Military Review English Edition January-February 2015 | Page 61

BACK TO THE FUTURE continues, “in addition to the planning responsibility being stripped away by a higher headquarters, so are many of the assessments required throughout the training cycle.”47 Set against these and other warnings, the Army’s movement to garrison sets the conditions for a further divestment of training management development and responsibilities from company and field grade officers for at least two reasons. First, numerous experts, such as Donald E. Vandergriff, contend that the institutional (generating) force seemingly disagrees with the operating force on how to implement mission command.48 While the latter has attempted to integrate combat-derived lessons related to mission command, namely trust and underwriting risk, the former is still preoccupied with auditing for compliance, primarily regarding no-notice or short-notice tasks.49 These countervailing perspectives of mission command reinforce the state of training management as a lost art. They lead to making junior officers more concerned with satisfying ostensibly time-sensitive checklists disseminated from higher headquarters rather than forecasting and appropriating resources against training plans. Mandatory “AR 350-1” tasks (tasks for which units must be trained, according to Army Regulation 350-1) are a manifestation of such discontinuity.50 The majority of required tasks are unrelated to preparing for combat but consume an exorbitant amount of time and resources that company commanders could otherwise expend in building an eight-step training model to facilitate execution of a mission-essential task.51 Second, although completion of such tasks would hardly accord “enough time for a junior leader to plan, execute, and assess his or her training,” according to Johnson, brigade, division, and corps headquarters continue to align their planning and operation cycles against a wartime operations tempo.52 This is understandable given an era of persistent conflict punctuated by the recent activities of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Yet, the corresponding reduction of troops available to complete myriad training and operational tasks stretches units to the brink of exhaustion. Training management will remain a lost art if MILITARY REVIEW  January-February 2015 home-station commanders fail to prioritize their unit training ruthlessly against mission-essential tasks for the simple fact that subordinate leaders will possess limited time, resources, and leader development. Training Management as the Wave of the Future Considering the tradeoffs embedded in ARFORGEN and the lack of training management instruction within the institutional domain, how can senior leaders best prepare junior officers to conduct training management? The answer lies in the conduct of leader development activities, through which senior leaders can engender agile and adaptive junior leaders. This solution will enable the Army to capitalize on innovations within the integrated training environment, epitomized by regionally aligned, live-environment, and CTC-like training management approaches. Because leader development should accentuate the trust that underlines mission command, it goes beyond the occasional leader professional development session. Leader development is about certification as well as shared risk. Subordinate leaders who lack the experience and expertise to align resources against requirements feel most heartened by commanders who do not marginalize them but rather model and impart doctrinally sound planning and evaluating tools. To develop junior leaders, senior leaders should enact leader certification programs that teach the essentials, including how to conduct training meetings and quarterly training briefs, manage schedules, coordinate tasks among various organizations, and use the eightstep training model. The 7th Infantry Division’s new certification program could serve as a model for other units.53 Ultimately, leaders are accountable for the ability of their subordinates to effectively and efficiently manage training. If leaders neglect this responsibility, they could very well erode trust. And “when we begin to erode trust,” Gen. Martin Dempsey warns us, “we begin to erode the profession.”54 A sense of mutual trust and shared risk between commanders and junior officers, therefore, is key to overcoming the deficit of training management expertise and will ensure it becomes the wave of the future. 59