The latest installment of the Simon Sinek enterprise, The Infinite Game, has a lot of what I found compelling from Sinek’s past works. It explains a big idea in simple terms but this one didn’t seem to deliver. I found the read clunky and disorganized. I am a huge Sinek fan which is probably why I was so distressed. While he presents some valuable ideas in this book, I did not find the depth I was expecting.

That said, the overall premise of The Infinite Game is sound. Sinek starts with the idea that humans view the world in win-lose terms. Stated another way, we believe our games are finite. We know the players, play by agreed-upon rules, have commonly understood goals, and somebody always wins and losses at the end. We yearn for this consistency and often get frustrated with interactions fraught with disorganization and surprise. The win-lose dichotomy clouds our perception of the world, and we view our interactions through this prism.

Infinite games, however, are not the exception; they are common, and viewing the world under this paradigm is more useful than we realize. Known and unknown players play these games, without exact or agreed-upon rules, and they have no practical end. The primary objective of the infinite game is to continue to play. You can win at chess but how do you win in a friendship? Drug dealers aren’t trying to beat police to win; they just want to continue their business. This long-view method of perceiving the world changes incentive structures, understanding risk, and how we manage our resources.

To play the infinite game, you must start by adopting an infinite mindset. Sinek’s prescription is to advance a just cause, build a trusting team, study rivals, show existential flexibility, and lead. A just cause is the feeling of being part of something bigger than yourself supplying a purpose so appealing people will sacrifice for it. Trust is aligned with psychological safety to embolden risk-taking. A worthy rival is a healthy competitor giving your organization a focus. Existential flexibility is the ability to change a process or path to align better with your cause. Finally, leading with an infinite mindset is focusing on a long-term view and taking care of the team.

The key point I took from this book was the need to focus on the long-term vision over a short-term goal-oriented approach. The short-term mindset incentivizes near-term wins without regard to long-term effects. This is akin to an Army unit focusing on individual weapons qualification statistics over the amorphous vision of being lethal when engaged with the enemy. Weapons’ qualification percentages are easily measurable and comparable; they’re also eminently necessary to winning a battle. Succeeding in battle, however, requires many more skills that are much harder to define than just shooting straight. Theoretically, an organization could be successful in battle with poor weapons qualification skills. At least one deep thinker wrote the acme of skill was winning without firing a shot. Thus, too much focus on short-term measures can lead to some great shooters at the expense of honing other necessary skills not easily measured.

In the end, Sinek’s big idea is worthy of reflection, but I recommend watching his talk on the web before picking up this one.

Lieutenant Colonel Christopher L’Heureux is an Armor Officer who likes to write, think, and sip whisk(e)y.

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We have all heard the ubiquitous saying that causes most of us to slap our foreheads in a mixture of shame, dread, and loathed acceptance: “I spend 90% of my time on the bottom 10% of my people.” Our admitted dilemma centers on the sense that there is a population that requires so much direction and maintenance that their presence is detrimental to the whole.  With this acceptance is the underlying assumption that that top 90% can make up for the performance of the bottom 10%.  In the current military paradigm, this assumption is not only not pragmatic, but it is also dangerous. 

The increasing threat from potential opponents’ militaries makes accepting a theoretical substandard 10 out of every 100 detrimental to mission accomplishment.  In addition, the way the US military is developing for future conflicts places an even greater focus on the talents of the whole unit, thus it can no longer accept individuals not providing a synergistic capability to succeed. It is necessary to effectively change the phrase to a more balanced “I spend 10% of my time on the bottom 10%.”  Leaders must develop all individuals and, while there will always be a bottom tier in any organization, a focused effort of education and training can enable this formerly unloved cohort to contribute to unit success and US strategic goals.   

Why should we raise the capabilities of every service member above the traditional norm?  It is because the US capability to operate un-contested around the world is no longer guaranteed.  Other militaries are becoming better equipped, organized, and trained.{1}  The once–large margin of performance between the US military and everyone else is eroding, and we may soon be faced with the most undesirable of prospects: a fair fight without superior talent as an advantage. How are we, the military, to combat this new reality?  According to the National Defense Strategy; two desired key capabilities are critical: {1} 

1:) Joint lethality in contested environments: The Joint Force must be able to strike diverse targets inside adversary air and missile defense networks to destroy mobile power-projection platforms. This will include capabilities to enhance close combat lethality in complex terrain. 

2:) Forward force maneuver and posture resilience: Investments will prioritize ground, air, sea, and space forces that can deploy, survive, operate, maneuver, and regenerate in all domains while under attack. 

The expectation of our total force is that we will become more adaptive, independent, and quick reacting.  This allows the US military a great deal of flexibility and lethality if it is something it can train and equip towards.  As a bellwether of how this may be accomplished, we look to the Marines and its current Commandant, Gen David Berger.  It is the Commandant’s current recommendation that the Marines shrink in total size, budget for new types of warfighting technology, and still maintain the current level of capability.  This new philosophy does not allow for much flexibility in the way of substandard performance from individuals{2}.  With the strategic expectation that units need to be more independent from centralized decision making and with the top leadership placing more responsibility on every individual, the allowance for an underperforming segment of warfighters is now an antiquated practice.  The capacity to not have every Soldier/Airmen/Sailor/Marine meet expectations is disappearing. 

To the demands of this new strategy we, as leaders and commanders, must reframe how we view our subordinates.  Instead of accepting the idea of a “bottom 10%” as an unalterable reality, it is better to view current underperformers as individuals with untapped potential.  There are real-life examples of how this can be accomplished. The Norwegian prison system offers us a clear example and—if we put aside the initial skepticism of comparing Norwegian criminals to US warfighters—we can draw parallels to how it is possible to raise the standard of performance from a population previously considered undesirable.  In Norway, prisoners receive education, counseling, and mentorship.  It is a tailored effort meant to rehabilitate and train individuals to benefit society once released.  The main effort is to fill the education, expectations, and behavioral gaps experienced by the individual prior to entering the system.  The result has been one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world at 20%, with inmates leaving the system for good and becoming productive members of society.{3}  To be clear, this paper’s purpose is not to critique penal systems; rather, it is to show that a focused methodology of education, training, and mentorship makes it possible to re-educate and incentivize a population of individuals to perform better.  

The idea that there is an unavoidable detrimental bottom tier is false.   Prior to dismissing a subordinate as a perpetual slow swimmer, it is better to ask if it is possible to make this individual the best asset to the unit as possible.  At the risk of sounding colloquial, it is our job to develop all members of a unit to the point that we do not require the strong swimmers to prevent the slower swimmers from drowning.  To extend the analogy, the slowest swimmers can and should only be a half–stroke behind the quickest.   

I have often witnessed leaders refusing to allow subordinates to remain less than stellar, and with excellent results.  I worked with an intelligence officer that recognized several of his subordinates had poor writing abilities.  As a result, he needed to QC all issues for grammatical errors and substance problems for materials published on a weekly basis, and this unit produced a large amount of information. Instead of berating his subordinates, he recognized their performance was a product of education, or rather lack thereof, and not a product of poor ability. He created an English user guide specific to the unit’s mission and taught critical thinking and writing classes to those that needed extra help.  The result was that within six months the unit won several awards for briefing abilities and research, and his workload drastically reduced as his subordinates began to gain in ability and confidence while taking on more responsibility.  

As a shift supervisor, I similarly leveraged my educational background to obtain the certificates necessary to counsel several of the airmen in my unit facing financial issues, thus enabling them to retain their security clearances and continue with the mission.  Despite these examples, and our basic urge to do so, being a good leader does not always mean being the sole resource for a top-notch soldier in the making.  Across the DOD, there are resources available to all personnel.  Do you have a soldier who thinks a little slow on his or her feet? There is a course for that. {4}{5}  Do you have airmen in financial trouble and it is affecting daily job performance?  There are professionals for this. {6} Do you have a sailor that is otherwise solid but has issues dealing with stress?  There are counselors for this.{7}  

An almost inexhaustible amount of help for the myriad of issues an individual may encounter exists and these resources are free to the individual.  Yes, it will take some additional work at the outset.  No, this is not a recommendation to punt all the problems of your unit to a paid professional.  Yes, follow up is expected to gain situational awareness on improvement and in general to show you care.  No, life will not be perfect, and individuals will still have shortcomings.  Yes, you will have a stronger cadre of individuals and the unit will benefit.  The message here should be clear: even though we are faced with an ever-more complicated mission set that requires more of the individual, the DOD has provided the resources to aid individual improvement.  The failure and success in taking advantage of these resources ultimately reside with leadership. 

The role of the military leader is not going to get easier.  As technology develops, the speed of change increases, the demands of government shift, and the need for an ever more intelligent and responsive military force become more urgent.  The ability of the top–tier to overcome the drag of the bottom–tier will no longer be enough to defeat the enemy.  The plausible solution to this dilemma is to permanently reduce the number of “under performers” to effectively zero and, in doing so, simply have a group of “performers.”  Leaders must leverage the resources and talents around them to improve the unit by strengthening the weakest within the ranks.  The external threats to the US and the resulting strategies demand a different level of performance that raises the bar for every person in uniform.  If, as a leader, you cannot configure a path to help those under you perform and if you accept underachievers to be forever substandard, then you put the effectiveness of the greater strategic mission in jeopardy and contribute to putting others at greater risk.  Now, more than ever, you can use this unique leadership position to affect the needed change of those beneath you. 

Maj Richart is currently serving as an instructor pilot and Safety Officer at the United States Air Force Academy.  An Air Force pilot, he has operational experience with various aircraft including C-130s, MC-12s, and remotely-piloted aircraft in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Africa.  His most recent experience in operations was as the Detachment Commander for the 432 WG, Jalalabad Afghanistan in support of JTF Operations. These views are his own and do not reflect the opinion of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Air Force. 

{1} https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf 

{2} https://www.defenseone.com/feature/state-of-defense-2020/#marines 

{3} https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/norway-benefits-from-rehabilitation-while-australia-lags-behind/ 

{4} https://www.goarmyed.com/public/public_programs_services-fast.aspx 

{5} https://www.army.mil/article/216153/class_focuses_on_improving_reading_math_gt_scores 

{6} https://www.afpc.af.mil/Benefits-and-Entitlements/Financial-Readiness/ 

{7} https://www.militaryonesource.mil/confidential-help/non-medical-counseling 

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Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., seen in Ste. Mere-Eglise on July 12, hours before he died of a coronary thrombosis. Arthritis caused him to walk with a stick. The 4th Infantry Division commander described him as “the most gallant soldier and finest gentleman I have ever known.” 

I am expanding on the recent topic of building trust by being approachable.  In his article, the author stated, “Be open and readable … What you see is what you get. No false pretenses or pretending to be something you’re not.”  I submit that two key components of approachability are self-awareness and sincerity. Being self-aware and sincere helps leaders humanize themselves and become more relatable to the rest of their team. While some professional distance between leaders and subordinates is required for good order and discipline, most approachable leaders will see more buy-in and initiative from their team members. A close team, full of mutual trust, will be more successful in garrison or combat than a team that is distant and micromanaged.

SELF-AWARENESS: IT TAKES COURAGE TO BE YOURSELF

As a primary staff officer, one of my goals is to generate high engagement across my team. To enable this, I ensure my section is a learning organization, and not working in a zero-defect environment. We all make errors from time to time. We must underwrite and learn from honest mistakes – and as a field grade officer, I do not have all the answers. Despite being relatively seasoned, I am not exempt from making mistakes myself. Importantly, I learn from failure.

As a lieutenant and junior captain serving on battalion and brigade staffs, I remember being intimidated by most majors. Many of them were not approachable, and in some cases were downright abrasive or standoffish. Upon reflection – while some might have been rude, unpleasant people – I am convinced most unapproachable majors held their subordinates at arm’s length because they were incompetent. Those majors feared their incompetence would be revealed if their subordinates saw what they were doing (or weren’t doing).

It was rare and refreshing whenever I worked for a major who was approachable, and transparent about his or her weaknesses and limitations. I never feared to give them bad news, and I appreciated how empowered I felt to solve problems at my level. Whenever they asked me questions, they were not only encouraging me to take ownership of my responsibilities – they were honestly asking and we’re not pretending to know the details of a certain task more than I did.

During my years in the Army, I have repeatedly heard (hopefully in jest) of the “field grade lobotomy” that occurs whenever captains are promoted to majors. I offer any perceived stupidity is the result of the Peter Principle, wherein people are promoted to positions for which they are incompetent. Any incompetence, inadequacy, or shortcomings are difficult to conceal when serving as organizational-level leaders – unless we are lying to ourselves and our subordinates. In the words of GEN Paul Funk, “The higher you go up the flagpole, the more your ass shows.” I was not exempt from the Peter Principle.

I went straight into a key developmental (KD) assignment after finishing CGSC and was unprepared for the job when I first arrived. Looking back, I am unsure what more I could have done to prepare myself; at the time, I would not have known what questions to ask. Upon arriving as a new EOD Group S4, my experience was not so much a learning curve as it was a sheer cliff face. While I had considerable knowledge of conventional logistics doctrine and tactical-level sustainment, I knew almost nothing about the GPC (government purchase card) program. I knew almost nothing about GCSS-Army, having been “offline” in the schoolhouse during the active Army’s transition from legacy systems. I knew almost nothing about EOD-specific equipment, not personally being an Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician, and never having supported those formations. Add to this the complexity of “separate mission command” (our units are dispersed over many installations – something else that was new to me) and not receiving any handoff from my predecessor, and I quickly grew flustered.

I am arguably at the stage in my career where I don’t need to be an expert in every new logistics system because my aperture is too wide to personally manage all of them, but I still need to know enough to hold others accountable. I was unable to do that when I first arrived at the unit. I have always counseled my subordinates that I am not afraid to admit when I don’t know something. I never want them to tell me what they think I want to hear. I need them to feel comfortable enough to speak their minds when asked for input.

A group or brigade S4 is a leader but also a manager of managers, and there were several personnel among my staff (warrant officers and non-commissioned officers) whose technical expertise exceeded mine. I was frank and honest about this; at no point did I pretend to know something, and I freely admitted how many of our systems and responsibilities I was unfamiliar with. My challenge was learning enough to be “dangerous,” without becoming a micromanager or telling my subject matter experts how to do their jobs.

I humbly submit I have come a long way and become far more effective since starting my KD time, but I needed to reveal my shortcomings to learn as much as I did. It takes courage to admit having a vulnerability, but we must be honest with subordinates about our shortcomings, and leverage the entire team’s strengths to succeed.

APPROACHABLE LEADERSHIP: SINCERE, AUTHENTIC, AND GENUINE

Much has been written on the so-called “authenticity gap.”  One article defines it as the difference between how we see ourselves and how others see us. I define the authenticity gap as the difference between what leaders say and what leaders do. To truly be sincere, authentic, and genuine, leaders’ words and actions need to match. We cannot just call ourselves approachable; we must actually be approachable. We cannot just claim we “take care of Soldiers”; we must truly take care of Soldiers. To ensure we are being true to ourselves and our subordinates, I recommend establishing non-negotiable daily actions we can use to hold ourselves accountable.

In a podcast, Drew Dudley (who gave a popular TED Talk on Everyday Leadership) said leaders need non-negotiable daily behaviors. He gave an example of a recovering alcoholic who vows never to have another drink in his life. To fulfill this promise to himself, every day the recovering alcoholic makes a choice to commit to his decision like it is his first day in recovery. Perhaps that is an unusual example, but I appreciate the intent behind it. Daily, we make a deliberate decision to either be ourselves or not. Personally, my top three non-negotiable daily leader actions (all contribute to my approachability) are: be sincere; show gratitude; and allow my subordinates to “occupy leader space.”

I see no need for leaders to “throw their weight around” or remind others they are in charge. When in uniform, it is obvious if you outrank someone. Being self-aware and sincere does not mean we should expect our subordinates to come to us every time, and you must find ways to connect with your team while being true to yourself. I would generally encourage you to get out from behind your desk, talk to your team, and learn what makes them unique individuals. However, don’t try being an outgoing, gregarious leader if you really aren’t.  Find ways to be yourself and leverage your strengths while working to improve your weaknesses.

In our personal lives and in our organizations, we should seek excellence, not perfection. Perfectionism is self-defeating because it often demands avoidance and risk aversion more than anything constructive. I sometimes struggle with recognizing those moments when good enough is good enough, which is necessary before moving on to the next task. Self-aware and sincere leaders can seek excellence while acknowledging they still have opportunities for growth and improvement

Major Ryan Cornell-d’Echert is an Army logistics officer with three deployments and nearly 13 years of active duty experience. He has previously been stationed at Fort Bliss, Fort Drum, and Fort Lee. He currently serves as the S4 for 71^st Ordnance Group (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) at Fort Carson. He has an MS in Adult Learning and Leadership from Kansas State University and a BA in English from the University of Delaware. He enjoys spending time with his lovely wife, good beer, cruel and unusual workouts, first-person shooters, and film theory and criticism. His next assignment is to the Army Management Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.

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“I’ll see you after spring break when we will discuss how the Allies won World War Two. Enjoy your week off.” The seventeen cadets enrolled in one of my sections of, “History of the Military Art from 1904 to 2013,” at the United States Military Academy took my words as the cue that class – our final one before the 2020 spring break – was dismissed. They got up from their desks and began filing out of our Thayer Hall classroom to head to a lunch formation.

Sunlight – a rarity in the generally windowless Thayer Hall – bathed the now-empty classroom as I packed up the WWII-era radio sets borrowed from the West Point Museum, which I had used to demonstrate the evolution of U.S. communications during the war. In this beautiful moment, the thought struck me: I was having a dream semester in a dream job. As a rotating officer teaching military history at West Point, the process of becoming an effective teacher over the previous year and a half had been an arduous one, full of trial and error. This struggle made the reward all the sweeter. Each of my three spring semester sections of “Mil Art” – including the one that had just departed – were firing on all cylinders, engaging in deep, sophisticated engagement with both the course material and one another.

The date was March 5^th, 2020. COVID-19 was a real concern for everyone, and the disease – not yet declared to be a pandemic – was gaining traction in the headlines as a global threat. Still, the developments of the ensuing seven days, which saw both a designation of COVID-19 as a pandemic by the World Health Organization and the declaration of a national emergency in the U.S., were a huge, unexpected shock. At the end of those seven days, Academy leadership made the wise decision to direct cadets not to return to West Point from their spring break destinations. Instead, the remainder of the semester was to be conducted remotely, in a digital classroom.

My first reaction to this new arrangement was a feeling of loss. As a teacher, I knew that the sweet, face-to-face, peer-driven discussion that makes the West Point classroom so effective would be very difficult to reproduce remotely. As a cadet mentor and an officer a few months away from departing West Point for my next assignment, I felt heartbroken. A near-constant engagement with cadets both in and out of the classroom is a hallmark of the experience of teaching at West Point. The transition to remote learning was to be a fundamental alteration not only to my work life but the life of our family. Prior to the onset of COVID-19, cadets were in our home multiple times a week for mentorship.

And yet, despite all the heartache and challenges of this transition to a digital classroom, three months later I am convinced that the half-semester of remote learning may have done more good than harm for the cadets who participated in it. This thesis is offered with a sincere acknowledgment of the immense and uneven difficulties everyone who participated in remote learning faced. My goal is not to make light of those challenges, but to help us all in “hunting the good stuff” as we reflect on the unprecedented events of the last several months.

The underlying logic behind my belief in this upside is simple: Army doctrine on leadership. The temporary foray into a remote learning environment challenged cadets and instructors alike to rely on – and therefore, strengthen – the “self-development” pillar outlined in ADP 6-22, Army Leadership. Under the leader attribute, “Prepares Self,” the authors of ADP 6-22 articulate a framework for self-development that reads almost exactly like the guidance issued to cadets during their remote-learning experience: “Leader preparation begins with self-awareness about one’s strengths and limitations, followed by focused self-development. Leaders maintain self-discipline, physical fitness, and mental well-being.” The central challenge of remote learning for cadets was to do just that – maintain all the discipline and focus they possessed when under the microscope at West Point in an environment with far less immediate consequences. This is the underlying behavior pattern of self-development: a willingness to remain committed to learning even when some of the tighter behavior controls are removed.

ADP 6-22 also emphasizes that success in the discipline of self-development, despite the individualistic connotations the term carries, is a team effort. As an instructor, I held a distinct role in shaping an environment in which cadets could grow their self-development muscles. This entailed modeling what learning should – and should not – look like. What follows is a brief list of “do’s and don’ts” drawn from this unique half-semester of remote learning at West Point. It is my belief that the lessons discussed below apply not only to instructors in professional military education but leaders attempting to develop a culture of self-development in units across the operational Army.

Do #1: Embrace Creativity

The great tragedy of our modern understanding of creativity is that it is divorced from the root verb, to create. Very few of us fit the mold of those atypical, “out of the box” thinkers. But everyone knows how to make something. One of the keys to successfully navigating the remote learning environment was to believe that each cadet held this universal ability to create and to deliberately tap into their creative instinct to support learning.

Of course, creativity is always imperative in teaching. But the remote environment made it even more essential, in large part because the constraints of communicating via a laptop camera degraded a key pedagogical tool many instructors – myself included – use to stimulate student engagement: charisma. In a non-digital classroom, I possessed a whole menu of non-verbal tools to stimulate student learning – both obvious and subtle. I could move around the room to encourage a cadet to pay closer attention. I could frown or act surprised when a student made a comment I wanted the class to explore more fully. Or, as I discovered during the weeks leading up to spring break, if I really wanted my class to focus on discussion with one another instead of me, I could simply look down at my notebook and jot down continuous observations as they spoke. The effect was near magic – perhaps they were nervous that I was grading their performance, or perhaps they finally felt free enough from my attention to look to one another.

Conversely, it is immensely difficult to “read a room” and engage with it digitally. In our remote classroom, cameras were usually turned off to preserve bandwidth for everyone on the call. This meant that instead of talking to fifteen sets of eyes, I spoke to a laptop screen of colored circle icons with cadet initials in the middle. Even when cameras were turned on, body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice all were much harder to decipher. The digital classroom brought with it a degraded quality of instructor-to-student and student-to-student communication.

Creative projects provided a way around this shortcoming. By pivoting to creative projects, I opened another avenue for fostering that spark of interest – one that discussion and personal interaction reliably promoted in our Thayer Hall classroom – that is so critical to building deep engagement with a subject.

For example, each cadet in my sections of “Mil Art” was required to craft a digital presentation on an object of “material culture” related to the lesson of the day. Material culture is an emerging, interdisciplinary academic discipline that uses objects – artifacts, clothing, art, technology, and so on – to craft original arguments. Cadets dabbled in material culture with consistent and impressive originality which demonstrated that deep engagement I was so keen to create.

One firstie (senior) cadet asked permission to examine, of all things, toilet paper for his material culture project. I was a bit skeptical – how can you relate that to military history in the twentieth century? But I allowed it. Several weeks later he gave his classmate a presentation that blew everyone away. During WWII, U.S. G.I.s received a ration of twenty-two sheets per day, compared to their British counterparts who were issued three. And their German foes? Toilet paper taken from captured German soldiers was “of very coarse quality and not packaged in moisture proof packets as were the American packets.” It is hard to imagine a more visceral, memorable demonstration of the strength of the “arsenal of democracy” – a critical aspect of Allied victory – than this common object. All I had to do was to give permission to explore and express this innate creativity.

Do #2: Incentivize Projects-Based Learning

The material culture project demonstrates another key element of success in remote learning: the importance of projects. In the immediate wake of the transition to remote learning, the team of instructors teaching “Mil Art” faced a significant dilemma: how to conduct examinations. Most cadets left on spring break planning to return a week later, leaving notebooks, supplemental reading material and even laptops in their barracks rooms at West Point. While our cadets were fortunate to have a digital textbook accessible from any computer in the world, the central dilemma remained: how could we test comprehensive knowledge from the entire course when the cadets did not possess their notes from January and February? Our solution was simple: we would test only the material covered in the remote learning environment, thereby decreasing the number of points allocated to the comprehensive term-end exam.

The extra points lopped off the reduced term-end exam were used as an added incentive for the class research paper, which cadets had been working on since the start of the semester. This project entailed tackling the central task of any historian – formulating an original historical argument based on evidence drawn from primary sources. The topic the cadets were asked to research was the 1945 Allied invasion of the island of Luzon. Fortunately, most of the primary source material for this project was already online, allowing most of the cadets to make the transition to the remote environment with relative ease. To adjust for at least some measure of turbulence in the transition to remote learning, the cadets were also given an extra two weeks to work on the project.

The outcome was amazing – the extra time and incentive is given to cadets led them to investigate their projects in greater depth than I had seen in my two years at the Academy. Nearly every project demonstrated that ‘spark’ of true engagement with the primary source material. This depth and engagement allowed these future officers to empathize with military leaders of the Luzon campaign – General Douglas MacArthur, Sixth Army Commander General Walter Krueger, and the commander of the Japanese Fourteenth Area Army, Tomoyuki Yamashita. The point is not just that the cadets produced higher quality work, but that by doing so they were far more likely to have internalized the key mental habits of a historian. These habits – the ability to evaluate arguments, examine the evidence, empathize with people from different backgrounds, and understand multiple perspectives of the same event – are essential for any officers to possess. This was accomplished not by doing more, but by “doing less better.”

Don’t #1: Over-Structure

History as a discipline is uniquely suited for self-development. The entire arc of a historian’s training is a transition from highly structured lectures as an undergraduate to seminars as a graduate student to self-directed research and writing as a professional historian. This model of development undoubtedly played a role in my instinct – as well as the instinct of many of my colleagues – to adopt and refine ‘asynchronous’ models of engaging with our classes.

When I first heard the term ‘asynchronous,’ I had to look it up in a dictionary. I learned that the word is drawn from telecommunications jargon, and refers to signal transmissions from multiple stations in a system. Each of these stations is designed to send transmissions periodically, as needed, rather than in a constant stream or regular interval. This definition paints a perfect picture of the model of asynchronous learning. Rather than attempting to simply transplant the regular time allocated for class meetings – a 75-minute period two to three times per week – into a digital environment, many of us adopted a more flexible model of engagement with our students. The asynchronous model allowed each student to respond to my directions on a less-regimented timeline.

The technology gave a whole menu of options for what this could look like. I could record a ten-minute lecture and post to a group chat for cadets to watch and respond before the end of the day. Cadets could do the same thing for one another. Written answers to discussion questions generated more careful and precise responses than in person and ensured that the “talkative” cadets did not dominate the conversation. I could send out surveys to gather information or direct cadets to work on group projects – like when they spent a week writing a chapter on the events of 2020 for a history textbook of the future. They also were required to engage in a peer review exercise prior to turning in their research papers. The point is that no single component of any digital medium alone was as strong as the various possibilities combined.

The asynchronous model also prevented “technological tunnel vision” – focusing on troubleshooting the flaws of one digital medium instead of employing a vast array of tools. The standard video call, for example, held many drawbacks – such as only displaying four student faces at a time – that were eventually remedied. However, hours of time – both cadet and instructor – could have been wasted in trying to fenagle this medium into an old format of instruction instead of exploring the various other tools the new environment offered.

Finally, and most importantly, this asynchronous model was profoundly sensitive to the wide array of home situations cadets found themselves in during COVID-19. As the New York Times argued in a compelling article early in the crisis, the transition to remote learning proved more difficult for certain students who found themselves facing vastly different home environments than their peers. For example, the Army News Service ran a story on a R.O.T.C. student at the Virginia Military Institute who attended remote classes from a tent on his family farm, pitched in an open field where the only reliable cell service could be found. The same pattern existed with my own students. Some were in comfortable, quiet home offices with parents giving them a wide berth to focus on their studies. Others shared rooms and Wi-Fi connections with multiple siblings also home from college or took breaks to perform household chores or babysit.

Don’t #2: Under-Structure

This wide discrepancy in socioeconomic backgrounds and home environments drives my final tip on remote learning: the need to “peer through the laptop” and figure out which students are struggling to stay afloat. Asynchronous should not be taken to mean laissez-faire instruction. In fact, I found the asynchronous model held the potential of being more taxing on my time and energy, not less. Imagine a telecommunications system composed of fifty substations communicating directly, as needed, with one main station. Without a set of parameters and management, both the main station and the substations are highly susceptible to overload. This makes sense considering doctrine – ADP 6-22 makes clear that successful self-development requires a strong element of selective oversight.

I developed a few tools to execute this oversight, both preventative and reactive. To prevent my cadets from falling behind on their final research paper, I had them submit a “time management contract” in which they committed to completing key steps of the writing process – drafting, revising, and producing a final draft – on certain days. As mentioned before, an ungraded peer review exercise provided another great incentive to get a rough draft complete prior to handing to a peer.

The injection of these elements of ‘preventative’ and ultimately helpful structure were critical to fostering successful remote learning. But equally important was maintaining an awareness, across all the ‘touches’ in an asynchronous environment, of cadet well-being. Care is a key element of any self-development program, something our doctrine makes clear. ADP 6-22 conceives of self-development in a holistic sense, in the maintenance and growth of mental, physical and even spiritual well-being. Self-development, in other words, is not merely a matter of equipping the intellect.

The golden rule of remote learning is to “peer through” the computer screen to check in with students, an imperative made even stronger by the COVID-19 crisis. When a cadet made a small slip up like failing to post on a discussion board or not responding to an email, a yellow flag went off in my brain. The first and most important question I would ask was not, “Why didn’t you post?” but rather, “Is everything ok?”

Yes, these are future commissioned officers who will lead Soldiers in combat. To do that effectively in the future, however, requires navigating the obstacles to success in the present. Stress over academics, conflict with siblings, concern for parents facing lost jobs or at-risk grandparents, or simple isolation all made this semester incredibly challenging for our cadets. In a remote environment, regular touches proved to be essential in sniffing out potential or real obstacles to running on the path of self-development. Any self-development program must do the same.

Conclusion

Leaders must deal with change and uncertainty. To do so effectively requires possessing the mind of a learner, regardless of age or rank. The students and instructors that engaged in this global, half-semester, remote-learning audible ought to be immensely proud of what they have accomplished. They should also reflect upon the upside of this crisis in developing leaders capable of fighting through change.

Self-development fills in all the important gaps not covered by institutional and organizational learning, as it equips leaders with “habits of mind” critical to success – including intellectual curiosity and a love of learning. This is not just high-minded idealism. Curiosity is what drives a young NCO to consult doctrine when creating a small arms range, or a lieutenant to consult the regulation to adjudicate a property issue correctly. Most importantly, leaders who possess the self-development muscle are the most likely to demonstrate the agile and adaptive thinking critical to success on the modern battlefield.

Like any muscle, self-development must be trained. This involves introducing controlled periods in a low structure environment, such as the one every West Point cadet went through this spring. Failing to do so assumes that success in a low structure environment will simply happen after graduation. This assumes too much. An investment in guided self-development prior to graduation – as well as in the operational Army – is the best bet to ensuring this habit grows as a part of our Army culture.

Major Wigton is an active-duty infantry officer currently serving as an assistant professor in the Department of History at West Point.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of the Department of History at West Point, the United States Military Academy, the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense.

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This article will review the authors observed trends of new field grades reintroduced back into their respective formations following their year of study at Command and General Staff College (CGSC). It will provide a synopsis of four areas that new field grades inquire about the most before they take on a staff position and considerations on how the environment has changed due to COVID19 since their last position prior to CGSC.  

Gather Context 

The recommended first step for current CGSC graduates to take before their reintroduction to the force is to understand the state of the Army and the operational or administrative environment that they are returning. It is dramatically different from those of junior field grades of the past. New staff officers are not falling in on a routine, cyclic long-range training plan. COVID19 is affecting months of collective training and having long-term impacts on the sustainable readiness model (SRM); specifically, in manning, resourcing, synchronization, and prioritization for units across the force.  

Upon the lift of Department of Defense restrictions, entire timelines for units must be re-planned, from collective to individual training. The doctrinal templates and procedures CGSC graduates have been learning may not be applicable to the Army upon reintegration. Instead of inheriting a transition and long-range training plan, graduates will have to think about how to apply environmental considerations to build a feasible and executable way ahead almost immediately. Lessons gained from CGSC may help, but rapidly evaluating what lessons to apply and when is far more valuable.  

Training models, methods, and SRM are rapidly changing. Resources are quickly being re-sequenced to support the FY 21 Global Force Management Allocation Plan (GFMAP). Units are deploying without Combat Training Center rotations.  New ways of doing business incur risk and look different. These non-standard new business rules will concern leaders ingrained in regimented glide paths. The challenge is to provide options founded in a sound understanding of the problems that best align with the commander’s intent and then execute coordination accordingly.  

Do Not Overburden the System 

COVID19 has had a positive impact. It stripped that which was not essential away from calendars. Limited resources like VTCs, SVOIP phones, constrained staffs into preserving only critical operations, shunting non-essential actions to preserve core function, which has generated white space. Graduates must be careful not to oversaturate this white space. In its “Lighten the Load”, study the Army found new ways to drop the average weight of soldiers’ kit. However, once a reduction was in place, commanders saw it as an opportunity to add back to it. The result was that soldiers carried more weight than the original starting point. Do not be an officer that takes a reduced system, and overburdens it, just because there is an opportunity.  

A mistake that some junior field grades make when they return to staff is that they turn off the learning mentality of CGSC, and revert to their last position of authority, most commonly a company commander. Graduates who show up to a unit and try to command staff, rather than learn from it, generally burn bridges quickly. Transitioning oneself from a commander to an action officer is a tough transition, more so in the dynamic COVID19 environment. Some majors execute this transition effortlessly, while some cannot let go of their command mentality. To overcome this, spend deliberate time to visualize how the systems currently work, two weeks with your predecessor is not enough. Understand current systems and processes before you try to adapt them. The system is going to try to achieve equilibrium to where it was before COVID19, let that natural transition occur before adopting it.   

Graduates Have Not Yet Begun to Write… 

CGSC requires hundreds of hours of reading, but as many graduates know, it is only a lot if you do it. However, graduates could not avoid writing. This constant churn of briefs, papers, products, and orders is not complete. Orders production is about to be a large portion of many graduates’ jobs. Similar to how there is a difference between reading and reading for comprehension, there is a vast difference in the level of writing graduates are about to be responsible for. The shift between routine and graduate-level writing will occur at a more rapid rate than most will have ever endured during their career.  Especially when faced with taking very complex products, plans, publications like COVID19 OPORDs or policies, and breaking them down into small executable parts for leaders or subordinates. This is both a skill that has to be developed and an art form learned through observing your audience.  

During the initial few weeks within a new unit, study how your commander speaks. Literally, list the verbiage they use, key phrases, terms, concepts. Begin injecting those into your own writing and emulate the commander’s voice. These pay dividends in both ghost note writing, and orders production to ensure that a nested and streamlined message is clearly conveyed and that it best replicates the way with which one commander communicates.  

Discerning What Matters 

There will be overwhelming periods, even for the most organized and detail-oriented major. It is the nature of middle management. Staff officers are both in between the doers, who will have questions of you, and the conceptual leaders who are generating the requirements asking for subject matter expertise to inform their decisions. Success depends upon how one understands the COVID19 environment and discerns what will apply today, tomorrow, a month, a year from now, and what residual factors changed it for the better. The residuals are the enhanced processes or procedures that will endure. Each of these time horizons requires a different depth of effort and rigor to comprehend. Majors, who can manage this understanding earlier regardless of the environment, generally generate thought freedom of maneuver for themselves, which in turn enables the optimal focus of their time and resources. 

Major Lyons holds a Master’s degree in Military Operational Arts and Science from the United States Air Force, Air Command Staff College. He has served in Air Defense and Sustainment Brigades as well as the United States Army Asymmetric Warfare Group as an Operational Advisor, Troop Commander and Group Operations Officer with operational experience in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Arabian Peninsula, Israel, and Africa. He currently serves as the Active Defense Chief at the Army Air and Missile Defense Command level, deployed forward serving within the US Air Force Central Command, 609th Combat Operations Division, Combined Air Operations Center. His other works include Defining Cross-Domain Maneuver for the 21st Century, the U.S. Army Travel Awareness Handbook, and multiple articles within the Small Arms Review, Havok Journal, and the Journal of Asymmetric Warfare. 

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Microsoft Teams is a highly effective command and control system that empowers leaders at echelon to create a collaborative and inclusive environment to share information rapidly, increase understanding, and enable decision making. The Army must maintain this capability to effectively operate in a COVID environment in the 21^st Century and Field Grade leaders must embrace technology that helps us propagate data, information, and knowledge across our formations quickly to enable Mission Command and maintain a competitive edge over our adversaries.

In March 2020, the world and the United States found themselves unprepared as they became entrenched in the COVID-19 pandemic that moved from Asia across the globe in four months. The Army found that many of its systems and processes were unsuitable for the rapid and drastic changes it was forced to implement to protect the force and mitigate the potential for a speedy decline in readiness. Protecting the force became the mission and number one priority.

Society has entered an Information age. Everyone has access to massive amounts of information through the World Wide Web, high powered computers, tablets, smartphones, and cloud technology; and currently, artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies are redefining how and even what decisions are made. Now, more than ever, field grade leaders must embrace technology that helps propagate data, information, and knowledge across our formations quickly to flatten communication, gain efficiency and speed, enable mission command, and for a competitive advantage.

Commanders and staff’s ability to quickly aggregate, analyze, decipher, and disseminate information into missions orders at echelon underpins mission command. Most notably, building cohesive teams through trust, creating a shared understanding, and exercising disciplined initiative (see Figure 1).[1] In fact, this is so important that Army doctrine refers to and encourages units to use parallel planning as much as possible.[2] However, e-mail remains the most prolific digital system across the Army. We all have confidence in our e-mail, but we also learned behaviors that hinder collaboration and inclusiveness. More often than not, e-mails are addressed to a limited audience, and information remains on our hard drives because portals and shared drives have become too cumbersome. While understandable and unintentional, leaders at echelon need to get serious about changing this behavior. Microsoft Teams is a platform that can help leaders reverse these trends and facilitate improved vertical and horizontal collaboration.

Individually, people must get comfortable sharing data and making it accessible and open to outside analysis and perspectives. Furthermore, we have to be comfortable bringing these conversations into more public forums; diverse thinking will increase the breadth and depth of understanding. Data and information accessibility is critical to be more objective and empowering commanders and staff’s to understand, decide, and act decisively. Microsoft Teams is an incredible tool to promote information accessibility and flatten communications.

ADP 6-0, Mission Command, Command and Control of Army Forces describes how the Army employs Command and Control to exercise authority and direction to accomplish a mission.[3] Mission Command, as a warfighting function, exercises command and control (C2) systems comprised of people, processes, networks, and command posts. These systems support commanders’ decision-making by collecting, creating, and maintaining relevant information to enable effective collaboration and communication with Soldiers.[4] Information age C2 systems are collaborative tools to facilitate processes that are effective, efficient, and enable relevant tempo to defeat an adversary. MS Teams is an innovative C2 system DoD fielded to increase distributed mission command under COVID conditions. It is a simple and highly effective capability the U.S. Army must retain and field grader leaders must employ to maintain a competitive edge over our adversaries.

Microsoft Team features include direct messaging, group chats, video teleconference, and file sharing in an intuitive user-interface that is secure, at the unclassified level, and can be used on government-issued systems and personal devices. This powerful change in Army operations has promoted unsurpassed distributed collaboration, inclusiveness, and increased efficiency. At the tactical level, formations have used these features to execute Team Leader Academies, Gunnery Skills Test Training, Mortar Gunnery Skills Training, Leader Development Programs, and full staff MDMP under COVID conditions. Units continued on their pre-COVID training schedule simply by downloading one collaborative app onto each Soldiers’ device.

As units returned to operations under COVID conditions, Soldiers began taking hands-on and written examinations and demonstrated increased scores and individual skill proficiency. An indicator that this generation of Soldiers is comfortable and achieves results sharing and collaborating virtually. The result is an increase in individual and unit lethality and safety for future training.

Staffs became more efficient at MDMP as they had to communicate in both the oral and written form clearly and concisely to overcome not being in the same room. Unit staffs, empowered by MS Teams, easily brought subordinate commanders into planning sessions resulting in synchronized plans.

The layout of MS Teams supported effective knowledge management to increase collaboration, understanding, and decision making. Dissemination of information across a wide audience in a rapid manner ensured consumers received timely information to support operations. For example, one battalion executive officer built a “Maintenance Net” on MS Teams where the ESR, 5988 trackers, services tracker, BN maintenance meeting slides, and BN LOGSYNC slides were updated daily. Company XOs could update products and brief the BN XO during daily sync meetings from their personal device, even when in the field executing gunnery. No longer were company XOs reliant on Ethernet cables or physically driving to and from meetings while their unit was in the field. The BN XO could review the information and drive actions to support a unit in the field in near real-time. Information age leaders are driving powerful cultural changes right now to create formations better manned, trained, and equipped.

MS Teams demonstrates the direction the Army must go to execute operations in the information age as well as in a COVID environment. It is through applications like MS Team, information age leaders at echelon can create a collaborative and inclusive command and control system to enable operations. Field Grade leaders must embrace technology to propagate data, information, and knowledge at relevant speeds across our formations to flatten our communications, enable Mission Command, and maintain our competitive edge over our adversaries.

MAJ Kyle Trottier is the Executive Officer for 1st ABCT 3ID. An Armor Officer he has served in Armor and Infantry Brigade Combat Teams with operational experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. He served as the Battalion Executive Officer for 2-7IN, 1/3ABCT, and the Chief of Future Operations for 3ID.

MAJ William Sitze is the Aide-de-Camp to the Deputy Commanding General, U.S. Army Forces Command. He is an Infantry Officer that has served in Airborne, Infantry, Stryker, and Armored Brigade combat teams with operational experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. He recently served as the Battalion S3 and then Executive Officer for 2-501 PIR, 1/82 IBCT (ABN).

[1] U.S. Army. Mission Command, Command and Control of Army Forces. Department of the Army. ADP 6-0. Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office. 2019. 1-6.

[2] U.S. Army. Commander and Staff Organization and Operations, FM 6-0. Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office.  9-2.

[3] Mission Command. 1-3

[4] Mission Command, 4-1.

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Today marks a bitter day in the fight against Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19), the disease caused by the virus known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). The Army lost a good leader today, a friend to many across the Army Reserve and Joint communities. He will remain nameless here. His cause of death is still not disclosed, though COVID-19 symptoms appear to have contributed to his death. And by the time you read this, his death will be in the past. The Army will have moved on in a positive direction, with new ways to organize its command and control systems (C2) in the age of COVID. These innovative ways are driven by the mission command approach and by the management of people, processes, networks, and the organization (command post). This leader’s death strikes a lot of America’s front–line warriors personally, as do all deaths and sicknesses caused by this disease. But we Soldier on. 

The U.S. military continues to work with many fellow Americans, at home and abroad, who are gravely affected by this global pandemic and national emergency. Many of these brave Americans are on the front line of this fight right now, either in a green suit or in a sky–blue medical suit, continuing work to stop the disease’s spread. To date (as of 24 May), U.S. public health jurisdictions have reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that over 1.5 million Americans have been diagnosed with the disease. According to the same reporting, over 96,000 Americans have died from complications related to the disease. But the military mission does not stop because the Department must keep moving forward. 

Still, the circumstances give the nation reason for pause as all Americans reflect on how best to adapt to this new way of life. Right now, brave teams of military personnel are actively in the fight, while parts of the nation find small innovative ways to work safe and keep moving forward. This gives Department of Defense leaders more than enough reason to continue in the vein of the global consensus, the same consensus of the last 70-plus days since this writer started quarantine with his family: #stayhome, #washyourhands, and #killthevirus. But the giant that is the Department of Defense must fight on. Learned long ago, in the midst of the Second Battle of the Marne and in the streets of Sadr City, the mission continues.  

But how? The fight continues through the mission command approach to command and control. On a separate site, readers can dig into the Reinvigorating the Army’s Approach to Mission Command series of articles, co-authored by Gen. Stephen Townsend, Maj. Gen. Douglas Crissman, and Maj. Kelly McCoy. These articles spark the conversations needed to redirect Army understanding of mission command as an approach and a philosophy. And though the April 2019 series preceded the July 2019 doctrine update, these articles did the Force a service in revealing the new definition of mission command: “the Army’s approach to command and control …empowers subordinate decision-making and decentralized execution appropriate to the situation.”  

Yes, in case you or your commander missed it, the Army’s conceptualization of mission command changed last summer. It is no longer the thing, but rather a philosophy that drives the thing. Mission command is an approach that is not interchangeable with the use of C2. It is no longer just another way to say “task org” or “command of missions,” which many senior leaders and organizations still mistake and misuse. Instead it drives the revived command and control warfighting function, which is at the heart of the elements of combat power in the field, down range, and in garrison. And, most recently, it drives the Defense Department’s new distributed work environment. This is how the military moves forward. 

At the heart of the mission command philosophy are the mission command principles. There are seven of them now: competence, mutual trust, shared understanding, commander’s intent, mission orders, disciplined initiative, and risk acceptance. And right now, parts of the U.S. military are making good use of each of these principles.  

The Army and the Defense Department are, by and large, making the best and adapting to a strenuous distributed work environment, with growth of virtual meetings, training, and recruiting. Indeed, the Regular Army workforce now faces the same distributed experiences of the National Guard and Reserve workforce with increased use of Defense Collaboration Service (DCS) and Microsoft Teams. The total team is now immersed in mission command principles. It starts with disciplined initiative, mutual trust, and risk acceptance. 

Disciplined initiative and mutual trust are now key watchwords for remotely working leaders and staffers. The chief of staff or executive officer are no longer peering over the shoulders of the coordinating staff or action officers. The context of daily telework forces mutual trust, as optimistic as this sounds. Taking on new, or even the same, projects and workloads in a new distributed work environment also requires exceptional competence and risk acceptance. Leaders are forced to further analyze talent, underwrite risk, and trust their teams while working from afar. These principles are a foundational start to progress in the new way forward for life after COVID-19. 

Mission orders, meanwhile, are, or should be, in constant draft, review, and dissemination to the formations. Checked your inbox lately for the latest Department of the Army fragmentary order updates? They are coming out often and getting published down echelon. Suddenly seeing an increase in use of mission orders from your own command? This writer is. His current command’s commanding general leads from the front daily by providing clear intent and stepping back to let the staff work their processes and take disciplined initiative. This is the mission command principles at work. 

What about your own work lines of effort? Seeing the mission command principles in action there? From this laptop alone, briefs are prepared, distributed, and hosted. Orders are drafted, peer reviewed, and stored on the Department of Defense Enterprise Portal Service SharePoint. And collaborations are initiated and actively brought to life through Teams or DCS. 

Also at the heart of mission command are the components of knowledge management (KM): people, processes, tools, and organization. These first three components form the context of the last component, the organization. Noticing a new organizational context lately? One with a hurried shift to figure out how to best align work packages against people, processes, and available tools? This is the components of KM in action, and it reinforces the mission command approach to command and control. 

This is a watershed moment for the Department of Defense, and at the lowest levels it is a watershed moment for tactical commanders. Will they see and take advantage of the lessons that stand before them in letting go, trusting, and taking risk, as Auftragstaktik intended, and as Nelson helped pioneer? Will they champion efforts to optimize performance through an adaptable and innovative arrangement of the KM components and the aligned C2 system? In the end, all of this is an effort to ensure knowledge analysis and flow in support of learning and effective, de-centralized decision-making. This is the 21st century military needed, to jointly operate as an institution ready for the multi-domain fight. 

Welcome to the new normal. The Army knows it can overcome complex, hybrid threats in the current operational environment. It has done so for almost three months in this new global context. Look at the work of Training and Doctrine Command and how they keep the Army moving forward with a new normal at basic training. Look at the other examples provided in the latest news from the Army. Degraded work conditions, persistent cyber threats, and an unseen biological enemy—these things have not stopped the U.S. Army or the Defense Department. They drive on, processing and compartmentalizing their losses and developing new paths forward. Despite due criticism of aged philosophies, they continue the mission.  

This is what the leader lost would have wanted: to keep moving forward. This is the legacy he would have asked for and for decades contributed to. For him, for the tens of thousands lost, for the heroes of the past and present, and for the Soldiers who will fight tomorrow’s wars, the Army must not let the lessons learned from this experience pass by without capture and analysis for future application.  

Major (P) Stefan M. Wiesz is an FA 57 and currently serving as an AGR deputy division plans officer in the Army Reserve. A basic branch Armor Officer, he has served in Armor and Cavalry organizations in the 3rd and 28th Infantry Divisions, with operational experience in Iraq and Kuwait. His most recent assignment includes BDE S3 in the Military Intelligence Readiness Command, out of Fort Belvoir, VA. 

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Two years ago someone gave me an audio book  (“Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” by Greg McKeown, read it!) and it changed my life. Without altering time with work or family, I listened to 100 books in 2018, and I listened to 150 books in 2019 – audiobooks literally changed my life.

Between Audible and the apps provided by libraries (Libby and OverDrive), I listen to books in all cracks of my day (from when I wake up until I leave the house, through my commute into the Pentagon, as I walk to my office, while working out, during my walk out of the building and commute home, while making dinner if my kids are playing, and after they go to bed while my husband and I are cleaning up the kitchen / making lunches / doing laundry / etc.).

I’m lucky that my office has the news on all day, or I would need to adjust some of this battle rhythm to ensure I’m caught up on the news.

Some Tips:

1) Goodreads is a great app for managing books you’ve read and books you want to read. You can customize your shelves to reflect your interest. For example, my shelves consist of: Biographies, Communication, Fiction, Global Issues, Health/Mind/Body, History, Leadership, Military, Parenting, and Presidents. (An old 1SG gave me a lifetime goal to read a book about every president.)

2) An Audible subscription is $14.95/month and you can buy 3 credits (3 books) for less than $30, so you can listen to 4 books/month for about $11/book. I believe money spent on books and salads is money well spent.

3) Every library has an app (either Libby or OverDrive) that you use to download audiobooks to your phone without ever going to the library.  Since these systems are electronic based on your library card barcode, I use the libraries for my current address, past address, and the Pentagon library – this increases my access to more books.

4) If you think you won’t like listening to books, start with an autobiography read by the author – it will feel really engaging and help to adjust your ears.  I’ve listen to books read by Ellen DeGeneres, Michelle Obama, Jimmy Carter, Trevor Noah, John McCain, Ash Carter, and Anthony Bourdain.  It’s special to listen to a book after the author dies, and also listening to the person narrating their own book feels extremely personalized.

5) As you get used to reading audiobooks you can listen at 1.25, 1.5, 1.75 or even 2x speed.  I listen to books at double speed, so a 28-hour listen only takes 14 hours.

6) Since back to back long 28-hour listens on national security issues can feel heavy, I rotate in light hearted fiction reads to balance the mood.

7) I am in many virtual book clubs with friends, some groups trade professional development recommendations, while others share fiction recommendations.  Audible books allow one free share per person, so if you read a book that really excites you, you can share it with multiple people.

8) While my 2019 goal was to listen / read 150 books, my 2020 goal is to listen to more podcasts.  Listening to books also primes you to absorb more information verbally, so podcasts like NPR’s “Up First,” the New York Times’ “The Daily,” and BBC “Global News.”

9) iPhone users can also configure their phones to read e-mails and PDFs out loud to them.  One of my colleagues uses this so her phone reads her morning news e-mail to her on her way to work.  To enable this feature, Settings > General > Accessibility > Speech.  Enable “Speak Screen” and use two fingers to swipe down from the top of the screen and an iPhone will start reading.  As with audiobooks, you can adjust your speed.

10) In “Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead,” former Secretary of Defense James Mattis said, “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.”  As a professional military officer, he makes the argument for following service and senior leader reading lists, all which are available here.

And finally, the best books I read in 2019 were:

Nonfiction:

• Inside the Five-Sided Box: Lessons from a Lifetime of Leadership in the Pentagon by Ash Carter
• Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Steve Coll
• The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World by Melinda Gates
• Leadershift: The 11 Essential Changes Every Leader Must Embrace by John Maxwell
• Dare to Lead by Brene Brown
• Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
• Americans at War by Stephen Ambrose
• Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin
• American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham
• I Hear You: The Surprisingly Simple Skill Behind Extraordinary Relationships by Michael Sorensen
• Facism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright
• Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War by Paul Scharre
• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink
• Warriors and Citizens: American Views of Our Military by Jim Mattis
• Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
• Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? by Graham Allison
• The Open Organization: Igniting Passion and Performance by Jim Whitehurst
• The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder by Peter Zeihan
• The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower by Michael Pillsbury
• No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes by Anad Gopal

Memoirs:

• Small Fry: A Memoir by Lisa Brennan-Jobs
• Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Loi Gottlieb
• The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
• The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Edith Eger
• Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford by Clint Hill

Fiction:

• The Library Book by Susan Orlean
• Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
• Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War by PW Singer
• Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
• American Royals Katharine McGee

Parenting:

• Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne
• The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel Siegel
• Parenting With Love and Logic by Foster Cline
• How Toddlers Thrive by Tovah Klein
• The Gift of Failure by Jessica Leahy

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LTC Allie Weiskopf is a public affairs officer in the office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy of the Department of Defense.

The post Audiobooks are Life Changing appeared first on The Field Grade Leader.

Admiral Horatio Nelson reviews the plan for the Battle of Trafalgar with his Captains. For Nelson, ensuring that his subordinates understood his intent was critical to enabling them to execute the disciplined initiative required for victory at sea.

With the operating environment of the 21st century’s multi-domain battlefield being one in which situational awareness and communications will be greatly degraded, the war fighting function of command and control (C2) will become extremely difficult to execute. Therefore, leaders at all echelons must start preparing themselves and their subordinates to overcome these critical challenges and continue to operate effectively. One of the often cited solutions to this problem is the proper implementation of the  elusive concept of mission command (MC).

For the United States Army, MC is supposed to be the practice by which leaders empower “subordinate decision making and decentralized execution appropriate to the situation.”  It would seem that this is  the right answer, yet although the Army has defined what MC is through its principles, and why it is important by framing the inherent nature of war, it has not done a great job explaining how to actually make it work in practice. Perhaps the missing link can be found in leader development, not the once a month, dry PowerPoint briefing type that we all know and love, but something more robust and effective. Newsflash: Leader development is happening all the time whether you like it or not (or make it a priority). A reassessment of how we approach leader development and its linkage to enabling mission command might be worthwhile as we enter into a new era of great power competition. Our success or failure in this endeavor might be the difference between victory and defeat on a battlefield in the not too distant future.  

Historical Context: Trafalgar and the Age of Sail

Like all generations of military professionals that have come before us, we would like to believe that the difficulties we face are unique to our time.  But history, that great mentor of all warriors, would beg to differ. If we look back through the annals of armed conflict, we can find numerous examples in which leaders were faced with problem sets similar to the ones we encounter today. In regards to the dilemma of achieving mission command through the fog and friction of battle, one of the most beneficial periods for us to explore for possible solutions is that colorful and daring stretch of time known as the age of sail.

In late October 1805, near the cape of Trafalgar, an outgunned and outnumbered British Fleet achieved a decisive victory against the combined Franco-Spanish naval forces of the Emperor Napoleon. This watershed moment would shape the course of history not just for Europe but the world. For the following century the Royal Navy would go uncontested and as Britannia ruled the seas, the sun never set on her Empire. So, why does this swashbuckling tale from over 200 years ago matter to leaders trying to prepare their subordinates to operate efficiently in the high-tech, fast-paced battle-spaces of modern warfare? Well, precisely because this overwhelming British achievement was not decided by technology, but rather by leadership. To be clearer, by superior leader development. The man responsible for giving the Royal Navy this tactical edge, was the legendary Lord Horatio Nelson. If one were searching for the Captain who best mastered how to navigate the chaos of late 18th/ early 19th Century naval combat, all channels lead to Nelson.

Lord Nelson’s body bore the scars of a life leading from the front. In 1797 his right arm had to be amputated just below the shoulder after he was wounded leading an amphibious assault against the Spanish in the Canary Islands.

To take part in just one decisive naval victory in the age of sail was a remarkable achievement, due to the fact that most engagements were inconclusive. However, Admiral Horatio Nelson stands at the top of great sea captains with having three credited to him (Cape St. Vincent, The Nile & Trafalgar). It would be safe to say that it wasn’t luck, but technique. What set him apart from many of his contemporaries was that he understood a simple truth about the character of naval combat in his time. He knew that once battle was set upon his fleet, the speed in which the situation would develop, the inherent fog of war and the limited means he had to quickly communicate orders, would greatly inhibit his ability to personally influence the fight. His solution was to trust and empower his subordinates, in which unity of effort could be achieved by decentralized actions. Sound familiar? The authors of ADP 6-0 would be proud. Although the Royal Navy didn’t have a field manual ordering Nelson to apply the concept of mission command, he was instinctively doing it,  because it worked. But you might be wondering how he made it a reality? The answer, “The Nelson Touch.”  

The Nelson Touch: Mission Command Actualized 

It has been well documented that Lord Nelson had the unique capability of rapidly building trust and confidence among the members of his command. His infectious assurance became known as the “Nelson Touch” and it is the foundation on which his victories at sea were built. As the Captain of a ship at the battle of Cape St. Vincent, Nelson executed a daring maneuver which did not fall in line with the exact scheme of attack his commander had ordered, but did meet his intent. The calculated risk he took to seize the initiative arguably won the day. Miraculously his career remained intact. This experience had a profound impact on Nelson, and when he was given command of his own fleet, he would see to it that he enabled this same audacious spirit in his subordinates. 

Nelson’s system for developing this type of behavior among the captains of his command relied heavily on his interactions with them. First, he kept his plans simple, acknowledging that that the more complex he made them, the more likely they were to fail due to lack of control. Additionally, he would share his plans early and often with his officers and always encouraged their candid feedback, a radical method for the times. This non-threatening approach ensured that plans could be refined and that shared understanding of his intent for how the fight would unfold could be achieved. Over dinners that he hosted in his personal quarters, he would often discuss a myriad of potential tactical situations the fleet might encounter, and what contingencies he expected his leaders to execute. This gave Nelson’s officers a glimpse into his mind and reduced ambiguity during battle. 

Maybe the most important outcome of these interactions was the relationship it fostered between Nelson and his men. He would famously refer to himself and his subordinates as a “Band of Brothers”, an admiration that no doubt stemmed from a special comradery that had been formed. By the time of battle, all of Nelson’s “band” knew what to do and they had the trust and confidence of their commander to execute disciplined initiative when opportunities arose.  

At Trafalgar, just before his fleet joined battle with the enemy, Nelson sent one last message via his signal flags. It stated “England expects that every man will do his duty.” This is telling, because when he had one last chance to communicate a possible order, he instead transmitted a final inspirational reminder. The cohesion that had been built between the “band of brothers” transcended the chaos of battle and although Nelson was felled by a musket ball on the quarter deck of his flag ship, dying shortly after, England won the day and as they say the rest is history. 

On 21 October, 1805, Admiral Horatio Nelson was shot on the quarterdeck of the HMS Victory. Although mortally wounded his “Band of Brothers” would fight on to victory at the legendary Battle of Trafalgar, a clear testament to the trust and competence cultivated by his leadership style known as the “Nelson Touch.”

Lessons from Admiral Nelson

Perhaps the biggest lesson that we can derive from studying Lord Nelson is that we each have a choice as leaders. We can either talk about it or be about it. We can pontificate about applying effective leadership philosophies like mission command or we can live them every day through our actions and interactions with our subordinates. Commanders must lead by example and prioritize the mentorship of their subordinates. More emphasis needs to be placed on the honing of war fighting skills through tactical discussion, table top exercises and rehearsals. Subordinates who execute disciplined initiative should be rewarded and encouraged, even if they stumble in the process. For Nelson, his scarred body was a testament to his willingness to lead by example in battle, having lost his right arm and vision in his right eye from wounds. Leaders today should be willing to take calculated risks in pursuit of truly achieving mission command even if it results in their careers taking some “professional shrapnel.” 

Conclusion: Do your Duty as a Leader 

The concept of mission command is not a lost cause. Its proper implementation is more important now than ever as we enter into a new era where the ability for commanders to apply direct control will be severely limited. The key to making it a reality is by investing in our subordinates at all levels. This requires time, energy and thought so that we can build cohesive teams that trust one another, can operate decentralized, can exploit the initiative and achieve unity of effort while not seeing or talking to one another. It requires the “Nelson Touch.” So, as the United States and its allies pursue military force modernization efforts focused on regaining our technological positions of advantage, it is absolutely critical that we don’t forget about investing in our leaders. They remain the most important factor to increase the lethality of our Forces. After all, the United States expects that every leader will do their duty. 

MAJ Steve Orbon is an Armor Officer in the United States Army and is currently the Chief of Operations for 3rd Infantry Division, at Fort Stewart, GA. His operational assignments include Tank Platoon Leader in Iraq and Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division’s Pathfinder Company in the Horn of Africa, both in support of the Global War on Terror. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and a Master of Arts in Defense and Strategic Studies. 

For further reading about Admiral Nelson:

1. The Great Admirals. Command at Sea 1587-1945, edited by Jack Sweetman
2. The Life of Nelson, Vol. 1 by Alfred Thayer Mahan.
3. The Pursuit of Victory: The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson by Roger Knight

The post The Nelson Touch: Leader Development and Its Link to Realizing Mission Command appeared first on The Field Grade Leader.