Military Review English Edition January-February 2017 | Page 121

WRITING

and correspondence in daily administration will help
soldiers and leaders think more critically about issues,
and become more competent.
Getting soldiers to write more and better in daily
operations will again require a shift from the Army’s
current overreliance on PowerPoint as a tool to present information to decision makers. This is because
PowerPoint inherently requires users to compress information irrespective of the complexities involved, which
fosters a preoccupation with summarizing data at the expense of careful analysis, logic, and coherence. According
to Edward Tufte, a study that compared PowerPoint
with other methods for presenting information yielded
evidence that “PowerPoint, compared to other common
presentation tools, reduces the analytical quality of serious presentations of evidence. This is especially the case
for the PowerPoint ready-made templates, which corrupt statistical reasoning, and often weaken verbal and
spatial thinking.”26 Interestingly, in his 2015 visit to U.S.
Forces in Kuwait, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter
was reported to have barred the use of PowerPoint in an
effort to “challenge his commanders’ thinking.”27
The Army can get more soldiers to write professionally by creating and formalizing requirements and performance-related incentives for them to write for publication, or in some cases doctrine, and tactics, techniques,
and procedures development. Conceptually, emulative
of the Army Acquisition Corps’ annual requirement for
its members to accrue forty continuous learning points
per year, the Army could mandate that commissioned
and senior noncommissioned officers publish at least one
research article every year in a professional publication.
This increased emphasis on professional writing would
also help the Army maximize returns on its investments
in great resources like The Army Press and Military
Review, and it would promote professional dialogue.
Additionally, the Army could institute written
examinations as part of the entrance criteria for officer
and noncommissioned officer developmental courses
or schools. Douglas Macgregor concurs by writing
that as a way to cultivate a habit of professional study
early in officers’ careers, the Army should institute a
written examination for admission to the Command
and General Staff College. Macgregor writes that “by
publishing the list of required reading and study material, captains would know precisely what areas would
be tested and what skills they would need to perform
MILITARY REVIEW  January-February 2017

well.”28 At this juncture, it is relevant to highlight that
in 2015 the Army implemented and evaluated an
initiative in which noncommissioned officers attending
the Warrior Leader Course, Advanced Leader Course,
Senior Leader Course, Master Leader Course, and
Sergeants Major Course were required to write essays
that were evaluated by what is known as the Criterion
Writing Assessment Tool. This tool helps the Army
identify and remedy the writing and communicative
challenges of noncommissioned officers.29
The Army can also get soldiers to write by encouraging leaders at all echelons to give higher performance
evaluations to soldiers who—all other things being
equal—demonstrate a higher level of professionalism
relative to their peers by undertaking to study, research, and write on aspects of the profession of arms.
Promotion boards could be made to award extra points
for candidates who have demonstrated commitment to
professional and intellectual growth by consistently fulfilling their mandatory annual requirement to publish
on a topic of relevance to the profession.
Finally, the Army can inspire soldiers to write by
emphasizing reading. One could convincingly argue
that the Army has a strong reading tradition—citing
the professional reading lists of numerous Army leaders as evidence. However, the existence of professional
reading lists, while inspiring and motivational to some,
fails to encourage the preponderance of soldiers to read
and study the profession on their own time. Leader
(command) emphasis is required to get the majority
of soldiers to read professionally. Leaders, preferably
commanders, should make reading and subsequent
discourse a part of their units’ periodic professional
development seminars. Reading and discourse will
inspire soldiers to write, which will vigorously spur professional growth in the Army. According to Lythgoe,
“writing, when combined with reading, produces
powerful thinking.”30 Some of the most illustrious officers in the Army’s history grew professionally through
voracious reading, critical thinking, discourse, and
writing. While in Panama, Eisenhower not only wrote
but also read extensively. Cox writes that Eisenhower
and Conner “would read biographies of Civil War
generals and spent [sic] hours discussing their decisions
together,” frequently conversing well into the night.31
Interestingly, according to Cox, it was also during this
time that Conner passed on his experiences and lessons
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