Military Review English Edition March-April 2014 | Page 74
workforce knowledge and insights.18 Learning
organizations will not find simple answers to the
complex problems they encounter, but change
leaders in these organizations may leverage the
innovative and growing knowledge base of their
young people to confront these challenges. Learning organizations with change leaders improve
the military’s ability to communicate internally
and engage externally by combining the power
of individual intuition, open information sharing,
and collective organizational knowledge.
The U.S. military needs to become a learning
organization directed by change-oriented leaders
who will be able to move beyond development
of strategy and enact visionary change in organizational culture. As a learning organization, the
U.S. military can leverage collective knowledge
to sustain leadership development at the highest
levels. Mature change leaders will communicate a
clear, compelling vision, philosophy, and goals for
the U.S. military and passionately motivate service
members to align individual priorities around a
transformative vision. The military can become a
proactive, learning organization in a highly technical, interconnected, and nonlinear environment if
its senior personnel embrace their role as impactful
change leaders.
Looking forward, a challenging future will
require military leaders to build adaptable and transformative organizations that leverage technology
and knowledge management, value the innovative
ideas of new generations, and emphasize organizational learning and personal development. U.S.
military leadership must seek emerging change
leaders among its positive deviants. These leaders
will exhibit mature, systems-oriented thought processes, be in touch with new generations of service
members, and inherently leverage new technology
and information permeability. By fostering nontraditional communication and guiding the knowledge
management process, leaders can enable innovation
and build information permeability into an otherwise rigid hierarchy. Most importantly, change
leaders will transform military services into changecentric, learning organizations. Ultimately, modern
military services will generate and develop new and
even more adept transformative leaders, allowing
the U.S. military to adapt and succeed through the
dynamically complex 21st century Information Age
and beyond. MR
NOTES
1. Department of the Army Pam 600-3, Commissioned Officer Professional
Development and Career Manager (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 2010), 36.
2. Art Fritzson, Lloyd W. Howell Jr., and Dov S. Zakheim, “Military of Millennials,” 28 November 2007, Strategy and Business, .
3. Office of the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, “2011 Demographics: Profile
of the Military Community,” November 2012, Military One Source, .
4. Victoria Ward, “Children Using internet from age of three, study fi nds,”
The Telegraph, 1 May 2013, .
5. Richard Tanner Pascale and Jerry Sternin, “Your Company’s Secret Change
Agents,” Harvard Business Review, 2005, 83(5): 72.
6. Dubai School of Government, “Civil Movements: The Impact of Facebook
and Twitter” (Dubai, United Arab Emirates, May 2011), Arab Social Media Report,
1(2), .
7. Ibid., 20.
8. Raymond T. Odierno, “Army Investment and Equipment Modernization:
Maintaining the Decisive Edge,” 7 August 2012, Army Live .
9. Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline (New York: Doubleday, 1990).
72
10. John C. Maxwell, “What are the 5 Levels of Leadership?” 22 August 2011,
John Maxwell on Leadership, .
11. Pascale and Sternin.
12. Senge, 71.
13. Steven Livingston, “Clarifying the CNN Effect: An Examination of Media
Effects According to Type of Military Intervention,” The Joan Shorenstein Center,
Harvard University (June 1997), .
14. John P. Steele, “Antecedents and consequences of toxic leadership in
the U.S. Army: A two year review and recommended solutions,” Center for Army
Leadership (June 2011), .
15. Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald, The Social Organization: How to
Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of your Customers and Employees
(Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2011), 105.
16. Amber Corrin, “A look at DOD’s AKO, DKO and JKO portal numbers.”
17. Alfonso Vargas Sanchez, “Theme 14: Strategic Control,” Strategic Management and Business Policy, University of Huelva, (2011) .
18. Joan Giesecke and Beth McNeil, “Transitioning to the Learning Org [