Building High-Performing Commander Leader Teams: Intensive Collaboration Enabled by Information Technology and Knowledge Management
Abstract
This document was prepared to support the development of advanced leader and leader-team preparation in conjunction with the formulation and development of the emerging Army Battle Command Knowledge System (BCKS). It develops a model for the development and sustainment of high-performing teams of leaders that serve in chains of command, chains of functional support, and chains of coordination. The central thrust of the model is to describe how new tools provided by Information Technology (IT) through Army Knowledge Online (AKO), and Knowledge Management (KM) through BCKS, as mutually supporting programs, can translate data and information to knowledge and actionable understanding shared between high-performing leaders and teams of leaders across Army Operating Forces and Army Generating Forces and associated Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental, Multinational (JIIM) organizations. By drawing on AKO and BCKS, America's Army is on the verge of a breakthrough in individual, team, and unit performance by creating and sustaining high-performing Commander Leader Teams (HP CLTs.) Extending HP CLTs across JIIM organizations will be critical to winning the Long War. If leaders draw on top-down IT and bottom-up KM to generate and then sustain both grouped and virtual HP CLTs, then organizational performance improves greatly. AKO and BCKS together facilitate significant increases in professional communication and collaboration. Intensive collaboration generates shared skills, knowledge, and attitudes (SKA) along with shared knowledge and shared understanding and creates HP CLTs. The most relevant SKA for developing HP CLTs are shared trust, shared vision, shared competence, and shared confidence. Much of what is described here is merely new technology applied to proven learning processes, but there are four new capabilities made available by the combined potential of IT/AKO and KM/BCKS: CLTs, Structured Professional Forums (SPFs), Knowledge Nets (KNs), and Action Teams (ATs).
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA464217
Entities
People
- Frederic J. Brown
Organizations
- Institute for Defense Analyses