What the Army can teach us about learning networks
Thursday, February 3rd, 2005
The January 17th issue of the New Yorker has an extraordinary article
about how a learning network emerged on the battlefield in Iraq.
“Battle Lessons,” by Dan Baum describes in detail how the Army is
revolutionizing its training of field officers. The Army is emblematic
of what all large organizations are facing in their training
departments. The problem starts with unidirectional activities coming
out of training: the army identifies a need and prepares and then hands
it down from the top. By the time it hits the field, it is stale and
irrelevant. Baum estimates that half of the soldier training is
meaningless and non-essential, and that the training is being handled
so it stifles fresh thinking. It encourages “reactive instead of
proactive thought, compliance instead of creativity, and adherence
instead of audacity.” As one captain put it, “They're giving me the egg
and telling me how to suck it.”
But a new direction has emerged from the battlefield: two new
web sites, Companycommand.com and Platoonleader.com, were developed two
young majors. Modeled on Alloutdoors.com, which lets sportsman exchange
information about all sorts of advice about “everything from how to
skin a squirrel by yanking its tail to how to call a turkey by blowing
on a wingbone, the new web sites allow for “unmediated real-time
cross-chat and debate.” This approach represents a true bottom-up
solution and is born of the X generation of leaders who are more
self-reliant and confident than their boomer superiors. That, coupled
with the exigencies of Iraq forcing the decision-making downward,
created the right conditions for this new learning network.
The network contains huge amounts of detailed information straight from
the front-line. (The stories in this piece are amazing.) And while it
was initially resisted by the chain of command, the new sites now have
the army's full support.
I am very excited to read this piece because it illustrates where we
believe learning and training need to go in large companies (and
small): new technologies like blogging and RSS can be put in the hands
of front-line employees and because they are so easy to learn, use,
support, and deploy, they can be rapidly adopted as a means of
capturing and publishing critical front-line information. Built-in RSS
can be used to aggregate and share this information so that people get
the information they need when they need it. Once the learning network
is up and running, the information can be mined and analyzed to
identify trends, best practices, and emergent leaders. It's all very
exciting and has the real potential to transform how people learn from
one another and to make us better, smarter, faster.
