In or Out of the Box: A Leader's Creative Thinking
Abstract
Much has been made of the number of missions the U.S. Army has performed since the end of the Cold War. In the forty years prior to 1989, the Army's focus had been on the high intensity, armored warfare that was expected to engulf Europe. Certainly there were diversions in Korea and Vietnam, but the strategic focus was on Europe. All of that shifted as the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed. For the last ten years the Army has been searching for a firm raison d'etre: what should we be doing, how should we be organized and how should we be equipped? Because we have begun to leave the Cold War mentality behind, leaders in the Army are beginning to adjust the focus of our organization. The concepts of massed formations and units operating dispersed, but within sight of each other, may no longer be valid. If current operations are any prediction of future operations, the time may have arrived to question how we create leaders. The Training and Doctrine (TRADOC) officer education system trains officers to use the military decision making process (MDMP) to arrive at acceptable solutions to problems. However, if officers were trained in this methodology either during the end of the Cold War or the recent transition period, those officers tend to be stifled in their thinking because of the way they learned the MDMP system. The MDMP became a rigid thinking process for many of these officers; they frequently did not learn how to approach situations from a different angle than what they had been trained in. This failure to adapt to creative or innovative problem solving techniques present a significant challenge for today's officers who must lead soldiers in situations not traditionally trained for in the TRADOC service school system.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 07, 2000
- Accession Number
- ADA378262
Entities
People
- Paul C. Jussel
Organizations
- United States Army War College