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 [