In one of our top level curriculum review meetings yesterday, our Deputy Commandant mentioned in his concluding remarks that there was a real “buzz” in the Army among the senior leaders concerning “Force Generation”, and he attributed it to the initiative I have been describing here which is holding out a lot of promise for transformative change.
This is before I even briefed him on the next phase, which is a survey/questionaire that we designed this week with our Quality Assurance Office and CGSS. Through the survey instrument, we’ll invite 1500 current students and 3000 graduates of the last 2 years to solicit : (1) their most important questions, (2) what they know that other students should know, (3) the problems they are experiencing with the force generation process in the field, (4) their best advice for solving problems, and (5) their interest in being part of the design team to craft curriculum to address the questions and problems.
We’ve already made contact with the Army proponents for each of the top level processes that govern the Army Force Generation process: policy, materiel, personnel, funding, training, and synchronization, and they have committed to helping us answer the questions that the students generate, as well as maintaining an ongoing knowledge base in the form of a wiki and a student text that will be widely available to Army units to reflect the most current wisdom associated with this process.
I see the wiki, the student text and our college as being the infrastructure that connects the educational needs of our officers with process experts from the generating force as well as the practical expertise that resides in the action-oriented leaders of our units in the field. I expect we’ll continue the survey as an annual instrument designed to ensure that our ST, wiki, and curriculum remain as adaptive as ARFORGEN is dynamic.
By staying connected to our officers’ stated educational needs and incorporating the best knowledge from experts and practitioners we intend to be relevant and adaptive as a department and college. When the day comes we no longer get urgent questions or significant problems identified that surprise us, we may conclude that we have a manageable ARFORGEN process. (There are more than a few things in the Army that are manageable but still hard 😛 )
In a classroom study group next week with volunteer students we will begin the design of the ARFORGEN wiki and Student Text “knowledge artifacts” that will represent our current consensus knowledge on the many complexities of ARFORGEN.
We think we can distribute the survey by 1 April, receive the bulk of input by 15 April, forward bundles to proponents by 1 May, be ready to populate the wiki and STs with initial answers by our 12 May ARFORGEN worksop at Ft Leavenworth, have a robust ST and wiki by 1 Aug, be ready to support curriculum for the 10-01 class, and then continue to refine the process and product through staff work and attention to detail.