Institutionalizing Wisdom:
The Journey of Introspection, Learning, Problem Solving, Teaching, and Training
Perhaps you are coming home from your fourth tour to either Iraq or Afghanistan. Or maybe you are a Green Beret who has spent the last decade in the quiet wars of the Philippines and Colombia? In either case, you might be spending a significant amount of time processing your experiences. What have you learned? What did you do right? What did you do wrong? If you have found your way to Small Wars Journal, then you have found a venue where you can share your experiences and learn from what others have done in the past in other environments.
This process of introspection can be unnerving as you have to learn to see the world as it is not as you wished it to be. If you worked in a particularly violent area, then your experiences may take a bit longer to work through. This situation is quite normal. Emerson tells us that this journey is necessary for wisdom, and we should, "Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old."
Next, you may decide to tell your story, writing and publishing to add to the collective narrative of warfare in the past decade. John Collin's Warlord's Writing Tips offers excellent advice on structure and flow, and Dave Maxwell's A Recommendation for Quiet Professionals cautions you to temper your tone with both humbleness and sincerity in order to properly share the valor and sacrifices of the men and women that you've commanded.
Now that you've shared your story and completed introspection, the military is going to prepare you to become a field grade officer or non-commissioned officer. You may be preparing to become an executive or operations officer. Or, the military is preparing you for the positions of command sergeant major or team sergeant. What are you likely to experience?
If the military sends you to West Point, a training center, or schoolhouse, then you are tasked with teaching basic military tactics and procedures. You may be exploring how to better teach and train venturing away from Tasks, Conditions, and Standards (TCS) and moving to more collaborative and developmental Outcome Based Training and Education (OBT&E) that is results driven rather than process driven.
If the military sends you to Monterey, then Dr. Nancy Roberts may introduce you to the concept of Wicked Problems. There, you will learn how others are solving difficult problems in time-constrained, resource-limited environments. Among these approaches, you will be exposed to how companies like Apple, Google, and others operate.
When the military sends you to Fort Leavenworth, then you will be exposed to design theory, a heuristic tool described in detail here. You will have to determine the utility of these methods for yourself, but they are a bridge of merging your practice back to the theory. In the proper combination, they can help you become a more thoughtful leader.
Finally, perhaps the greatest wisdom is learning that you are not the first person to experience war. Paul Yingling and Gian Gentile constantly remind us that there is nothing new under the sun, and we can learn and relearn from the past. This realization lends to a call for a renewed and refocused effort towards studying military history. After your time in combat, you now have the ability to better understand what the great authors of the past were trying to teach us.
In the end, I suppose that this journey is a process not a destination. As the SWJ challenge coin proudly proclaims, "Historia Magistra Vitae Est- History is the best teacher." While you're in deep thought over my writings, consider donating to the cause to keep our movement in motion.
Bottom Line- Keep Writing, Keep Thinking, and Keep Learning.
