On July 10, 2019, I reported to Fort Leavenworth and the Command General Staff College. I had prepared myself to be led into a room with a doctor holding an orbitoclast for the lobotomy I had been promised. After some quick in-processing, I received administrative information before they sent me on my way. I was relieved to still have my mind, but surely the lobotomy everyone had promised would happen later in the year.
When I found out that I was selected to attend resident Intermediate Level Education (ILE) at Fort Leavenworth, I immediately realized how little I knew about the course. My research brought up numerous articles from officers discussing their year at Fort Leavenworth. These articles are what I found most useful and are the reason that I decided to write my own. Hopefully, my experience and advice serve two purposes. The first is to assist future classes in understanding the course of instruction and aid in your preparation for the “Best Year of Your Life.” Second, this article will be my attempt to, as General Funk says, “Leave the jersey in a better place than I found it.”
Assuming the fall assignment and unit interview cycle will proceed as normal, the authors of this blog set out to provide insight into the AIM 2.0 and unit interview process for the incoming CGSOC AY20-21. The process begins almost immediately once the course begins. Prepared officers will develop a game plan to increase their chances of receiving their desired assignment.
It’s been two years since I completed my Field Grade Key and Developmental (KD) time. Since then, I’ve had the fortunate opportunity to gather my thoughts and reflect on my time as a Battalion and Brigade S3. By no means does my experience make me an expert. If anything, it’s an opportunity to think. My intent is to reinforce common fundamentals with personally unique thoughts. Much of it is directed at the man in the mirror.
There I was…It was 2013, I was an aviation battalion S-3 in Afghanistan, and my boss had just given me less than 24 hours to write an argumentative essay. Someone at a higher headquarters wanted to redeploy one of our aerial medical evacuation (MEDEVAC) helicopter companies without replacing it. My boss believed this decision would severely impede MEDEVAC in our area of operations and the division commander agreed. He said he would take the issue to his boss and asked us to provide a short paper summarizing our analysis and recommendation. The writing fell to me. I had thought I’d left the argumentative essay behind two years earlier when I graduated from the Command and General Staff College (CGSC). But once again, I found myself crafting a thesis, gathering evidence, and writing an argument.
Don’t raise your voice, improve your argument.
Anyone following the Field Grade Leader knows the importance of reading. Anyone short on material or motivation can find dozens of book lists and a stream of articles that support professional reading. Everyone knows we need to read, but rarely do we talk about how to read. We assume that because we can see and comprehend words and the order they are in, we can read. But is that true? Everyone knows what a map looks like, but not everyone can use it for land navigation.
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.
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 21st 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.
“Black Swan – First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations…Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact…”1
– Nassim Taleb, Black Swan
There are certain events and circumstances in life that will catch you unprepared or place you in unexpected situations. The author Nassim Taleb categorized these significant events as “Black Swans” in the book that shared the same title. The premise for those types of events is that they are unexpected and have radical and far-reaching effects. Depending on whom you ask, a global pandemic may not have been a surprise throughout certain parts of the world. However, the CoronaVirus-19 (CV-19) pandemic drastically changed how the military operates daily both in garrison and deployed environments. Routine daily in-person contact, group physical training, and meetings were replaced by phone calls, text messages, and smartphone/computer applications. The pandemic highlighted the importance of the individual disciplined initiative, distributed leadership, and technological solutions. The intent of this article is to offer insights from serving as a field grade officer during the CV-19 pandemic and provide concepts and recommendations for future field grade officers that are faced with similar circumstances.
In March of 2020, the majority of offices in the United States closed to protect its most precious resource, it’s people, from the coronavirus (COVID-19). The Department of Defense leaned forward and transitioned to a majority telework environment. How does an organization that is “key and essential” continue to operate? What are the mechanisms and fundamental processes that enable productivity in vulnerable, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments? The field grade officer must be adaptive and agile in operating any of the settings that may present as a result of COVID-19. These categories are the new normal.