"Go That Way"

I've made the decision to move this blog to a different location. A few things with Google's product just didn't jibe with what I wanted to do.  Thus, for future reference, please go to my SAMS Loggie blog at http://samsloggie.wordpress.com/.

Thanks-

The Military Decision Making Process---Welcome to the first exercise at SAMS

A few years ago, well, more like a decade ago, the simple concept of the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP for cool folks) overwhelmed me. I think that feeling was due to being a junior lieutenant in an organization (a brigade level headquarters company) loaded with field grade officers and a few seasoned and senior company grade officers. My exposure to the process left me a bit in awe, along with an "I'll never be able to do that" feeling.

Fast-forward a decade and not only have I embraced MDMP and other problem-solving models, but I am now waist-deep in it here at SAMS.

Our first non-introductory week of SAMS, this week, kicked off with a division-level MDMP exercise. During the Intermediate Level Education course in 2009, there was considerable build-up prior to conducting exercises such as this. Here, my initial take was that it serves to validate the individual and group competency towards taking a basic military problem and going through a linear process to solve.

However, after today's lengthy session--approximately 13 hours--my group began the bonding experience that typically takes weeks in some organizations. The ability to be professionals, argue professionally over passionate topics during Mission Analysis, and come together as a team to formally bring varying levels of experience and knowledge together was humbling. 

The best part: there are three more days of it and five more similar exercises scattered throughout the year from now until November. 

I managed to "get lucky" and was assigned my stereotypical duty position--the Logistics Officer. In this case, being the Division G4 in a major combat operation (MCO) scenario was really not too far off from my two years as a Brigade Combat Team's Support Operations Officer. The basic sustainment principles remain, the scope is significantly, larger, clearly, and the depth across the other warfighting functions required a bit more knowledge and understanding of their moving pieces and the slew logistics-related implied tasks that their specified tasks would subsequently generate. 

Humbling, fulfilling, and all encompassing. And, it is merely the first full week of the course.

If you know nothing about MDMP, go ahead and kick back for the evening and enjoy Appendix B of Field Manual 5-0. You probably will not gain rock start status if you are a first-time reader. Or, scan the chart below and realize how similar it compares to most other problem solving models.

The Reading Is Only Difficult, If You Don't Manage It

Every Army school has a formal and informal legacy. SAMS is no different. Prior to arriving this past month, many folks offered their feedback on the workload---specifically, the reading requirements. Part of the informal SAMS legacy, for me, was the impression that the reading was completely overwhelming.


During the Intermediate Level Education (ILE) course at the Command and General Staff College across the pond on Fort Leavenworth, a common thread of “the reading is only hard, if you do it” managed to echo from class to class, generation to generation---to include my time in 2009 while attending. I honestly put forth about a 70% effort towards the reading after the first three months concluded.


Upon receipt of the syllabus for the first 18-lesson block of instruction within the AMSP here at SAMS, I was truly surprised to see the reading requirement and the workload distribution. Each lesson does have anywhere from 125 up to 210 pages of reading. However, with the flow of the course—classroom time from 0830-1200 for three out of five days each week, on average—makes meeting that requirement very attainable. 


However, here is a strange dilemma I face. By no means am I an outstanding speed-reader, but I see a gap in a reading assignment only covering, say, 1/3rd of a book and that’s it. Do I owe it to myself to cover the entire scope of the product and embrace what is between the front and back covers? Alternatively, take the directive that the Ph.D-holding course author put in writing, do the specific reading, and move forward with the day?


Quick note, some folks drew all of their books for the entire first block of instruction---upwards of 25 total books. I have made the decision to draw those required for the first six lessons now and will pull another portion out as the time comes. Main reason: 25 books is a lot and my 10k forklifts, flat racks, and PLS trailers remain at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.


It has become quite clear that time management is significant here. With the ability to personally own a large portion of outside-the-class time, the pressure to actually do the work—the reading, the writing, the reflecting, the researching, and the next-class-preparation—is just awesome. I believe I have a solid plan to meet all of the requirements and subsequently defy any horrible SAMS workload legacy.

Google Scholar is your friend

One of the elements of graduating from SAMS is the completion and submission of a monograph. I'll talk a lot more about this over the next several months as my experience morphs, but the last two days during the introduction week, I can't express how much dialogue my class has received about the monograph. While there is no shortage of hints and advice, one piece that I've been considering is how researching and constructing a monograph of publishable quality in 2012 differs significantly from one that would have been researched and conducted in, say, 1992.

Despite having a massive library less than a half mile from my home on Fort Leavenworth, this crazy, yet likely unknown-to-most tool called "Google Scholar" is great. A few thoughts: 1-search everything from one place, 2-locate it locally, regionally, or via retail, 3-get a strong vibe for the scholarly literature in just about any subject and topic.

Final thought: Does a tool like this, seemingly simple to those of us in 2012 who've used Google for quite a few years, create a "Well, back in my day, research was hard" narrative from those who did research in, say, 1992? 

Or, in 2032, will global information and knowledge management be pushed beyond anything we can imagine that I will in fact generate that same "get off my lawn" type of narrative? 

First Day of SAMS

On the night of January 9th, 2012, I laid down feeling like an eight-year old. The internal feelings of "what's it going to be like tomorrow" stirred through the mass between my eyes like a stock car circling an oval track.


My first day in the Advanced Military Studies Program is today. Despite it only being a simple "introduction week," there is nothing simple about it. The group, 16 in my seminar and 16 in the other, is full of folks selected out of a group of over 100 applicants during a rigid process early in 2011. The introduction piece will surely be a matter of "sizing each other up."


Stealing a line from "Rudy," I'm five-foot-nothing, a hundred-and-nothing, I don't have anything to prove to anyone, but myself.


This is going to be a fun year.