standard progression in people's thinking going from disciplinarity, through interdisciplinarity towards transdisciplinarity. It is as much a mental and psychological shift as one of perceptions. For example, most people operating solely in a single discipline tend towards seeing all problems with that discipline's lens: one of those "when you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail" situations. On occassion, this can lead to extremely rigid thinking where, when the boundaries of that discipline have been reached, people can (and do) suffer mental and emotional breakdowns ("Facts? Don't bother me with facts!").

    People who think in interdisciplinary terms tend to be better at dealing with problems at the boundary zone of one discipline, mainly because they can shift to another as necessary. This can often bring them into conflict with people who only think in a single discipline for a whole slew of reasons. This potential for conflict is enhanced if the additional disciplines are radically different from the organizational primary discipline - say, for a silly example, performance art and accounting. This is where we start getting into organizational culture and communications.

    Many larger organizations formally recognize different disciplinary thinking and place it in a "box of boxes" (i.e. the formal organizational culture, aka Weberian bureaucratic organizational hierarchies). Part and parcel with this formal organization is a formalization of both the lines and genres of communications between the boxes (e.g. "this is a job for the CA folks"). Generally, this sort of kludge can work fairly well, but it does lead to disciplinary stereotyping which may be problematic if the operational environment changes.

    Transdisciplinarity is a threat to the "box of boxes" since its basis is that one can transcend disciplines into a single, broader stance (thereby attacking identities constructed around both those single disciplines as well as the necessity for a bureaucratic organization). Again, many formal organizational cultures do recognize this type of thinking, but they either place it at the apex of the hierarchy or one step down and to the side (as an example, the discipline of "management" is an attempt to formalize, in a disciplinary format, some form of transdisciplinarity).

    If we bring all of this back to the specific focuse, SF education at the O3 level, there are several interesting points. First, SF is in and of itself a stereotyped, bureucratic "box" for a particular series of interdisciplinary actions - "out of the [mainstream] box" thinking is an organizational culture requirement. Second, and as a modification of the first point, while SF "thinking" is required to be "out of the box", there is a question of what other boxes are acceptable: how about poetry? Stand-up comedy? Improvizational acting? Cordon Bleu cooking? Baroque singing (yeah, you knew I had to get that in !)?

    I think I'm going to leave it here and see what people think.

    Cheers,

    Marc
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 07-30-2009 at 02:53 PM. Reason: Replace 9 with (
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  3. #23
    Council Member William F. Owen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by oblong View Post
    That's an interesting idea. But how bad of a bad neighborhood would you drop them off in? In today's world, I would imagine the reaction from Congress and the media would be pretty intense the first time one of these individuals is seriously injured (or killed) or injures someone in self defense if he gets mugged or assaulted during one of these exercises.
    Eyh... My Battalion beat the cr*p out of a UK-SF guy who was pretending to be a bird watcher on the Thetford training area...... the only down side being that he actually was bird watcher.
    Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"

    - The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
    - If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
    Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition

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    Default Marc, can't speak of the other boxes for SF

    alone - my sample is too small. But I know soldiers who are sculptors, painters, actors, singers, and fiction writers. Now for baroque singers... and bronc riders...

    Cheers

    JohnT

  5. #25
    Council Member marct's Avatar
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    Hi John,

    Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
    alone - my sample is too small. But I know soldiers who are sculptors, painters, actors, singers, and fiction writers. Now for baroque singers... and bronc riders...
    You know, I think it would be fascinating to see if there is a statistically significant difference between the mainstream forces and SF in these areas. It might also be interesting to see if something like it works in reverse - I keep thinking about Julia Child coming out of the OSS and getting into cooking (I just finished reading Julie & Julia; great book if you are into feisty hilarity and French cooking ).

    Cheers,

    Marc
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  6. #26
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Know three Bronc Riders, one Marine, two Sojers...

    Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
    alone - my sample is too small. But I know soldiers who are sculptors, painters, actors, singers, and fiction writers. Now for baroque singers... and bronc riders...
    I do have to admit to knowing only one Baroque Singer -- and that only virtually...
    I think I'm going to leave it here and see what people think.
    Much there to think about. Seriously. Especially the "Transdisciplinarity is a threat to the 'box of boxes' " issue...

    On a less serious note (slightly), stand-up comedy and improvisational acting have merit as cross disciplines; leadership they say is half showmanship -- and the benefits of both alternatives to the military briefer go without saying...

  7. #27
    Council Member marct's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    I do have to admit to knowing only one Baroque Singer -- and that only virtually...
    Someday, we'll fix that "virtually" part over bourbon and beers .

    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    Much there to think about. Seriously. Especially the "Transdisciplinarity is a threat to the 'box of boxes' " issue...
    There has been some decent work done in the area, but it's spread across a whole slew of disciplines. I think my favorite piece dealing with it is Andrew Abbott's The System of the Professions - a brilliant work, IMO, that should be mandatory reading in high school!

    I've been doing a lot of thinking about and working with the issue of transdisciplinarity in my academic life. I suspect that we are right on the cusp of getting decent methodologies to actually get some decent empirical data on the issue but, so far, I haven't seen anything yet (at the empirical level) that I really like. What I want is brain scans, darn it!

    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    On a less serious note (slightly), stand-up comedy and improvisational acting have merit as cross disciplines; leadership they say is half showmanship -- and the benefits of both alternatives to the military briefer go without saying...
    In many ways, the best training I ever had for teaching was the training I got in improv acting and stand-up comedy. I've also run some informal polls, and it seems that most of my students learn better when they can laugh at the process of learning (endorphin induced stress-reduction is my guess). As for the leader motivation aspect you bring up Ken, I totally agree, although i might put it a touch higher .

    Cheers,

    Marc
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  8. #28
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Just ordered the Abbott book. Thanks...

    Quote Originally Posted by marct View Post
    Someday, we'll fix that "virtually" part over bourbon and beers .
    Good plan!
    As for the leader motivation aspect you bring up Ken, I totally agree, although i might put it a touch higher .
    I try to be charitable on alternate Thursdays...

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