Image via Wikipedia The college in-briefed the new Commander yesterday; From the dialogue emerged his 4 priorities 1. Leader Development (sub-bullets below are not all-inclusive) – Develop and implement ILE 2010 – Identify ILE and captains career course backlog issues related to ARFORGEN 2. Mission Command Center of Excellence (We emphasized LD&E’s contribution of manpower […]
Tag: Army
A reflection on charismatic leadership
Image via Wikipedia I am naturally skeptical about charismatic leaders, but I have seen its power in action. Just before GEN Petraeus left our college to take command in Iraq he gathered faculty and students in our large auditorium, which seats 2500. He spoke in a very relaxed manner, hardly the tone you might expect […]
Reflecting on self-directed leadership in a military college environment (an action research approach)
Image via Wikipedia The purpose of this assignment is reflect upon my learning through this course and to describe what I am doing to provide for the development of leadership capabilities in those who look to me for direction and guidance. My professional work centers on preparing Army organizational leaders for a world of complexity […]
A reflection on Hunt’s “Leadership: A new synthesis” (1996)
Image via Wikipedia remember that Hunt is writing his synthesis in 1996, and he comes from the leadership discipline, not education or cognitive neuroscience. He is good when it comes to synthesizing existing literature, but his excursions into the future of “what-if” are not very convincing. There has been a lot of important work done […]
A reflection on leading and managing a complex Participatory Action Research curriculum project
Image via Wikipedia 1. Introduction The purpose of this paper is to examine my current leadership skills. I will describe and reflect upon a recent curriculum project that I was in charge of at the US Army command and Gen. staff College. I will use a lens of the Bolman and Deal four Frameworks to evaluate […]
a reflection on critical pluralism, pragmatism, & politics
Image by zenonline via Flickr my take on critical pluralism is that it is a form of scholarly pragmatism, in the following sense: Pragmatism could be a shortcut around doing “due diligence” if it becomes a habit to satisfice, and avoid doing deep analysis and comparisons between perspectives , solutions, methods. there are some situations […]
PC triumphant!
Image via Wikipedia The report finds that PC inhibited our military’s ability to remove this clown from the force, and yet can’t name the devil itself, What’s changed? Nothing, we actually have reinforced PC behavior in this investigation. The U.S. military‘s just-released report into the Fort Hood shootings spends 86 pages detailing various slipups by […]
Haiti and the little red hen
Image by Getty Images via Daylife there are some countries that are complaining about the motives that the impute to the US with respect to the military forces engaged in relief operations in Haiti. Most of those countries are not in a position to provide significant humanitarian relief to the area in that they are […]
Complexity and planning for “endstates”
from a discussion on usefulness or not of the “end-state” concept and planning in general when faced with the challenges of nation building: Complexity theory says that complexity arises from a combination of 4 attributes: moderate to high levels of interdependence, connectedness, diversity and adaptation. Complex systems do not lend themselves to cause & effect […]
Ask a Pakistani why Afghanistan matters
If you want to know, ask somebody: (ht: smallwarsjournal) Afghanistan: Seven Fundamental Questions by Major Mehar Omar Khan I know we live in a world that is real and is moved by minds – thinking, manipulating, conniving, conspiring, calculating and masquerading minds. Our world therefore seldom has a place for ‘sentiments’ – pure, sincere, honest […]