When Do We Teach the Basics?

When Do We Teach the Basics?

By Donald E. Vandergriff

We have to develop leaders who understand that context matters. The complexity of today's challenges and the uncertainties of tomorrow require a much broader approach to leader development and a clear understanding of the operating environment.

— General Martin E. Dempsey
Commander, Army Training and Doctrine Command
October 2009

By-the-book answers to specific wellknown situations are not good enough. It is the ability to think that allows a leader to take the knowledge from personal experiences, education, and training and adapt it to the imperfect information of the present situation to arrive at a timely, sound, and workable solution.

The Army is taking on and evolving a new approach to training and education called Outcomes-based Training and Education (OBT&E) while developing a new teaching method under the umbrella of OBT&E called the Adaptive Leaders Methodology (ALM).

The OODA Loop

Fundamental to applying Boyd's concepts is the realization that the OODA loop isn't really a loop at all. Boyd, in fact, never drew it that way. Instead, the loop is more appropriately considered as a way of thinking about conflict based on the concept of keeping our orientations better matched to reality than our opponents can. Boyd demonstrated, by combining examples from both military history and modern science, that the side that can do that not only can respond to changes more quickly, but also can shape the situation to its liking, and then exploit the advantage before the opponent can react. Another key is to use training and experience to assemble an arsenal of potentially effective actions that will flow intuitively, smoothly, and quickly from orientation. The end result is, as Boyd described it, to "operate inside an opponent's OODA 'loop'" and thus produce rapid, jarring changes that disorient and demoralize the opposition.

At the heart of ALM is the essence of the Boyd Cycle, a 4-step theory of decisionmaking that was first articulated by Col. John R. Boyd following his study of fighter pilots in combat during the Korean War. . . . Commonly known as "OODA" (observation, orientation, decision, action), the Boyd Cycle is a useful framework for the assessment of students throughout the course. We focus on the critical step of "orientation" because this is where the cadet attempted to make sense out of the information at hand. The decision that the cadet makes is important, but how they arrived at that decision is just as important.

The OODA loop serves as the centerpiece of how an adaptive leader makes decisions. Unlike the Army's Military Decisionmaking Process—a linear and analytical decisionmaking approach—the OODA loop provides a guide to how to think faster and more effectively than the enemy. However, it is a guide and not a process. Students should first be guided through many scenarios to discover the loop on their own. When finally introduced to the formal theory, students will say, "Wow, that is what I was doing!"

The essence of the ALM is not to arrive at the school solution, or even to teach the students to go down a prescribed checklist of steps. For an era where we cannot predict what leaders will be doing—or even if it should be called "war" at all—the checklist mentality is irrelevant at best. Instead, the method requires instructors to put students into increasingly complex and disorganized scenarios. A good scenario employing TDEs gives students a tactical problem and then puts them under stress—often a time constraint, but there are other means limited only by the instructor's imagination. The students must not only present their solutions, but also explain why they did what they did. The instructor and the other students will critique the solution as well as the explanation and the technique for solving the problem. Did the students, for example, use an effective balance of written and verbal instructions? Why did they micromanage their NCOs? Did the local population think better of the coalition as a result, or did the "favorable" body count just help recruit more insurgents?

Read more: http://www.ndu.edu/press/teach-the-basics.html