feedback loops of us military cultural training programs

Feedback Loops of US Military Cultural Training Programs:

Prescribed Process vs. Reality

Jennifer Rachels

Some reading to get us started

Spink, Amanda (1997). Information science: a third feedback framework. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, vol. 48, no. 8, 728-740.

A history of the development of systems theory, and the divergence of the understanding of the feedback phenomenon among information science, social science, and cybernetics

Argyris, C & Schon, D.A. (1978). Organizational learning: a theory of action perspective. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley

Covers modeling, single-loop learning, double-loop learning

Some reading to get us started

Salmoni, Barak A., and Paula Holmes-Eber. (2006, November-December). Advances in Predeployment Culture Training: The U.S. Marine Corps Approach. Military Review November- December 2006.

Outlines the USMC pre-deployment cultural training program; essential elements of an effective program

Some reading to get us started

Black, J. Stewart & Mendenhall, J. Stewart (1990). Cross-cultural training effectiveness: A review and theoretical framework for future research. The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 15, No. 1, 113-136.

A literature review of central concepts; developments in research on cross-cultural training program effectiveness

Leiba-O’Sullivan, Sharon (1999). The distinction between stable and dynamic cross-cultural competencies: Implications for expatriate trainability. Journal of International Business Studies, Vol. 30, No. 4 (4th Qtr), 709-725.

Stable competencies are inherent in a personality, or learned by experience; dynamic competencies (history, language) are more trainable.

The Military Context

Operational relevance: A full academic understanding of anthropology or linguistics is not necessary. The type and amount of training a servicemember can receive differs according to the nature and requirements of the branch and the servicemember’s Military Occupational Specialty. Cultural information can feed intelligence efforts for kinetic operations, but is especially useful in informing stability operations.

The Military Context

Operational relevance: A full academic understanding of anthropology or linguistics is not necessary. The type and amount of training a servicemember can receive differs according to the nature and requirements of the branch and the servicemember’s Military Occupational Specialty. Cultural information can feed intelligence efforts for kinetic operations, but is especially useful in informing stability operations.

Competing approaches: Each branch has its own philosophy for analyzing cultural information, and for training servicemembers, and its own center(s) for cultural education and learning. Still more programs and philosophies occur in the field, during handover operations.

The Military Context

Operational relevance: A full academic understanding of anthropology or linguistics is not necessary. The type and amount of training a servicemember can receive differs according to the nature and requirements of the branch and the servicemember’s Military Occupational Specialty. Cultural information can feed intelligence efforts for kinetic operations, but is especially useful in informing stability operations.

Competing approaches: Each branch has its own philosophy for analyzing cultural information, and for training servicemembers, and its own center(s) for cultural education and learning. Still more programs and philosophies occur in the field, during handover operations.

A perceived knowledge gap: Turnover during and after Desert Storm and Desert Shield created a shortage of trainers and cultural knowledge, and there may be a fear that this has happened/will happen again. In the initial ramp-up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there was not the necessary expertise. Contractors and academics fill this gap.

The Military Context

Operational relevance: A full academic understanding of anthropology or linguistics is not necessary. The type and amount of training a servicemember can receive differs according to the nature and requirements of the branch and the servicemember’s Military Occupational Specialty. Cultural information can feed intelligence efforts for kinetic operations, but is especially useful in informing stability operations.

Competing approaches: Each branch has its own philosophy for analyzing cultural information, and for training servicemembers, and its own center(s) for cultural education and learning. Still more programs and philosophies occur in the field, during handover operations.

A perceived knowledge gap: Turnover during and after Desert Storm and Desert Shield created a shortage of trainers and cultural knowledge, and there may be a fear that this has happened/will happen again. In the initial ramp-up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there was not the necessary expertise. Contractors and academics fill this gap.

Doctrine: All training programs are created equal. All data collection instruments are created equal. Contractors always do it better, and the role of doctrine is to tell you exactly what to do.

The Military Context: Relevant doctrine

Field Manual (FM) 3-24: Counterinsurgency FM 6-0 Mission Command: Command and Control of Army Forces FM 6-0 Section 6-01.1: Knowledge Management TRADOC Regulation 350-70, Chapter II-8: “Training Requirements Analysis System” TRADOC Pamphlet 350-70-4: “Systems Approach to Training: Evaluation”

Cultural training and education challenges military doctrine.

Challenges to COIN Doctrine

COIN drives cultural training requirements by prescribing how cultural information can be used, and requires shortened feedback loops. However, COIN doctrine does not provide us with a system for capturing the lessons learned vital for the implementation of an effective COIN operation. COIN requires significant field level decisionmaking by junior enlisted Soldiers and Marines. Doctrine requires a rigid decisionmaking process that strictly follows rank and job descriptions.

COIN= counterinsurgency

Challenges to KM Doctrine

The doctrine of the Army is significant here because the sheer size of their force creates an acute need for managing the information their operations generate and require. KM doctrine affects how cultural information is collected and stored for reintroduction into the training system.

The Army KM Field Manual contains exhaustive guidance for the After Action Review (AAR) process, as well as descriptions of tools and strategies for the collection and redistribution of information (and specifically mentions cultural information).

KM= knowledge management

Challenges to KM Tools

Challenges to KM Tools

Challenges to KM Tools

Challenges to KM Tools

AARsThe two places in the training system that it is most likely to occur are not appropriate for the transfer of cultural knowledge. Even when culture is a factor in the exercise, AARs that occur at the end of exercises may focus on tactical performance, an individual’s performance of a technical skill, or on assigning responsibility for corrective action. AARs occurring at the end of a deployment result in the collection of whatever information can be recalled at the end of a long deployment. Moments of cultural understanding are so ephemeral, and so quickly integrated into the learner’s behavior, that the learner may not be able to recall them later.

KM strategy and tech tools Can cultural and social information be quantified, stored, and recalled for relevant tasks like historical operational information, or inventories? Can the KM strategies and tools created to share and manage “tacit knowledge” be used effectively for cultural information?

AAR= after-action review

Challenges to Training Doctrine

Contractors and training evaluation

• The geographic distribution of facilities, competing approached to cultural training of the different branches, and the sheer number of trainees requires multiple training programs delivered by different contractors.• Each of these contractors may consider their curricula, supporting materials, and evaluations intellectual property.• Evaluations may not deliver reliable or accurate results: Multiple choice evaluations delivered at the end of a course will reveal nothing about the ability of the trainee to use the information once deployed. Tests indicating the trainee absorbed the material presented do not indicate if that material was operationally relevant.• Academics used as trainers often do not have recent field experience in the area of operations.

Challenges to Training Doctrine

Feedback loops and “the imperative for a culture of innovation”

Fastabend, BG David A., & Simpson, Robert H. (2004). Adapt or die: The imperative for a culture of innovation in the United States Army. Army Magazine, Vol. 54, No. 2, February

Products should drive process, not the other way around.

Ancher, Col. Clinton J. and Burke, Lt. Col. M.D. (2003). Doctrine for asymmetric warfare. Military Review, July-August, 18-25.

“Current frustration with asymmetric opponents and operations” is “the product of Industrial-Age theory attempting to direct Information-Age operations”

Challenges to Training Doctrine

Feedback loops and “the imperative for a culture of innovation”

Chandler, Jennifer V. (2005). Why Culture Matters: An Empirically-Based Pre deployment Training Program. Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School

An extensive discussion of the effects of the development of the “strategic sergeant” on requirements for cultural training programs.

Scales, Maj. General Robert H. (2006). The Second Learning Revolution. Military Review, January-February, 37-45.

Also discusses the “strategic sergeant”, and documents the changing training needs of enlisted decisionmakers.

Leiba-O’Sullivan, Sharon (1999)…

Stable vs. dynamic competencies require different feedback mechanisms to determine the effectiveness of training.

Current doctrine does not support the tools a strategic

sergeant would use to provide feedback on cultural training

programs.

What tools would the strategic sergeant use?

Social networking: Used extensively by servicemembers, met with conflicting guidance and ambivalence by leadership and doctrine

Wiki: Peace Corps experience, recent release of four FMs for wiki comments, Afghanistan Lessons Learned for Soldiers (A.L.L.)

Blogs: Milblogging.com, Blog Action Day, blog registration, content analysis

Online forums: Small Wars Journal, the demise (and re-launch) of the NCO forum

iSoldier: Is more equipment a good thing?

These are not suggestions; they are reality. People are using these tools unofficially right now, and sharing cultural lessons learned that are escaping the doctrinal process.

FM= field manual

Operationally Relevant Cultural Training Programs Require

Faster Feedback Loops, and Faster Feedback Loops will

Require Innovation

Faster Feedback Loops =Operationally Relevant Cultural

Training Programs

Returning to Advances in Predeployment Culture Training (by Barak A. Salmoni and Paula Holmes-Eber )

• What doesn’t matter: rank, academic credentials, outsider or neutral status, MOS• What does matter: firsthand, day-to-day experience, recent experience, and information gathered from all sources (any MOS, with a focus on junior enlisted and rank, informal sources and debriefings)

If doctrine does not allow for innovations, analyzing information shared in informal networks and blogs, or other information sharing-methods, then the greatest problem to overcome in terms of improving cultural training and education programs may not be expertise or technological tools, but doctrine.