CCLKOW is a weekly conversation on military affairs jointly hosted by the Center for Company-Level Leaders (CCL) at the US Military Academy at West Point and the Kings of War (KOW), a blog of the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. This week’s post was provided by Gary M. Klein, an Army Officer and member of the Military Writers Guild. The views expressed here are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the US Army or the Department of Defense. Read the post and join the discussion on Twitter #CCLKOW.

Winning in a complex world requires adaptive and innovative Soldiers and leaders.

The Army fully embraced this concept when it published TRADOC Pam 525–3–1, The U.S. Army Operating Concept: Win in a Complex World in October 2014. This document frames the future operating environment and asks first order questions (aka Army Warfighting Challenges) to determine the way ahead for the Army.

Even if you have not read this document, you have probably heard or read a number of the arguments presented within it. The Army Operating Concept states that our leaders must be adaptive and/or innovative ten times. More significantly, it dedicates two of the twenty warfighting challenges to exploring this idea. The two warfighting challenges are:

9. How [do we] develop resilient Soldiers, adaptive leaders, and cohesive teams committed to the Army professional ethic that are capable of accomplishing the mission in environments of uncertainty and persistent danger?

10. How [do we] develop agile, adaptive, and innovative leaders who thrive in conditions of uncertainty and chaos and are capable of visualizing, describing, directing, and leading and assessing operations in complex environments and against adaptive enemies?[i]

The Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC) is exploring these warfighting challenges through a series of collaborative discussions, research efforts, experimentation, and exercises known as the Force 2025 Maneuvers: The Campaign of Learning. These challenges and the ensuing discussions consider a number of first principles: unit readiness, building or maintaining capabilities, prioritization of organizations or capabilities that are difficult to train and regenerate, cutting unnecessary overhead, synergy between the operating force and the institutional Army, etc.[ii]

Whatever the results of these efforts are, it is worth asking — what are we doing, or what can we do, to address adaptability and innovation in the Army now?[iii]

This question was explored during the recent Solarium 2015 as part of the research into cognitive abilities (i.e. brain-based skills), but these discussions and many others like it tend to focus on solutions within the institutional Army.[iv] The institutional Army is only part of the solution though. While the institutional Army does an outstanding job teaching Soldiers skills, it does not have as much of an impact on shaping an operational unit’s organizational culture, which is a significant cultivator and/or prerequisite for adaptability and innovation. For this reason, the operational Army must foster adaptability and innovation as well.

Implementation in the operational Army brings about its own unique challenges. Do you train cognitive abilities to individual Soldiers and leaders, or to collective units? Do you train different cognitive abilities at different ranks or echelons? I think it is safe to say that the answer to these questions will vary depending on the specific ability or skill you seek to address.

For this week’s CCLKOW discussion, let’s frame our problem in the context of our tactical leaders from Brigade to Platoon-level leadership, since they are the decision makers and executors of training management. As a prior, current, or future leader within one of those organizations:

1. How are you training or educating adaptability and innovation at echelon (BDE/BN/CO/PLT)? Or if you have not done so, how might we go about doing this in the future?

2. What cognitive abilities do we need to foster in our Soldiers, squad leaders, platoon leaders/sergeants, and company-level leaders? (e.g. perception, speed of mental processing, critical thinking, synthesis, creative thinking, innovation, etc.) You may have different answers at different levels.

The third question is aimed at the audience at large, military or non-military. Tony Wagner argues in The Global Achievement Gap that the most important “First Survival Skill” in the modern world of work is critical thinking and problem solving. Specifically, he states that historically, education focused on the “Three R’s” of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but these basics are no longer adequate in the current knowledge economy. Similar to the situation outlined in The Army Operating Concept, Tony argues that we must all learn to think and ask better questions.[v] So…

3. How do we teach ourselves as citizens, employees, or leaders to ask good questions and develop critical thinking skills?