Category Archives: The Profession

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Success in Three Simple Steps

A Guest Post by Thurman McKenzie

NATO photo by Jake Tupman, March 07, 2018

In my current assignment as the U.S. Army Field Artillery Branch Chief, officers repeatedly ask me the same question: “What must I do to be successful?” My response is usually the same and can be distilled into three simple steps:

  1. Ground yourself in foundational components of your chosen profession. For Field Artillery Officers that includes the Five Requirements for Accurate First-Round Fire for Effect; and, the 13 Principles of Fire Support Planning.
  2. Be confident and play to your strengths while always seeking to learn and grow.
  3. Take care of your team!

In my experience, officers’ careers progress through a familiar sequence. First, an officer is placed in an unfamiliar environment. Next, the officer seeks to build his team applying foundational concepts. Then, the officer adapts to that new environment and effectively integrates into the larger team. Following the three steps above will serve Field Grade Leaders well as they learn and grow in the military.

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The Toyota Way: How Field Grades Should Approach Solving Systems Problems

A Guest Post by Trent Lythgoe

U.S. Army photos by Spc. Zachery Perkins

Army field grade officers (FGOs) must be able to solve systems problems. The best FGOs create systems to keep routine processes running routinely. Since FGOs cannot personally oversee every process in a battalion or brigade, systems ensure that things get done without constant FGO supervision. Systems are good for both organizational health and FGO stress levels. Occasionally, however, systems break down. Signs of system breakdown include missed deadlines, wasted time, and angry commanders. When this happens, FGOs need to know how to troubleshoot the system, find the problem’s root causes, and get things running smoothly again.

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Managing Talent: FA Majors to Combat Training Centers Post-KD

This essay was co-written by Field Artillery officers who currently serve as Observer, Coach, Trainers at the Army’s three Combined Training Centers.

U.S. Army Photo by Spc. Gyasi Thomasson, Jan. 26, 2019

As highly competitive field grade officers complete Key and Developmental (KD) jobs, many face a decision of going to a Combined Training Center (CTC) or a myriad of other possibilities.  The fact that this next assignment fills the important time between KD time and the possibilities of a tactical battalion (BN) command highlights the importance of this decision.  Factors that weigh into an officer’s decision for post-KD assignment include career progression, time available time for family, and location, among others.  The Army’s three Combat Training Centers located in California, Louisiana, and Germany, offer opportunities to fulfill all of the aforementioned factors, as well as a tremendous experience and learning environment for majors as they make the transition from running a battalion to commanding one.

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To Broaden, or not to Broaden, therein lies the Question

A Guest Post by Colonel Brad Nicholson

U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Henry Villarama. March 6, 2019

There are several points in an officer’s career where the possibility exists for individuals to pursue broadening opportunities. These broadening experiences are probably the most sought after and least understood opportunities available for officers. The three primary windows for such opportunities open immediately following basic branch qualification or company command, key and developmental field grade positions, or battalion-level command and key billets. While not all Army career fields or branches are the same, Army Regulation 600-3, Officer Professional Development and Career Management, highlights that basic branch and functional area officer development models share a generally accepted or standard path of professional progression associated with success.

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Turning Failure into Success: Four Lessons to Capitalize on Hard Times

A Guest Post by Jason Quash

“Failure is not an option!” It is the phrase that so many of us who serve in the military have been indoctrinated into believing, especially when the stakes are the highest. However, as renown author and speaker John C. Maxwell states in his book Failing Forward, “The terrible truth is that all roads to achievement lead through the land of failure. It has stood firmly between every human being who had a dream and the realization of that dream.  The good news is that anyone can make it through failure.”1 In the 5thEdition of their book Leadership: A Communication Perspective, Michael Hackman and Craig Johnson further explain, “Typical leaders ‘fail backwards’ by blaming others, repeating their errors, setting unrealistically high expectations, internalizing their disappointments, and quitting. Successful leaders ‘fail forward’ by taking responsibility for their errors and learning from them, maintaining a positive attitude, taking new risks, and persevering.”2 These are the attributes I have noticed in leaders I admire, and they are the characteristics we must absorb if we are to turn our failures into success.

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AIM-ing for the Best Assignment: How to Make the Most Out of AIM 2.0

A Guest Post by Jarod A. Taylor and Agustin M. Gonzalez

Army Secretary Mark Esper addresses the Talent Management Task Force he created to overhaul the cumbersome, centralized military personnel bureaucracy.

How should Army officers pursue desired future assignments under the new talent management system, the Army’s Assignment Interactive Module (AIM) 2.0? This article provides an overview of AIM 2.0 and makes recommendations for officers preparing for the reassignment process.

Officers identified to move in the summer of 2019 recently completed the process of requesting new assignments from the Army’s Human Resources Command (HRC). The process for individual officers is almost always opaque, with the officer’s branch manager at HRC occupying a powerful role, charged with doing what is simultaneously best for the Army, unit, and officer. Recent initiatives are pushing the Army, much like the rest of the Department of Defense, to implement personnel policies that emphasize talent management, where vacancies are matched to the particular skills of the employee filling that duty position. Decades of industrial-age personnel policy, required by law in the 1980 Defense Officer Personnel Management Act (DOPMA), combined with a generational shift in the All-Volunteer Force during the ongoing Global War on Terror resulted in various analysts warning about the risks of “brain drain” and “bleeding talent.”

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Learning to Fail

 

My name is Josh Powers, I’m a Major in the United States Army, and I’d like to tell you about the worst failure of my career. I’ve had countless failures as a leader in the military, from the time I backed a forklift over a porta potty as a Second Lieutenant to the executive level briefing that belly flopped in Tokyo in December. My career is riddled with failures, accidents, flawed logic, and bad assumptions. Each of these shortcomings sucked in their own way, but each helped shape who I am as a leader. So, what’s special about the near decade-old story I’m brushing off today? This one is absolutely the most personal. It is a failure which defines a moment in my career when I felt inadequate and out of my league professionally. It is a painful memory, an indication that it is the right story to share. I hope you remember this story the next time you fall on your face or the next time a subordinate strikes out in front of the commander. You see, we all fail, even the most proficient and experienced leaders. But failing does not make you a failure. As a professional in the United States Army, failure is not a destination, a place you end up and never return from. What matters in failure is what you learn and how you recover.

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Anticipating Challenges, Not Courting Failure

A Guest Post by COL (R) Kevin C.M. Benson

U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Felicia Jagdatt

Officers entering the field grade ranks, likely since Caesar made the move, grew up being admonished with the adage “Failure is NOT an option.” The reality is while failure is not a consciously selected option, it is a possible outcome. The challenge for field grade officers is to determine how to capitalize on methods designed to anticipate points of failure and avoiding them while building flexibility into plans and orders. Leaders must seize every opportunity to learn and get better, this includes learning through failure. As Yoda said, “The greatest teacher failure is.” So, what methods exist to anticipate failure in planning and execution?

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The Curse of Knowledge: Mentoring Failure

A Guest Post by Billy Folinusz

 

Last fall, in one of my master’s classes, the instructor started with a game of sorts. He paired us up with another student, came over to one person in each pair, and whispered a song. The song remained unknown to the other person (“Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”, etc.).  He then instructed the partner who knew the song to tap it out on the table for the other person.  My partner and I were lucky, we both had young children and were able to guess the nursery rhyme with relative ease. However, watching the rest of the room revealed something very interesting; the partner who was tapping grew increasingly frustrated that they could not communicate this simple nursery rhyme to their partner. After 90 seconds or so, the instructor had us stop, and most of the room had been unsuccessful in communicating their song. The purpose of this exercise was to reveal what is referred to as “The Curse of Knowledge.” In 1990 Stanford University conducted a study led by a graduate student in psychology named Elizabeth Newton. She had 120 songs tapped out by different sets of partners. Only three listeners guessed correctly, which astounded observers who had predicted a 50 percent success ratio.  How could this happen?  How could the prediction for success be so far off?

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How Does Failure in Training Enable Learning?

A Guest Post by Kurt Wasilewski

Rangers conduct close quarters combat skills training (U.S. Army photo)

The Gift – A Lesson in Failure

A few years ago, I observed a platoon of Rangers conduct squad-level, multiple-room clearance operations (Battle Drill #6a) on a hot Georgia summer night. As a young fire support officer, the skill and efficiency of each squad appeared exceptional, but the First Sergeant wasn’t impressed. “Tonight’s going to be a long one,” he said after the first squad finished. As I stood on the catwalk, I watched three squads of various skill navigate the scenario during the blank iteration and not one achieved the First Sergeant’s benchmark for excellence.