AGILE LEADERS, AGILE INSTITUTIONS:

EDUCATING ADAPTIVE AND INNOVATIVE LEADERS

FOR TODAY AND TOMORROW

Lieutenant Colonel Christopher P. Gehler

August 2005

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PREFACE

 The U.S. Army War College provides an excellent environment for selected military officers and 

government civilians to reflect and use their career experience to explore a wide range of strategic 

issues. To assure that the research developed by Army War College students is available to Army and 

Department of Defense leaders, the Strategic Studies Institute publishes selected papers in its Carlisle 

Papers in Security Strategy Series.

 This paper examines the new strategic reality and its implications on our officers’ professional military 

education, as well as the concepts of individual and organizational agility, specifically investigating 

adaptability, innovation, and learning. The author then advances a recommended model to develop 

agile leaders, while making the institutional system more agile as well.

ANTULIO J. ECHEVARRIA II

Director of Research

Strategic Studies Institute 
iv

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHRISTOPHER P. GEHLER is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, and a member of the U.S. Army 

War College Class of 2005.
v

ABSTRACT

 In 2004, General Kevin P. Byrnes tasked the U.S. Army War College to study the post initial-entry 

Officer Education System (OES). The Agile Leader Study’s charter was to assess OES curricula to 

determine how well-suited they were for developing leaders to operate effectively in the contemporary 

operational environment. More narrowly, this paper is a “directed telescope” focused on the Captain’s 

Career Courses (CCCs). It seeks to answer the research question, how should TRADOC change its 

education system, with specific regard to the CCCs, to better develop and prepare mentally agile 

leaders for the Army’s new strategic reality?

 To answer this question, this paper examines the new strategic reality and its implications on our 

officers’ professional military education, as well as the concepts of individual and organizational agility, 

specifically investigating adaptability, innovation, and learning. It then advances a recommended 

model to develop agile leaders, while making the institutional system more agile as well.

1

AGILE LEADERS, AGILE INSTITUTIONS:

EDUCATING ADAPTIVE AND INNOVATIVE LEADERS

FOR TODAY AND TOMORROW

To succeed, leaders must be at harmony with their context.

—LTG (Ret) Walter F. Ulmer, Jr.1

 The Army’s new strategic reality, the context in which we find ourselves, is that war is now the 

norm—it is our steady state environment.2

 The 2005 Army Posture Statement states: “Operating within 

an uncertain, unpredictable environment, the Army must be prepared to sustain operations during 

a period of persistent conflict—a blurring of familiar distinctions between war and peace.”3 This is a 

protracted war against adversaries employing irregular, unconventional, and asymmetrical means. 

The implications of this new context are clear: “Adapt or Die.”4

 This bold statement resonates with Soldiers in combat; they implicitly understand the wisdom in 

it.5 However, thousands of miles away and removed from the imminent threat that so persuasively 

catalyzes the Soldier’s wisdom, the bureaucratic system of our Institutional Army rationally ponders 

the “truth” of this command. The adaptive-challenge time horizon for the Soldier in combat is measured 

in seconds, minutes, and hours, all of which he can judge by looking at his watch. For the Institutional 

Army, steeped in deliberate and rational methods designed for peacetime innovation, the time horizon 

is measured in the months, quarters, and years which lay out well on a multiyear calendar.6 While the 

Soldier is decisively concerned about the challenges he faces in this fight, the institution is focused on the 

next fight or even the “fight after next.” Within the new strategic context, these different time horizons 

are incompatible. As General Kevin P. Byrnes, Training and Doctrine (TRADOC) Commander, said, 

“In wartime, we can’t afford such a system.”7

 In many ways, senior Army leadership and the leaders in front of the bureaucratic systems have 

and are addressing much of the inertia and structure that resists change, or that is so farsighted 

so as to not focus on the challenges Soldiers currently face. The formation and deployment of the 

Improvised Explosives Device (IED) Task Force, the expanded role for the Center for Army Lessons 

Learned (CALL), and the integration of Rapid Fielding Initiatives are all innovative and adaptive cases 

in point. However, the concern of this paper is on the leader education system for this new strategic 

environment. Our education system needs to focus on developing agile leaders who are prepared for 

the challenges and complexities of this environment. To train and educate these leaders, our TRADOC 

institutions will have to adapt and innovate—they will have to become agile learning organizations 

in harmony with the new strategic context. In “Adapt or Die,” Brigadier General David A. Fastabend 

puts it this way: “In the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment we face for the 

foreseeable future, if we were to choose one advantage over our adversaries it would certainly be this: 

to be superior in the art of learning and adaptation. This is the imperative for a culture of innovation in the 

United States Army.”8

 In June 2004, General Byrnes tasked the U.S. Army War College to study the post initial-entry 

Officer Education System (OES). The Agile Leader Study’s charter was to assess OES curricula and 

the Combat Training Centers’ (CTC) training environments to determine how well-suited they were 

for developing leaders to operate effectively in the contemporary operational environment (COE). 

Research showed that many junior officers displayed great agility in dealing with the new challenges 

of combat in Operations IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF) and ENDURING FREEDOM (OEF).9

 Questions arose: 

Was this agility simply individual talent or did their institutional training and education instill it? Is 
2

OES preparing them to be agile? What can we do to better prepare them? More narrowly, this paper is 

a “directed telescope” focused on the Captain’s Career Courses (CCC).10 It seeks to answer the research 

question, how should TRADOC change its education system, with specific regard to the CCCs, to better 

develop and prepare mentally agile leaders for the Army’s new strategic reality? 

 To answer this question, this paper will examine the Army’s new strategic reality and its implications 

on our officers’ professional military education. Rather than talking about the COE which has dominated 

joint and Army literature in the post-Cold War era, senior leaders today are talking about a new 

strategic reality. This distinction has everything to do with our perceptions of time horizons and new 

challenges. Next, the paper will examine concepts of individual and organizational agility specifically 

investigating adaptability, innovation, and learning. As well, it examines the barriers to organizational 

learning, specifically for militaries at war. With these lenses and informed by observations from the 

CCCs, the paper advances recommendations to answer the research question.

NEW STRATEGIC REALITY

The implications are clear. We must understand the character of the irregular warfare we now face and adapt 

accordingly.

—FY 2005 Army Posture Statement

 The COE is the overarching environmental paradigm that explains conditions that exist today and 

into the future of 2020. The COE encompasses the entire spectrum of warfare from the lower intensity 

conflicts (LIC) of smaller, adaptive, and asymmetrical opponents through the higher intensity conflicts 

(HIC) of larger, modernized forces which are able to engage in more traditional-conventional (or 

nuclear) symmetrical ways.11 Conflicts of the COE may range anywhere in this spectrum or involve a 

combination of these types of threats. This construct, which has steadily moved our military away from 

the Soviet-based Cold War paradigm, has and still is serving our military well. 

 The new strategic reality that confronts our nation today is a permutation within this COE. It 

recognizes that the threat challenges we are engaging now are more narrowly focused in an irregularwarfare category employing unconventional and asymmetrical methods. This view is in line with 

our new Defense Strategy. The new Defense Strategy model of the security environment considers 

two continua in its development; the vulnerability of the United States to the threat (higher to lower) 

and the likelihood of the threat (again, higher to lower). Overlaying the two considerations results in 

the four challenge categories (traditional, irregular, catastrophic, and disruptive) of the new strategic 

security environment shown in Figure 1.12

 While in many ways the COE is in consonance with this strategy paradigm, the Defense Strategy 

categorizes and models these threats differently. Like the threats of the COE, the four challenges 

of the Defense Strategy may overlap or occur simultaneously with no discernable transition.13 The 

Defense Strategy continues to recognize and require preparedness for the conventional threats of the 

“traditional” category, but it classifies this category as the least likely and our least vulnerable of the 

four challenge categories. The lack of a peer-styled threat and our military’s significant overmatch in 

this area clearly account for this assessment. It also postulates that these overwhelming traditional 

capabilities do not serve as an adequate deterrent for the emerging threats and challenges of the other 

quadrants.14 Although the military has tasks, responsibilities, and capabilities in all four quadrants, the 

main emphasis for military action is found in the traditional and irregular challenge categories.15 It is 

along the continuum between these two categories that our “intensity of conflict” paradigm (high—

mid—low) of current doctrine lies. 

 The most significant aspect of our new strategic reality, defined within this threat paradigm, is the 

persistent nature of the war within which we are engaged. The Army’s reality in the Global War on 
3

THE SECURITY ENVIRONMENT

LIKELIHOOD

VULNERABILITY

LOWER

HIGHER

LOWER HIGHER

CATASTROPHIC

WDM: Rogue, Terrorist;

Homeland Missile Attacks

Catastrophic challenges involving the 

surreptitious acquisition, possession, 

and possible terrorist or rogue 

employment of WMD or methods 

producing WMD-like effects.

Seeking to paralyze U.S. power

IRREGULAR

Ethnic War; Guerilla;

Insurgency; Terror

Irregular challenges from the 

adoption or employment of unconventional methods by non-state and 

state actors to counter stronger state 

opponents - terrorism, insurgency, 

civil war, etc.

Seeking to erode U.S. power

TRADITIONAL

Legacy Nuclear Forces;

Uniformed Militaries

Traditional challenges posed by 

states employing legacy and 

advanced military capabilities and 

recognizable military forces, in 

long-established, well-known forms 

of military competition and conflict.

Seeking to challenge U.S. power.

DISRUPTIVE

Cyber-War; Directed Energy; 

Genetic Weapons; Nano Weapons

Disruptive future challenges emanating from competitors developing, 

posessing, and employing breakthrough technological capabilities 

intended to supplant our advantages 

in particular operational demands.

Seeking to marginalize U.S. power.

Figure 1.

Terror is that there is no time for a strategic pause to reset. The organization’s time horizon to address 

the performance gaps of this fight is now, while engaged. The strategic pause “between the wars” may 

never come, certainly not in the foreseeable future. The Army, therefore, must be agile, adapting and 

innovating. 

 The implication of this new reality is that the Army must change or replace its systems, processes, 

and policies that prevent it from quickly adapting to the emerging challenges. Many of the Army’s 

institutional systems are geared to a peacetime time horizon and are based on a system designed 

to operate in this traditional paradigm. Our current doctrine production cycle is about 5 years from 

inception to effect in the education system.16 The standard for review of institutional common core 

curriculum is triennially.17 While these timelines met the needs of an Army at relative peace, they are 

wholly inadequate for an Army at war against elusive, adaptive, and determined adversaries. 

AGILITY AND LEARNING

Ag.ile . . . characterized by quickness of mind, resourcefulness, or adaptability in coping with new and varied 

situations . . . Applied to mental or intellectual matters, it suggests ready adaptability to change and adjust.

—Webster’s Third New International Dictionary

 Army literature uses the terms agile and adaptive in tandem and often synonymously. Both derive 

from the tenets of Army operations: initiative, agility, depth, synchronization, and versatility (from 

which we get adaptability).18 As the definition above shows, agile and adaptive are nearly synonymous 

with agile, adding the ideas of quickness, ease, and readiness. According to Field Manual 7-0, the 

responsibility of the institutional Army (schools and training centers) is to provide the framework to 

develop adaptive, mentally agile leaders.19 The Army’s Training and Leader Development Panel (ATLDP) 

Officer Study concluded that, because of the ambiguous nature of the future operating environment, 

leaders should focus on developing the “enduring competencies,” or what they call metacompetencies, 
4

of self-awareness and adaptability.20 They recognized that the two were symbiotic; one without the other 

is useless. These metacompetencies are the essential building blocks of learning. Agility embodies this 

symbiotic relationship between self-awareness and adaptability. In this paper, agility is a metaphor for 

self-awareness and adaptability in action, the essence of learning. 

 Learning is both an individual and organizational phenomenon. Researchers have defined 

experiential learning as a change of beliefs (or the degree of confidence in one’s beliefs) or the development 

of new beliefs, skills, or procedures as a result of observation and interpretation of experience.21 This 

learning happens at the individual cognitive level. Organizations, though often thought of as an 

organism with goals, beliefs, and memories, do not and cannot learn in the same way. Organizations 

learn through the experiences of their individual members by encoding these experiential lessons 

learned into organizational norms and routines. This is a widely accepted perspective advanced by 

Argyris and Schön,22 Heclo,23 and Hedberg.24 Organizations learn from experience to the extent that 

member experiences are assimilated into various organizational policies, doctrines, and procedures. 

The research describes “a multistage process in which environmental feedback leads to individual 

learning, which leads to individual action to change organizational procedures, which leads to change 

in organizational behavior, which leads to further feedback.”25

 The literature on how military organizations learn is linked with understanding how military 

organizations effect change in their doctrine.26 There are several theoretical views within literature on 

the catalysts that drive military doctrinal change and innovation. The first view holds that external 

civilian reformers (often assisted by maverick officers) are the driving force behind doctrinal change 

and innovation in response to realized or forecasted performance gaps from new and emerging threats. 

In this theory, “the fundamental question of political-military integration is whether the statesman 

has at hand the military instruments required to achieve those political goals deemed essential to the 

security of the state.”27 A key factor in the civilian reformer’s involvement is the military’s institutional 

conservatism that resists change and makes innovation of doctrine rare.28 The next posits that senior 

military leaders of the organization (internal) create new tasks and missions in response to their 

recognition of new threats, performance gaps, or opportunities, with the assistance of civilian officials. 

Further, the literature advances that wartime organizational learning and innovation are possible if 

they take place in the context of current missions.29 The final theory can be viewed as a combination 

of these two theories, the internal and external schools of innovation. Civilian reformers and military 

leaders combine to cause changes in military doctrine in response to changes of the international system 

and perceived requirements of new forms of warfare.30

 In his research, John Nagl points out that, while these theories are valuable in understanding what 

spurs innovation in militaries, they fall short in understanding how militaries create, assimilate, and 

disseminate doctrinal change during the course of conflicts.31 To explain this, he looks to organizational 

theory, and more specifically to organizational culture. Organizations favor policies that reinforce the 

essence of the organization and that provide a clear roadmap to success for its members. Further, while 

militaries are often alike, their cultures, “that is, a persistent, patterned way of thinking about the 

central tasks of and human relationships within an organization,” often differ.32 Culture is unique; it is 

the organization’s personality based on its own set of experiences. Nagl’s study, as well as others that he 

cites, show the differences between the American and British military cultures and the impact on their 

ability to innovate during conflict. His conclusion is that differences in organizational culture allowed 

the British military to adapt and learn during its irregular warfare experience of counterinsurgency 

in Malaya, while the U.S. Army’s culture prevented it from learning during its similar experiences in 

Vietnam.33 Culture, an organization’s conventional wisdom about its essence, is a powerful lens that 

organizations use in interpreting their experiences and determining how or what to learn from these 

experiences. 
5

 The concept of culture as an organization’s conventional wisdom is directly related to its 

doctrine. Richard Downie’s research of the Army as a learning organization shows that the process of 

developing this conventional wisdom is a similar and parallel process of developing its institutional 

memory. Institutional memory is represented by the organization’s doctrine, norms, standard 

operating procedures, and educational curricula. “Change to institutional memory is a prerequisite 

for learning and occurs when an organization captures and institutionalizes lessons learned by its 

members.”34 According to Downie’s research, individual learning can be present and understood by 

the organization’s members, but institutional learning does not occur unless the institution accepts, 

integrates, and disseminates this individual learning, and it becomes widely accepted. “To learn from 

an experience, an organization must first act to interpret, evaluate, and accept the lessons learned by 

individual organizational members and then make the decision to adapt organizational behavior to this 

new knowledge and transmit it throughout the organization.”35 To adapt effectively while engaged in 

the complexities of the new strategic reality, the Army must be able to capture lessons from individual 

experience and rapidly innovate or change doctrine and curriculum to reflect this learning.36

 The process of rapid, effective organizational learning is the essence of organizational agility. In line 

with this paper’s concept of individual agility, organizational agility is a metaphor for organizational 

learning that is faster, more flexible, and more sensitive to the speed with which individual experiential 

learning occurs. However, just as individual and organizational learning differ, so to do individual 

and organizational agility. Key determinants for institutional agility include leadership, culture and 

values, and organizational process for change.37 However, institutional agility—the process of learning 

in action, which embodies both the proactive (innovative) and reactive (adaptive) nature of change—is 

a process that produces anxiety in the organization. This anxiety elicits resistance to change and the 

barriers to learning. Another form of resistance comes from the concept found in “The Innovator’s 

Dilemma.”38 Even though there is a disruptive change in the strategic environment within which 

an organization operates, the organization fails to change. The failure has everything to do with the 

organization’s past successes, its conventional wisdom, and its institutional memories that continue to 

proffer the success. Change at this point is seen as counterintuitive. In this way, culture and doctrine 

blind the organization and its members from the awareness of the need for change or to the future 

benefits of change. The paradox of organizational agility is that the very products (success as well as 

anxiety) and artifacts (doctrine and culture) of an effective learning process are, in effect, detriments to 

future learning. 

 To overcome the paradox of organizational agility requires a change in mindset. Leadership must 

stimulate the organizational realization that change is constant, that transformation is a dynamic 

journey and not a serene destination, and that the consequences of inaction are worse than action. Senior 

leader communication and reinforcement of the vision for change and the monitoring of adherence to 

the requirements that allow change are essential to increasing the speed of change.39 As well, Nagl’s 

research shows that the most critical aspect of the learning process is not the innovation, but the senior 

leader authority that allows and enforces the innovation, monitors its effectiveness, and then transmits 

the new conventional wisdom or doctrine throughout the organization.40

 The change in mindset required is the adoption of the “culture of innovation” as described by 

Brigadier General Fastabend. The Soldiers and leaders who demonstrate agility (adaptability, 

innovation, and learning) on the battlefield are the same ones that serve in our institutional Army. 

Their success and agility from the battlefield can pervade into our institutional Army. Led by senior 

leader vision and supported by a change of leader actions and behavior throughout the organization, 

a culture of innovation can take hold: agile leaders and agile institutions.41
6

OBSERVATIONS

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

 —Abraham H. Maslow

 The Agile Leader Study (ALS) conducted interviews with developers, instructors, and students 

from across the spectrum of the post-initial entry OES as well as planners, observer-controllers, and 

participant players at the CTCs.42 These interviews, along with a review of the curricula and training 

scenarios, provided fresh insight into the current instructional process at the various schools and 

centers. The observations focus on assessing the instructional content and process of the CCCs in light 

of the requirements of ongoing combat operations. As a full discussion of these observations is beyond 

the scope of this paper, the following paragraphs will briefly highlight some of these observations 

drawn from the research. These observations are grouped into the three main categories of content, 

context, and complexity.

Content.

 The study found that the content of the CCCs is dominated by doctrine: basic branch doctrine, 

traditional combined arms doctrine, and the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP).43 This triad is 

the basic foundation and framework of every CCC. The branch schools view the CCC as the last branch 

school and their near-exclusive domain. The content and structure of the Program of Instruction (POI) 

is directly related to the branch’s vision and culture. It is an opportunity for the branch to “re-green” 

students to the basic doctrine, as well as in the branch vision of itself as an organization. In some cases, 

this re-greening is thought to be necessary because officers are coming out of combat deployments 

where their basic branch skills were under utilized or neglected. The main focus of the basic branch 

is at the company and battalion levels. This doctrine is then tied into the study of combined arms 

doctrine going up to brigade operations. Offensive and defensive tactics comprise the vast majority 

of the combined arms doctrine. The MDMP is used as the driver to train and understand current 

branch and combined arms doctrine. Multiple iterative exercises and scenarios then build knowledge 

and expertise in branch, combined arms, and MDMP. The incorporation of current lessons learned is 

instructor dependent and varies greatly between the various branch schools.

Context.

 The great majority of contexts for the presentation of this core content are the traditional, mid-tohigh intensity conflicts against a peer or near-peer enemy. The standard phrase to describe the context 

is “COE-compliant.”44 Though COE-compliant, scenarios tend to stay on the high-end of the spectrum 

of COE. This context allows the stimulation of the largest set of MDMP processes and reinforces the 

instruction in offensive and defensive tactics. Most scenarios take place within generic areas, meaning 

they are not related to a current or future warfighting area. Some these scenarios, for example, use 

the terrain of the National Training Center. Local areas are often chosen to allow students to walk the 

terrain and understand its implications on the planned operations. The selection of generic terrain is 

not viewed as suboptimal since the intent of the instruction is how and not what to think. The terrain/

environment varies between desert, woodland, temperate, and urban, though urban, if included, 

is typically a discrete scenario. The study of regional culture is not an aspect of the content of the 

course.
7

Complexity.

 Complexity is an additive and incremental factor related to the amount of information presented 

with the scenario and the level of command being addressed. To some extent, complexity is introduced 

in the more discrete stability operations and support operations (SOSO). The final combined arms 

exercise (CAX), a TRADOC core requirement, is the capstone exercise and culmination of the complexity 

challenges. Cultural complexity, as mentioned above, is not an integrated part of the curriculum.45

RECOMMENDATIONS: 

BUILDING THE AIRPLANE IN FLIGHT 

Understanding environments that change requires tearing down obsolete mental maps and starting anew.

 —Bo Hedberg46

 Thus far, this paper has set the context for why TRADOC should change the officer education 

system, specifically the CCC, in order to develop and prepare mentally agile leaders for the Army’s new 

strategic reality. This new context is one of persistent conflict that will not allow a strategic pause; it is a 

context of new, irregular, and evolving challenges. In tandem, these two defining characteristics create 

a reality that requires an institutional system that is significantly more agile in its learning enabling 

processes. The research has also provided the theoretical base for individual and organizational agility, 

with an eye toward understanding organizational agility. The “how” of the system change involves 

three main components: senior leader involvement, curriculum (content and process) change, and 

institutional system change.

Senior Leader Involvement. 

 Senior leader involvement is critical for organizational agility. While in many ways the Army is a 

learning organization, the speed with which it executes its organizational learning process is glacial, 

especially in view of its current organizational members’ learning pace. Senior leaders have the ability 

to communicate the vision that leads to organizational recognition of the need for change, they have 

the authority to implement and monitor change, and they have the ability to reduce or remove barriers 

to organizational learning. All of these are instrumental in increasing the speed of the learning process 

leading to organizational agility.

 As an overarching guide for change in the CCCs, this paper suggests the following commander’s 

intent written from the TRADOC Commander’s perspective (Figure 2). 

 This intent lays out the strategic vision for a shift in the institutional education system and 

organizational learning process. Many of these thoughts already reside to some degree in the various 

CCCs and reflect of some ideas in current Combined Arms Center (CAC) guidance dated June 24, 

2004.47 The intent does not give an implementation timeline. Though not previously noted, a constraint 

from the initial guidance to the ALS states that the changes must be actionable in a short period of time 

(less than 6 months). 

The Proposed Model.

 The CCC curriculum model incorporates content and context changes reflecting of the guidance 

and incorporates a requirement for agility in the system itself. The model, shown in Figure 3, is a 

recommendation for the 19-week/6-day course and encompasses the vast majority of the technical and 

tactical content requirements for CCC. Based on the findings from the Agile Leader Study, this proposed 
8

Commander’s Intent

 Our Army is an Army at War—we will be at war for the foreseeable future. 

Our training shall be focused on this current fight—we will train our Soldiers 

and leaders on our doctrine using the current fight as the driver. Emerging 

doctrine, TTP, lessons-learned, geographic and cultural immersion will be 

characteristics of our training presented within the context of the Army’s new 

strategic reality. This is our new methodology and reflects the realities of being an Army at war. It is responsive to Combatant Commanders’ (COCOM) 

requirements while providing the core doctrine of our Army and branches in 

a comprehensive context rather than just the traditional high-end warfight. 

“Our leaders must understand how to use all the tools in the kit bag, not just 

the ball peen hammer.”

 We will reduce risk by not over-emphasizing the traditional high-end 

warfare capability, but will balance this with our emerging LIC and irregular 

warfare doctrine and lessons learned. We will leverage the operational and 

combat experience of our student and instructor base in assessing and analyzing these lessons learned to inform and hasten our emerging doctrine development process. Our institutional army’s educational system recognizes the 

importance and the value of our leaders’ ongoing combat experience and will 

imbed interactions and mentorship of serving leaders as part of the individual 

and organizational learning process. As well, our curriculum development 

process will change to require continual evaluation and infusion of relevant 

content and context. 

 We will educate and train leaders who are well-founded in doctrinal principles in both traditional and irregular environments—who have a comfort 

level and high degree of tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity—who expect 

to operate with initiative and agility in volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environments—who understand and are willing to assess and assume 

risk for the good of the mission and the force. These are empowered leaders 

who operate in an organization that rewards initiative, agility and boldness 

−that expects success and failure but encourages creative ingenuity. These are 

leaders who are prepared to fight in the Global War on Terror now, trained by 

institutions that are responsive and relevant to today’s fight and organizationally adaptive and ready to change for the next fight. Simply put—Agile Leaders and Agile Institutions.

Figure 2.

model does not reflect how the curriculum content or context is currently structured or focused.48 And, 

perhaps most importantly, this model differs by imbedding a curriculum innovation requirement. This 

is a generic model, the template for each branch to begin structuring their curriculum in coordination 

with CAC. The objective of this model is to increase individual agility, balance content and context, and 

increase institutional agility. 

The Branch. The paper will explain the categories (in the first column) of the model using the first core 

focus area of the branch in theirdescription. This first focus area, as the title suggests, concentrates on the 

branch. The intent is to prepare students to be branch subject matter experts (SME). In this core, students 

learn the doctrine and TTP of their branch from the Company level through Brigade Unit of Action (UA) 

across the spectrum of scenarios. Scenarios connote both the spectrum of warfare, HIC through LIC 

(including traditional, irregular, and in some case catastrophic challenges), as well as specific scenarios 

depicted later. Here, the branch vision and direction for their curriculum drive the scenarios. Curriculum 

turnover defines how often this core focus area curriculum will change. The paper defines moderate as in 

terms of a series of months; the implication is that the branch validates and/or updates this curriculum core 
9

Building Agility in the CCC Curriculum

CCC

Focus

Prepare for 

what role?

What is 

learned?

What level is 

emphasized?

What is the 

scenario?

Curriculum

turnover

Basis

Responsibility

Core Focus

Area I

Core Focus

Area II

Core Focus

Area III

Core Focus

Area IV

The Branch

Branch SME

Branch 

Doctrine & 

TTP

Co to UA

All Scenarios

Moderate

Doctrine

Branch

The Doctrine

and Process

UA Staff Officer

Combined 

Arms and 

MDMP

UA

Korea

(HIC)

Low

BCTP style 

plans

CAC/Branch

The 

Developing 

Doctrine and 

Process

Staff/Co Cdr

Rapid 

Decision 

Making TTP

UA/TF

Iraq/Afghanistan (LIC/

Irregular)

Case studies 

and 

simulations

Moderate High

Branch/CAC Branch/CAC

Co Cdr

Today’s 

Challenges

Application 

of Doctrinal 

Priniciples

TF/Co

Current 

Opperational 

Context

Vignettes,

VTCs, visits

Figure 3.

every 5-month class. This turnover recognizes the significant transformation that our branches are 

currently undergoing. In this focus area, this validation may simply entail updates of organizational 

structure changes, newly incorporated technologies, or more significantly, new or emerging branch 

doctrinal methods of operations. The basis for this core focus area is doctrine, and the branch has prime 

responsibility or ownership of the curriculum content. The objective of this core focus area is to develop 

the “base” for doctrinally well-founded branch experts. 

Doctrine. The second core focus area is Combined Arms Doctrine and the Military Decision Making 

Process. The core prepares students to be UA staff officers. Here they learn Joint and Combined Arms 

Doctrine and the doctrinal Military Decision Making Process. The level emphasized is the UA—a 

combined arms headquarters that operates in a joint, interagency, and multinational environment. An 

example of the scenario used to train and educate is the mid-high intensity conflict of Korea. This is a 

key distinction between current and proposed curriculum. This model employs a realistic environment 

and context against potential real adversaries with real capabilities, and with real strategic and political 

objectives.49 This allows the integration of cultural and geographic immersion and environment analysis 

techniques in an area that is a potential major regional conflict area. This provides students and the 

COCOM direct practical application and benefits. The turnover for this core curriculum should be 

low, defined here in terms of years—up to 2 years between updates. The basis for the curriculum is the 

doctrine and process inside a Battle Command Training Program (BCTP) style plan for Korea. Here, 

CAC has prime responsibility for the curriculum with branch input. This is another characteristic of 

the model—burden sharing and interdependence. CAC and the branches will share the burden and 

responsibility for aspects of the curriculum. As well, sharing, interchange, and coordination among the 

branches should become commonplace under this model for various reasons, including knowledge 

transfer and burden sharing. 
10

 Thus far, the model adheres to a similar focus, content, and context of the current CCC with the 

exceptions, noted above in the real context of Korea and in the required curriculum content review. 

In this model, the bureaucratic desire and need for stability is displaced from content and context to 

mission and purpose. The unifying theme is to develop and prepare mentally agile leaders for this fight 

with an eye to the future. It is not simply about learning yesterday’s fight, but innovating to get out 

ahead of our opponents in tomorrow’s fight in this protracted war. The concept of continual change 

in military organizations finds support with many researchers. Blair and Whitehead call this a “selflearning” organization that is underpinned by a paradigm that embraces uncertainty, ambiguity, and 

impermanence, an organization that becomes more adaptive and innovative as a system on a continuing 

basis.50 Rather than focusing on a fixed point in a constantly changing future, the Army should create 

innovational organizations that are agile within the strategic context. In this way, the metaphor for 

the organizational curriculum change process is less like that of firing a bullet (ready, aim, fire) and 

more like that of firing a missile (ready, fire, aim). The bullet follows a straight line to a fixed aim point 

hopefully in coincidence with the target, while the missile is aimed in the general direction of a moving 

target and continually aligned with new information about the target’s location.51 With this metaphor 

in mind, the paper will move to the next core focus area.

Emerging Doctrine. The third core area focuses on the developing and emerging Doctrine and 

Decision Making Processes which currently are not formally developed at the CCCs.52 The Emerging 

Doctrine core prepares students to be staff officers and company commanders working within the UA

and Battalion Task Force (TF) levels. The content of this core is focused on emerging doctrine, lessons 

learned, and emerging rapid decisionmaking techniques all within the context of ongoing current and 

established operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The turnover for this core is moderate: validated and 

updated every class. The key here is to focus on irregular warfare doctrine principles and challenges, 

and then how these principles blend or relate with traditional warfare doctrine. 

 Case studies, developed from operations and experiences in OIF and OEF, form the basis or driver 

for this focus area. Rather than simply “pulling” lessons learned from ongoing operations, CAC, in 

cooperation with the branches, utilizing the CALL as its executive agent, will formalize a lessons 

learned “push” system which will form the basis for the case studies. These case studies will be vetted, 

validated, and coordinated between the branches and CAC. This provides a “window in to the theater” 

through a formal feedback system linked to the field through CAC to the branches and actively develops 

lessons learned for inclusion into the curriculum. The responsibility for this core is shared between the 

Branch and CAC, with a Branch lead. 

 This core focus area represents two major shift areas. The first and most obvious is the content and 

context change. The context is the Global War on Terror with operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The 

complexities of this context include its geographical and cultural challenges, as well as its irregular 

threat challenges. Instructors must leverage the student body experience in their operating environment 

analysis and draw on these experiences to facilitate knowledge transfer. Given the changing nature of 

the lessons learned content, the typical master-apprentice faculty relationship transitions to that of a 

co-learner and facilitator. The content thus becomes more complex. 

 Students investigate the various rapid decisionmaking techniques used in-country and emerging 

heuristic decisionmaking models such as recognition primed decisionmaking (RPD)53 against this 

context informed by their base knowledge of the doctrinal MDMP. Current and emerging irregular 

and counterinsurgency warfare doctrine, blended with small unit traditional doctrine and employed 

within this context, will challenge the dominant traditional warfare paradigm. Employing these 

techniques also will represent a shift toward greater understanding and acceptance of a systems 

paradigm from a reductionist paradigm. Rather than operating in a paradigm that perceives certain 

determinable linear cause-and-effect relationships, students will operate in a context that sees holistic, 

open, dynamic, emergent, complexly organized, rationalistic relationships that are too complex to be 
11

absolutely known.54 Applying knowledge and skill sets in this complex and ambiguous environment, 

dealing with the unexpected, operating with incomplete information, and making calculated decisions 

of risk all increase individual agility.55

Today’s Challenges. The final core focus area is preparation for what leaders and units are going 

through now. This core focuses on developing students to be commanders in the immediate context of 

where units are engaged or deployed throughout our military. This concentrates on the application of 

traditional and emerging doctrinal principles learned throughout the course to a real-time, operational 

context at the Battalion Task Force and Company level. It builds on the momentum and ideas developed 

in the Emerging Doctrine focus area, adding to the richness and complexity of the learning experience. 

Curriculum turnover in this focus area is high, defined in weeks and months. Students analyze and 

explore this fresh, unrefined context and events, placing themselves in the position of the commander 

making decisions. This core addresses student’s immediate preparation concerns and incorporates a true 

window in to the theater. The driver for this core is a combination of vignettes, video-teleconferences, 

leader visits, and senior mentor assimilation. The branch retains primary responsibility for this 

curriculum content and design with CAC input.

Implications: Systems Change.

 The model represents a significant change from current practices. First, the model builds individual 

and institutional agility. The model requires a quicker curriculum evaluation, allowing for a quicker 

learning process. It builds on individual member experiences and those from organizations in the field 

to inform its learning process. With regard to current relevance, it shifts the CCC curriculum from the 

dominant traditional warfare curriculum to one that is balanced with irregular challenges. The model 

infuses emerging lessons from the field throughout the curriculum, but especially in the Emerging 

Doctrine and Today’s Challenges focus areas. The inclusion of rapid decisionmaking techniques and 

other heuristic decisionmaking techniques from theater builds on students’ MDMP base and provides 

additional tools for new circumstances. The infusion of these techniques, lessons learned, and case 

studies helps inform and precipitate the development of emerging doctrine. In this dynamic process, 

as much of the emerging doctrine becomes more widely accepted, it moves to the left on the chart. 

 This process increases relevance while keeping the learning process moving and self-adjusting. 

This is not to say that the process will not need attention or correction. On the contrary, the system 

will require leaders to tend to it and be a part of the organizational learning process. Those aspects that 

lose their applicability outside of unique context are pruned from the curriculum. Azimuth corrections 

are an inherent quality of the model and are required to keep the curriculum in coincidence with 

the moving target of a changing enemy and a changing context. Clearly, this will strain the current 

curriculum development apparatus and require innovative and agile solutions. 

 This model challenges and changes the CCC student-instructor dynamic. At certain times, the 

relationship may resemble the more traditional master-apprentice relationship, while at other times, 

the instructor becomes a facilitator and co-learner. Measuring student performance necessarily becomes 

more subjective and based on instructor judgment, though retaining some appropriate objective criteria 

aspects. The instructor becomes a focal point in the emerging doctrine development process as well. 

Instructor selection, training, and development therefore become even more critical aspects of the 

individual and organizational learning process.

CONCLUSION

 The challenges that confront our Army and our nation do constitute a new strategic reality. Persistent 

conflict has become our steady state. There is no time for a strategic pause to regroup, assess, and distill 
12

the lessons of our experiences—this must all happen in-stride, while engaged in the mission. In the 

face of this new reality, our Army must adapt and innovate, and it must prepare our leaders to do the 

same. While our past informs us, we cannot remain beholden to our past successes. As an institution, 

we must have the courage to assess and assume the risks involved with adapting, just as our Soldiers 

and leaders are adapting in their crucible experiences of OIF and OEF. We must become agile—agile 

leaders and agile institutions—to ensure we can protect our nation from the challenges of our new 

strategic reality. The model proposed in this paper sets a course for this critical transition. 

ENDNOTES

 1. Walter F. Ulmer Jr., Inside View: A Leader’s Observations on Leadership, Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership, 

1997, p. 32. 

 2. Kevin P. Byrnes, remarks at Major Command presentations, Training and Doctrine Command during the 

Association of the U.S. Army annual meeting, Washington, DC, October 27, 2004. Available at http://www.tradoc.army.mil/

CGMACOMspeechAUSA04.htm; accessed February 20, 2005, p. 1. 

 3. Francis J. Harvey and Peter J. Schoomaker, Our Army at War—Relevant and Ready . . . Today and Tomorrow: A Statement 

on the Posture of the United States Army, Fiscal Year 2005, Posture Statement presented to the 109th Cong., 1st sess., Washington, 

DC: Department of the Army, February 6, 2005, p. ii.

 4. David A. Fastabend and Robert H. Simpson, “Adapt or Die: The Imperative for a Culture of Innovation in the United 

States Army,” Army, Vol. 54, February 2004, p. 14. The implications in the above cited Posture Statement are the same as 

Fastabend’s, who puts them in the harsh but accurate vernacular that every soldier understands. 

 5. Perhaps the best insight into this phenomenon is Leonard Wong, Developing Adaptive Leaders: The Crucible Experience 

of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, 2004.

 6. Byrnes, p. 7. Adapted from his comments.

 7. Ibid., p. 2. Byrnes states that the cycle of the doctrine process takes about 5 years. 

 8. Fastabend, p. 16.

 9. Wong. 

 10. Martin van Creveld, Command in War, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985, p. 75. 

 11. Center for Army Lessons Learned Handbook 02-08, Operation Enduring Freedom Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures, 

June 27, 2002; available from https://call2.army.mil/products/HANDBOOK/02-8/02-8toc.asp; internet, accessed February 22, 

2005, p. 1-1.

 12. Harvey, p. 1.

 13. Ibid.

 14. Ibid., p. 2.

 15. This is especially true of active duty forces. National Guard forces clearly play a larger role in the catastrophic 

challenge area with regard to Homeland Defense responsibilities. 

 16. Byrnes, p. 2.

 17. Institutional Leader Training and Education, TRADOC Regulation 350-10, Fort Monroe, VA: U.S. Department of the 

Army Training and Doctrine Command, August 12, 2002, p. 2-21.

 18. FM 3-0, p. 4-15.

 19. FM 7-0, p. 1-27.

 20. The Army Training and Leader Development Panel Officer Study Report to the Army, Washington, DC: U.S. Department 

of the Army, May 25, 2001, p. OS-3.

 21. Jack S. Levy, “Learning and Foreign Policy: Sweeping a Conceptual Minefield,” International Organization, Vol. 48, 

Spring 1994, p. 283.

 22. Chris Argyris and Donald A. Schön, Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective, Reading, MA: AddisonWesley Publishing Company, 1978, pp. 9-11, 18-22. 
13

 23. Levy, p. 288.

 24. Bo Hedberg, “How Organizations Learn and Unlearn,” Handbook of Organizational Design, Vol. 1: Adapting Organizations 

to Their Environments, Paul C. Nystrom and William Hayes Starbuck, eds., New York: Oxford University Press, 1981, pp. 

3-27. 

 25. Levy, pp. 287-288.

 26. John A. Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya to Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, Westport, CT: 

Praeger, 2002, p. 6; Richard D. Downie, Learning from Conflict: The US Military in Vietnam, El Salvador, and the Drug War, 

Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998. Reading these two sources provided the roadmap for investigating the innovation of military 

doctrine.

 27. Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars, Ithaca, NY: 

Cornell University Press, 1984, p. 25. 

 28. Ibid., p. 55. These innovations are rare because of the perceived increased operational uncertainty, especially during 

the time of transition. He goes on to state that it follows, under combat conditions, even a bad doctrine may be better than 

no doctrine. To further avoid uncertainty and to exercise some amount of autonomy, militaries often tend to gravitate 

toward offensive doctrinal theories. This view is advanced by Stephen Van Evera and others in “The Cult of the offensive 

and the origins of the First World War,” International Security, Vol. 9, Summer 1984, pp. 58-107. Nagl’s Counterinsurgency 

Lessons from Malaya to Vietnam provided the basis for this connection.

 29. Steven R. Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991, 

pp. 21-27.

 30. Nagl, p. 4. 

 31. Ibid.

 32. Ibid., p. 6.

 33. Ibid., pp. 205-217.

 34. Downie, pp. 22-23. Nagl’s research further adds curriculum which is in consonance with Downie.

 35. Ibid., p. 24.

 36. Ibid., p. 9.

 37. This concept is a synthesized understanding of these from the following two sources. Edgar Schein, “How Can 

Organizations Learn Faster? The Problem of Entering the Green Room,” Spring 1992, available from http://dpace.mit.edu/

retrieve/2018/SWP-3409-45882883.pdf; internet, accessed February 13, 2005; A. T. Kearney, “A.T. Kearny Study on Agile 

Government,” December 3, 2003, available from http://www.atkearney.com/ main.taf?p=1,5,1,140, internet, accessed February 

22, 2005. 

 38. Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, Boston: Harvard 

Business School Press, 1997. This is the general premise throughout the book.

 39. Schein, p. 3. 

 40. Nagl, p. 195.

 41. Fastabend, p. 12.

 42. U.S. Army War College, “Agile Leader Study,” Briefing with scripted commentary, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle 

Barracks, March 22, 2005. 

 43. Ibid. 

 44. Ibid.

 45. Ibid.

 46. Hedberg, p. 4. 

 47. William Wallace, Operations Order 04-176A OES Captain’s Career Course (CCC) Redesign, Fort Leavenworth, KS: 

Combined Arms Center, June 2004, p. 24. 

 48. U.S. Army War College, “Agile Leader Study.”

 49. This concept has support in the research of Williamson Murray, “Innovation: Past and Future.” Williamson Murray 

and Allan R. Millet, eds., Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 326.
14

 50. James G. Hunt, and James D. Blair, eds., Leadership on the Future Battlefield, Washington, DC: Pergamon-Brassey’s, 

1985, p. 249.

 51. Concept adapted from personal experience and comments in Robert Dilts, Alpha Leadership; available from http://

www.nlpu.com/Articles/AlphaLeader.html; internet, accessed March 6, 2005. 

 52. U.S. Army War College, “Agile Leader Study.”

 53. Gary Klein, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998, pp. 15-30, 89-102.

 54. Hunt, p. 137.

 55. U.S. Army War College, “Agile Leader Study.”