The Enabling Leader: How Air Force Leaders Can Enable Emergence and Innovation During Complexity
Abstract
Today's increasingly complex threat environment presents many problems that current United States Air Force (USAF) doctrine cannot completely solve or struggles to address. For this reason, USAF leaders at the operational level must find creative and innovative solutions within their resource- and time-constrained environments. At the same time, the rigid, top-down USAF hierarchy, due to its bureaucratic nature, constrains both approval and implementation of creative or innovative ideas. So, how can operational-level USAF leaders foster creativity and innovation within their sphere of influence to achieve disproportionate effects if the USAF bureaucracy naturally discourages emergence? New research on leadership and organizational adaptability called Complexity Leadership Theory (CLT) attempts to address the tensions between bureaucratic hierarchical leadership structures and innovative adaptation required to address complex problems. CLT suggests that enabling leadership practices can help leaders deal with the tension between bottom-up, emergent innovation and the top-down hierarchical control. Operational Air Force leaders who embody enabling leadership traits and foster personal relationships and networks can create adaptive space between their ground-level tactical planning teams and higher strategic leaders to successfully foster creativity and innovation within their units. To better understand how current and future USAF leaders can apply the concepts found within CLT to their own units, this monograph will analyze two successful and highly innovative historical airpower case studies: the Doolittle Raid during World War II and Operation Bolo during the Vietnam War. The case studies feature two different enabling leaders who were able to work beyond the established hierarchy, create adaptive space, and enable novel, emergent operational approaches that had disproportionate effects at the strategic level.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 24, 2018
- Accession Number
- AD1071107
Entities
People
- Adam T. Keith
Organizations
- School of Advanced Military Studies