Assist You in Your Duties as a Field Grade Officer over the Next 10-Years of Your Career

Today’s Army faces an ever changing environment and evolving enemies.   Webster’s defines doctrine as “a body of principles in a branch of knowledge or system of belief established through past decisions”.   When I think of AMEDD Army doctrine I think of the regulations and formal TRADOC classes that made up my education.   These materials were based on military theory, historical facts, and experience.   With the operational environment changing rapidly, leaders have to quickly adapt to be effective and later efficient.   Too often leaders use the changing landscape a reason to not study and apply doctrine.   I contrast this dismissal with doctrine to systematic movements or even departures from doctrine.   Critical thinking and creativity are essential to solving problems and dealing with an evolving enemy.   These skills will be the most useful for me as a Field Grade officer in the last 15 years of my career.   Critical thinking and problem solving are essential to an officer.   C120 stressed the importance of doctrine in “Tools of the Trade”.   Then gave me a systematic way to break down a problem into a statement and then apply the problem solving techniques to the situation.   No matters what issue(s) are faced, knowing doctrine and departing from it in a logical fashion gives a person a process that can be retraced.   This is the most reliable way to remain relevant and capture lessons learned and improve the solution set.
To apply critical thinking and problem solving you must first have a basic body of knowledge and beliefs to depart from.   FM 3-0 states, “Army doctrine is detailed enough to guide operations, yet flexible enough to allow commanders to exercise initiative when dealing with specific tactical and operational situations. To be useful, doctrine must be well known and commonly understood” (1-5).   A basic tenant of this field manual is a mastery of army doctrine to apply critical thinking strategies to a situation or problem.   Knowing how Army...