Such an environment demands that we develop leaders who understand the context of the factors influencing the military situation, act within that understanding, continually assess and adapt those actions based on the interactions and circumstances of the enemy and environment, consolidate tactical and operational opportunities into strategic aims, and be able to effectively transition from one form of operations to another. We seek to develop leaders who will thrive in this environment.

It has been my observation that when the next echelon of leaders understand the mission in terms of the task and purpose, and by understand I mean they really understand all the supporting collective, leader and individual tasks that go into it, it is then that they feel free to allow greater subordinate decision making and initiative. That is how they weigh and assume risk, and develop their own risk mitigation measures (bigger reserve, alternative COAs, etc.)

To support this shift in the next higher leader echelon during training and operations which supports our leader development goals, the defining of the tasks (and their supporting tasks) in conditions where the standard tactical tasks are inadequate is needed. At the experiments, AARs (of all types), and theater collection efforts I’ve participated in, reviewed or seen, I’ve not seen more than a skin deep attempt to document or create the list of tasks individuals and units have done (or would be required to do in the case of experimentation).

Part of this may be where we catch people in theater or upon their return, part of it also may be the way we collect – I’m not completely sure. Those interviewed may not have deemed it critical for one reason or another, they may have assumed it was something that someone else should have done but could not, or it could just be that because we caught them at the end of their tour, the tasks that stood out were those that were strongly rooted in emotion.

With respect to experimentation it may just be due to resources, and the way seminar war games, and other forms of experimentation are structured. It would take a great deal more time, and detailed information about the environment that really replicates the frictions that impose the types of unanticipated tasks on us that actual operations do. It would also require an increase in analytic capacity I think to be present in the experiment so more than just the big rocks are captured.

I think until we can identify the range of tasks that we expect individuals and units may have to do (either because it is part of the identified mission, or because the other folks we’d prefer to be doing those tasks are not present or able) in the COE, then we won’t be able to really look at what individual or unit capabilities are required, and we will not be able to look at how training, education, assignments and other leader development opportunities, etc. need to be tweaked to support it. We will not be able to tell ourselves what we want leaders at each level to be capable of doing, and we won’t be able to allow them to stretch their authorities and initiatives to develop them. After all, just because the right, or identified person, unit or agency is unavailable to do a task does not mean the requirement goes away. However, I do think not understanding the tasks, and not knowing which capabilities are required to do those tasks conflicts with our leader development goals as stated in the paper.

While some work has been done in task analysis, from what I have seen it has largely been limited to work groups which convene for a 2-3 day period somewhere, and because of self imposed constraints have been somewhat limited to looking at how existing identified tasks might fit somewhere else vs. looking at the a problem or objective and describing the over arching task(s), and then doing the difficult and time consuming work of task decomposition that produces the type of supporting collective, leader and individual tasks that we have in our list of “tactical tasks” and which we have spent years developing training strategies and resources around.


Ken's recent comments (ref. Niel's article) raised another related question: what artificial constraints do we impose into the environment that either facilitate this, or hinder it?


Best Rob