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 […]
Tag: Military
4 Reflections on Design
4 Reflections on “Design” that are guiding my inquiry, inspired by thought provoking article and commentary at the School for Advanced Military Studies, which is engaged in deep think on the entire military decision making model: 1. The challenge of codifying artful design. I am trying to integrate these 2 statements from the article; It […]
Reflecting on Mentoring and counseling
the faculty i respect the most at our college are the ones who voluntarily take on the challenge of being a faculty advisor and engage the students in one on one educational and career counseling. there is a move afoot in the Army to formalize and systematize the mentoring “program” across the force, and I […]
Blogs and democratization within hierarchical organizations
an update on “giving voice to important matters” after we briefed him on the power of blogging, our commandant, the senior military officer in charge of the college has embraced the idea and has started asking provocative questions about the future of the college’s curriculum and modes of instruction. Students and faculty are starting to […]
PAR Journal entry: initiating the “Force generation” project
this is the text of an info paper I wrote for our Deputy Commandant to send to the 3 and 4 star generals in charge of Army leader education and training. It describes the motivation for and purpose of our inquiry into “the education gap of force generation”, and lays out a methodology and strategy […]
College, teach thyself?
My commentary from a discussion thread at the CAC blogs on the topic of General Officers education and selection. I am interested in how we improve the capability of the college to support life long learningi nour student officers (and faculty). I argue that our college should be as flexible as the organizations we are […]
Reflecting on personal learning environments: teacher as model student
At the last CTU residency, on the last day my breakthrough insight was to approach the research question on leader curriculum development at the Command and General Staff College from the perspective of giving voice to the students, who are professional military officers operating at the graduate level and fresh from combat experience in Iraq […]
A Reflection on the political process of defense acquisition
In other places , such as this discussion about acquisition reform, and Dr Paparone’s discussion of The Fallacy of Technical Rationality, we have seen commentary on the nature of the acquisition process. There is a strong case for it being political in nature. In any event, politics plays a large role in creating the process, […]
Just what kind of a challenge is military acquisition reform? rhetorical?
We were having a discussion about reforming the military acquisition system around the watercooler today, and the subject came up: what kind of lens should we use to look at the problem? Engineering? Political? Scientific? Metaphorical? As we circled around the politics of reform I observed: “…If acquisition is a political process (and it should […]
Challenges for education in the network age
I am taking a close look at a school of thought on modern network-based education called “Connectivism”. It aligns very closely to my primitive and naive thoughts as expressed in this short video i made in 2005 as i was making my first efforts in moving my department from an Industrial Age curriculum and paradigm […]