AN EXERCISE TO EXPERIENCE
Te Army Acquisition Workforce spends significant time learning its trade, whether in the classroom or online, training or pursu- ing formal degrees. Firsthand experience from opportunities like Training with Industry notwithstanding, the workforce learns through passive methods, for the most part. It is no exaggeration to say that passive learning is like listening to someone read from PowerPoint slides; it has limited utility in preparing acquisition officers to deal with the challenges of today’s complex weapon system acquisition programs.
Dealing with complexity, whether it means contracts with thousands of pages, congressional staffers’ questions on budget details or the technological detail of our systems, simply cannot be taught in a classroom. In the Army, we tend to teach Soldiers to deal with complexity using the sink-or-swim method known as OJT—on-the-job training. OJT works, but it isn’t the most effective way to learn, is rarely effi- cient and almost always has hidden costs. In a realistic environment, experiential learning is effective and efficient, offer- ing an immediate payoff.
rotation. Such an exercise would be cross-functional, focused on providing Army program managers and staffs—acquisition leadership teams—with the executive, managerial, teaming and technical skills necessary for success in managing complex acquisitions.
Acquisition program management is a series of decisions connected in
something that will one day become a fielded weapon system.
Te Army trains division and corps staffs through the Mission Command Train- ing Program. Tis isn’t a physical center like the National Training Center, although the command posts do deploy to the field. Instead, commanders and staffs do battle in a simulated environment on a virtual battlefield located in a simu- lation center. Shortly after graduating from the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, I was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division as a plans officer. 1st Cav was scheduled for a warfighter exercise the year I arrived. As the plans officer, I engaged with the operations staff and commanders and reacted to enemy and friendly fire and maneuver. It was an eye- opening opportunity to experience how a division commander and staff interact, make decisions and win. No plan survives first contact, but experiencing the execution of a plan, even simulated, builds confidence and, above all, learning.
THE BENEFITS OF HANDS-ON LEARNING Experiential learning can make a difference in the education and training of our acquisition warriors. An Army acquisition exer- cise using the Army’s proven “learning by doing” approach would provide an experience similar to a National Training Center
116 Army AL&T Magazine Fall 2019
Tink of this as taking a systems approach to acquisition educa- tion, the same approach the Army has been using for training since World War II. A system in this case is a set of interrelated and inter- dependent events, with inputs that lead to outputs through processes. Te system operates under constraints and rules that are applied by a mech- anism, usually people. A systems approach recognizes the causes and effects, or feedback loops, of our interactions with our environment.
Te three core pieces of this proposed systems approach to acquisition education are acquisition leadership, which represents the system mecha- nism; experiential learning, providing the system process; and a third factor, collaborative analysis, a kind of war- gaming, which provides the inputs and captures the outputs. Te foun- dation of this approach is a simulated
but realistic environment where acquisition leaders can experience and learn from both success and failure before actually manag- ing a weapon system development. (See Figure 1.)
DEVELOPING LEADERS Te complexity of technology and project management forces people to specialize. Te benefit of specialization is that we have dedicated experts in management, systems engineering, contract- ing, finance and other fields. Te downside is that we have fewer people with broader backgrounds who can make sense of the bigger picture. Given the technical and managerial scope of acquisition programs today, no one person, the program manager (PM) included, has all the knowledge and information to make effective decisions on their own.
Te Army embraces teams because it is built on teams—infan- try, armor, artillery, etc.—that fight together, from fire team to corps. So it is with the teams that manage weapon system programs. Teams are central to the successful execution of Army
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