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.
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