Why We Failed, with Some Success(es)

This is an ongoing series to support Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's reforms of DoD. Here we talk about the lessons learned from trying to reform DoD just over a decade ago.

[Author Note: This oncoming series is from a Marine Corps Gazette article, “Warning to TECOM: Why we failed learning from the past reform efforts” in the JAN 2020 issue. This article got a lot of attention by then TECOM Commander, Major General Bill Mullen. It was read widely, but still did not allow a small group of reformers to succeed at evolving how Marines learned to the next level. The prevailing establishment of the GS mafia (including Senior Executive Service (SeS) employees, either got rid of us by waiting out the few senior Marines that provided top cover for us]

We failed because change or revolutionary change is too hard! TRADOC resisted because it also had a proven methodology to learning called the doctrine of “task-condition and standard”, through the “crawl-walk-run” method of teaching. There are additional reasons as well. Too many people believed in the current system, to the point where it could not be questioned.

After the Vietnam War, the Army was in bad state; training and personnel were underfunded. There was a massive renaissance that occurred in the 1980s, which fixed many of these problems (except the personnel system). On top of this, decades of a massive PR campaign began after Vietnam (1975), stating the “U.S. Army was the best in history” and “in the world” had a negative impact; “If we are so good, why change?” many would ask, as they resisted any evolution.

The Army had recently implemented the task-condition-standard evolution from institutionalizing the industrial model under TRADOC Commander William DePuy in 1976; the entire culture of the Army and TRADOC was built around it to support a culture based on mass mobilization for a global war of attrition. Moving from an input/ inward driven system to an outcome (mission command) system would demand sweeping cultural change.

The U.S. military had recently won the Gulf War I (1991) and II (2003) and Afghanistan (2001) decisively (achieved short-term objectives), while the asymmetric wars of Iraq and Afghanistan were on going, this validated the point above. (Victory in all those conflicts had more to do with the poor quality of the enemy than with the supremacy of the Army and left horrible strategic consequences).

The senior leaders of the Army, the three- and four-star generals and civilians, had been in the aftermath of Vietnam, and believed the structural and training reforms (but no personnel system reforms) conducted then, remained relevant. In an Industrial-Age culture, tangibles trump intangibles every time. It is easier to make changes to technology in the short-term, as well as force structure, than to wait and see the long-term results from personnel and educational development reforms.

U.S. society is impatient. It is obsessed more with technological or tangible solutions (easier to throw money at something in the short-term) than intangible (harder to measure and long term) solutions. The tangible solutions also benefit from proponents among program sponsors, industry, and interested Congressional staffs.

The intangible solutions are harder to measure; the short- and long-term benefits are hard to see without long-term and often expensive studies. It is important to note that although these factors may have prevented the Army from “buying in” to OBTE [OBL] at an organizational level, there were many smaller-scale successes at the unit level.

Some Success!

Over five years from 2007 through 2012, with almost non-stop lectures, workshops, and training events, the three parallel efforts of Casey, AWG, and Vandergriff made significant progress. While their efforts were harmonized through their own cross talk, there was no oversight from a central authority. First, they influenced personnel from junior officers to general officers and NCOs on how to look at learning differently.

Over 100 articles in military journals on OBTE—by an array of authors—were written, and most were positive on moving to OBTE. One simply has to put OBTE in a search engine to view the array of papers, articles, and essays published on the subject. Additionally, the Army Chief of Staff Casey’s support by sending out the sixth chapter from Vandergriff 2008 book, Manning the Legion, to all two stars generals, won the temporary support of many commanding generals of the centers of excellence. These included MG Peter van Gel and his replacement, MG David Halverson (Fires Center of Excellence, Fort Sill, OK), MG James Campbell (Armor Center, Fort Knox, KY), MG Jeffrey Smith (CG Cadet Command, Fort Knox, KY), and MG H.R. McMaster (Maneuver Center of Excellence, Fort Benning, GA), who hosted conferences and pushed reforms based on OBTE throughout schools and commands (but once they left, those efforts away). In detail, what occurred was incredible for an organization like the US Army that was very bureaucratic hidebound, and addicted to the myth’s of its past,

1. MG van Gel hosted conferences, continual CATC training, and had Haskins, Darwin, and Vandergriff teaching and lecturing at the Fires Center of Excellence.

2. MG Campbell allowed the group of AWG, Haskins and Vandergriff to transform the Scout Platoon Leaders Course to the Army Reconnaissance Course using OBTE as the learning doctrine (Summer 2009-2010).

3. MG Smith (2010-2011) pushed significant changes to ROTC summer camp and made Vandergriff’s book, Raising the Bar, number one on cadre reading list through 2014.

4. MG H.R. McMaster (2012-2014) hosted mission command conferences and speakers, and also placed much of Vandergriff’s work on recommended reading lists.

5. Vandergriff was also hired by 316th Cavalry brigade (Fort Benning, GA) again for nine months, as a small business owner, in (JAN-SEP 2015) to teach mission command (that included OBTE) workshops to every Armor School and some Infantry School course.

6. In reaction to Special Forces Qualification course and Ranger School, then moving to more process-oriented assessment and evaluations, key personnel brought in AWG and Vandergriff to implement OBTE (but after 2012, when key supporters in those courses left, it reverted back to “competency-based”).

What do all these temporary changes mean?

While significant changes were made, and they had a positive impact on many leaders and Soldiers, only a few stayed at their courses in pockets within a class or pertained to a teacher who brought the methodology with them or were kept as a hidden curriculum out of sight when inspected. As the key agents of change left, the old returned as the GS and SeS mafia remained.

Next, we will use a well-known outline to examine why we failed despite several bright spots to bring in a better learning methodology to the Army TRADOC.

Next: “Kotter Provides a Guide to Why We Failed”

Notes:

1. Due to contracting conflicts with my employee at US Army ARCIC Forward in 2012, taken over by Booze Allen Hamilton, which cut my travel budget dramatically, I took a job in Afghanistan in JAN 13 in order to observe the ongoing military campaign. I returned in OCT 2014 to run my own business until OCT 2015, when I returned to Afghanistan. I was not failing with my own business, but I got a fantastic deal to return to Kabul, Afghanistan and work with the ministry of Interior and get an inside observation of the campaign at the highest levels.

2. Donald E. Vandergriff, “Chapter 5, Institutionalizing the Process,” in Developing Leaders for Mission Command: A Superior Command Culture, (Annapolis, MD: United States Naval Institute Press, September 2019).

3. Antoine Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos On the Battlefields of Modernity, (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2009).

4. Donald Vandergriff, “Today’s Training and Education Development Revolution: The Future is Now,” Association of the United States Army, (May 2010), available at https://www. ausa.org.

5. Donald Vandergriff, Manning the Legions of the United States and Finding Tomorrow’s Centurions, (London, UK: Praeger Publishing, May 2008).

6. Donald E. Vandergriff, “Training (Developing) Tomorrow’s Soldiers and Leaders,” in Manning the Legions of the United States and Finding Tomorrow’s Centurions, (London, UK; Praeger Publishing, May 2008). This chapter was also furnished to the Army Chief of Staff GEN John Casey who sent it out to all two star generals in the Army to read and apply in the summer of 2007.

7. As of today, all the key players in the reform efforts described, except for myself, are now doing other jobs outside reform. The system more or less waited most of us out. I am not saying at all that those individuals, all find men and women, and remain friends of mine, quit. No, they got frustrated and went off with their great talents and abilities to do other things for their families.