Military Review English Edition March-April 2014 | Page 36

In a similar but less monumental manner, following nearly a decade of continuous combat
operations, the United States Army published the
Army Leader Development Strategy (ALDS) in
November 2009. ALDS was the Army’s initial
vision of how it would focus institutional means
toward building its next generation of direct and
organizational leaders. It was authored by major
departmental stakeholders who believed that the
Army was “out of balance” in developing its leaders and recognized the need for a new leadership
vision. In discussing the “competitive learning environment” of the future in which our forces would
face patient and adaptive enemies using time and
complexity to their advantage, the authors called
for the Army to shape victory now by developing
its leaders to “learn faster, understand better, and
adapt more rapidly.”3
To get there, the ALDS stated that the Army
must focus on developing confident, versatile,
adaptive, and innovative leaders in order to dominate in a changed and changing environment. A
way, said the strategy, was for the Army as an
institution to balance its commitment to the three
pillars of leader development: training, education,
and experience.4
While the effects of institutional change are
rarely visible in the short term, four years later
the Army still sees itself as out of balance across
these three pillars, “given the emphasis [it has] had
to place on warfighting,” according to the latest
version of the ALDS, published in June, 2013.5
Exactly where balance is still needed and where
change must still occur is and likely will remain
a matter of debate. This essay seeks to enter that
debate by proposing that وH