1 00:00:00,450 --> 00:00:08,099 Look, this gives me this is pretty provocative to actually hit the general I think you're familiar 2 00:00:08,100 --> 00:00:12,570 with post war historiography in general has got a pretty bad name most of the time. 3 00:00:13,740 --> 00:00:25,080 And that was, you know, particularly is that we have not only a scholar who spent his career studying this particular problem and make it better, 4 00:00:25,680 --> 00:00:29,280 but also it's part of our little league we've heard about. 5 00:00:30,170 --> 00:00:39,059 And essentially the whole notion of college, who can give us that sort of sense of connection, transatlantic, 6 00:00:39,060 --> 00:00:48,460 not just because he has a background in flying helicopters to inhabit the service experience, but as before becoming searching. 7 00:00:49,980 --> 00:00:57,000 And it was like saying that he writes or a series of different chiefs of I get the titles right. 8 00:00:57,000 --> 00:01:03,420 I'll tell you it was about how leadership education in particularly if you think of the science of bombing 9 00:01:03,900 --> 00:01:09,930 operation socioeconomic command and the report would be obviously developed The Wall Street Journal, 10 00:01:09,980 --> 00:01:11,520 which I wrote, which is going to be factual, 11 00:01:11,520 --> 00:01:20,060 it's very refreshing today because this 2011 published Cold War forces, Canadian aircraft procurement of food, fried chicken food, 12 00:01:20,670 --> 00:01:30,720 and is now part of what he called the biography of Air Marshal Wilfred Curtis, chief of staff of the Royal Canadian Air Force in the post-war period. 13 00:01:31,750 --> 00:01:36,660 Well, thank you very much, indeed. We'll be speaking to you very much. 14 00:01:36,720 --> 00:01:42,060 Well, you can thank me after we're done. And that's what I usually say to people, if you like what you heard and please thank me. 15 00:01:42,060 --> 00:01:51,510 But if you didn't, then throw soft objects and at least the sun are starting to break out, so I won't have to be quite as scintillating as I was. 16 00:01:51,510 --> 00:01:53,580 I thought I might. It was if the rain continued. 17 00:01:54,300 --> 00:02:01,650 Let me start by saying that while I am a public servant of the Government of Canada, I am also an academic for full academic freedom. 18 00:02:01,660 --> 00:02:08,790 So what I will talk about are my views, which sometimes I think line up with public policy and other times probably don't. 19 00:02:09,180 --> 00:02:14,820 But having dabbled in the field of military education for the last two decades, 20 00:02:16,320 --> 00:02:19,740 I've gotten to the point where I'm at least willing to share my thoughts. 21 00:02:20,790 --> 00:02:24,209 Now, truth has run off with the two men who operate the device. 22 00:02:24,210 --> 00:02:26,670 But let's see what happens when we push that spacebar, right? 23 00:02:26,920 --> 00:02:33,180 It's not one aeroplane picture just for the pilots in the room or the hardware check is a girl's room. 24 00:02:34,380 --> 00:02:43,350 And yeah, what I'd rather be doing that than sitting trying to work in an education environment depends on the day and depends on the weather. 25 00:02:44,070 --> 00:02:51,209 But all this to say that I came to education 21 years ago without any qualification, without any background in education. 26 00:02:51,210 --> 00:02:56,040 And that is one of the I guess the damning themes of military education generally is that we 27 00:02:56,040 --> 00:03:01,319 take practitioners who are very good at what they do and put them either in a classroom or in 28 00:03:01,320 --> 00:03:09,990 charge of classrooms without giving them any of the the how to the why you need to stuff that 29 00:03:09,990 --> 00:03:14,880 someone would get if they were doing an undergraduate or need a graduate degree in education. 30 00:03:15,750 --> 00:03:23,940 So that's a bit of a a bit of a concern. I would also I see a couple of, I think, faces from last Tuesday night with Dr. Murray. 31 00:03:24,260 --> 00:03:27,750 Are there those who were there when he was talking about the. 32 00:03:28,030 --> 00:03:29,100 Okay. Just one, actually. 33 00:03:29,430 --> 00:03:37,800 So Dr. Murray last week talked about how the US Army Commanding General Staff College, of course, would pretty much broken me. 34 00:03:38,610 --> 00:03:44,790 I will tell you that there are things that work okay and things that could be improved and some things I think work as well as any. 35 00:03:45,900 --> 00:03:50,100 Over the next few minutes and I'm going to try and go at the speed of light. 36 00:03:50,100 --> 00:03:54,810 So there's time for discussion. Here's the bottom line upfront. 37 00:03:56,010 --> 00:04:03,510 It's a highly complicated thing that we're going to talk about, and it's not just about generals, and I'll come to that in a few minutes, 38 00:04:03,930 --> 00:04:09,240 but if I can steal something from Clausewitz to make a bit of a much of it, 39 00:04:10,200 --> 00:04:15,390 you would think that education is simple because we all, at some point in our lives, experience lots of education. 40 00:04:15,720 --> 00:04:23,550 But in fact, the simplest thing is always very difficult and complex when it comes to figuring out what needs to be done and doing it. 41 00:04:27,520 --> 00:04:34,300 And I should actually tell a quick anecdote here about a more recent experience, again, with a German officer involved. 42 00:04:34,720 --> 00:04:40,180 We had about 15 or 16 years ago sat at the staff college in Toronto and said, you know what? 43 00:04:40,480 --> 00:04:43,600 We're not sure we're delivering the product that the military needs. 44 00:04:43,870 --> 00:04:46,990 How do we validate? Use a bit of edge. You speak. 45 00:04:47,230 --> 00:04:55,630 How do we validate what we're doing? But we don't have the customers getting the sorts of graduates that can satisfy the systemic needs. 46 00:04:57,100 --> 00:05:03,190 We really didn't know. And our education expert said, well, we can validate training, but we've never tried to validate education. 47 00:05:04,090 --> 00:05:14,250 So that's a problem, isn't it? Anyway, it happened to one of our students who was the chief of Quality Assurance of the French Academy in in Hamburg. 48 00:05:14,260 --> 00:05:16,960 And he said, I bet I can come to talk to you about this. 49 00:05:17,230 --> 00:05:20,379 The whole thing about the validation, about measuring whether you're doing things right or not. 50 00:05:20,380 --> 00:05:23,380 And I thought, this is wonderful and the Germans can measure everything. 51 00:05:24,010 --> 00:05:27,339 So we had a quiet summer and an afternoon. 52 00:05:27,340 --> 00:05:32,110 A few of us showed up and he leaned on the podium more or less like this and said, 53 00:05:32,400 --> 00:05:37,930 The first thing I must tell you is trying to measure the effect of education is a real [INAUDIBLE], right? 54 00:05:39,040 --> 00:05:45,819 From there, we went on to have a rich discussion about the fact that it is very hard indeed to know if you're educating the 55 00:05:45,820 --> 00:05:51,969 general and if you're educating the general properly to satisfy the needs of the service or in the case of Canada, 56 00:05:51,970 --> 00:05:56,170 the services. Okay, so that's my real German story. 57 00:05:56,830 --> 00:06:01,450 Here is the sort of larger remit that I think we're talking about here. 58 00:06:01,510 --> 00:06:03,340 This comes from a 1969 study. 59 00:06:03,790 --> 00:06:10,080 Anywhere, the things are underlined from here to the end and put emphasis added on several slides, but that is emphasis that. 60 00:06:10,210 --> 00:06:19,180 So the chief, the chief of defence staff, someone who had seen combat, who had seen reorganisation of the Canadian military and everything in between, 61 00:06:20,080 --> 00:06:24,850 said these words about a properly educated, educated who are effectively trained. 62 00:06:24,910 --> 00:06:32,650 Now he's differentiating professional officer corps doomed at best to mediocrity and of worst to disaster. 63 00:06:32,680 --> 00:06:35,770 Well, what in the name of heaven does that mean? And that's very qualitative. 64 00:06:36,220 --> 00:06:40,810 How do I measure that? Goes back to the German problem. But that that is the remit. 65 00:06:41,170 --> 00:06:45,670 That is what professional military education should be doing for us. 66 00:06:46,060 --> 00:06:49,060 Okay. So the next, I hope about half hour. 67 00:06:49,390 --> 00:06:55,000 There's lots of time for questions and we're trying to find some concepts as I understand them. 68 00:06:55,840 --> 00:07:03,610 I'm going to look at the definition of the education requirement for the general and in the very larger sense of the word. 69 00:07:04,090 --> 00:07:10,719 Look at the programs that we offer in Canada, which look awfully like the programs offered in UK and the US in Australia, 70 00:07:10,720 --> 00:07:15,700 the ABC Eight Nations, you hear the five over the four eyes from time to time. 71 00:07:15,710 --> 00:07:19,900 That's the group of sort of English speaking nations that were allies in the Second World War. 72 00:07:21,430 --> 00:07:24,879 And then I'm going to make a few observations and conclusions and hopefully throw the 73 00:07:24,880 --> 00:07:30,670 floor open to some lively discussion about what we might or might not be doing properly. 74 00:07:31,690 --> 00:07:36,610 To educate my talking, as I just showed earlier about education, we're talking about training. 75 00:07:36,610 --> 00:07:42,639 Where does learning come into it and does it matter? What about learning organisations and lifelong learning? 76 00:07:42,640 --> 00:07:49,090 How do these sort of modern terms fit into to educate or do they should they? 77 00:07:49,570 --> 00:07:52,600 The other half of the title is deals with General. 78 00:07:52,600 --> 00:07:56,770 So what is the general and what competencies that she or he need? 79 00:07:56,860 --> 00:07:59,950 How do they acquire these competencies? Is it in a classroom? 80 00:08:00,640 --> 00:08:04,690 Is it by doing things? Is it a combination of all of all of those and more? 81 00:08:05,170 --> 00:08:08,469 And should I be worried about using this generic term general? 82 00:08:08,470 --> 00:08:12,220 Or should I be thinking more specifically about flag officers or air officers? 83 00:08:12,550 --> 00:08:17,500 Are there differences between the three services? I'll use the British model, the three services. 84 00:08:19,300 --> 00:08:24,610 And where does the officer corps come in? I'll come back to that in a minute, but it's certainly part of the deal. 85 00:08:24,970 --> 00:08:30,730 And there's a larger thing called the professional army. So I can't talk about the general without including all of these things. 86 00:08:30,730 --> 00:08:35,590 I can't talk about education without including all of those ideas. So how does it all fit together? 87 00:08:35,860 --> 00:08:40,330 Well, we're an Oxford University is a concise Oxford dictionary to define education. 88 00:08:41,770 --> 00:08:44,979 And it's a known development of character or mental powers. 89 00:08:44,980 --> 00:08:53,860 Mental powers to educate, to give intellectual, moral and social instruction training to instruct for a particular purpose. 90 00:08:54,640 --> 00:09:02,230 So it seems to be tending to the idea end of the spectrum, whereas training, actor, process of teaching or learning a skill or a discipline. 91 00:09:02,950 --> 00:09:04,419 Well, there's the discipline of history. 92 00:09:04,420 --> 00:09:11,560 There's a discipline, but a discipline or skill might also be something that we would associate with with technical trades. 93 00:09:12,530 --> 00:09:19,990 Okay. To train the game. It's some sort of practice that we do, maybe physical, but maybe also intellectual. 94 00:09:21,040 --> 00:09:27,580 Okay. And finally, to learn to gain knowledge of or skill in by studying. 95 00:09:28,630 --> 00:09:31,900 So in the classroom, do we have students? Do we have pupils? 96 00:09:32,110 --> 00:09:35,530 Do we have learners? Does it matter how we see the difference? 97 00:09:35,770 --> 00:09:39,400 Is there a difference between them? Now something is not in the concise Oxford. 98 00:09:40,300 --> 00:09:44,230 In fact, our learning outcomes, everybody more or less heard it. 99 00:09:44,230 --> 00:09:47,620 Heard that term before. No, not at all. Maybe. 100 00:09:47,800 --> 00:09:52,780 Okay. So learning outcomes is something that's relatively new, but it is effectively what is. 101 00:09:53,050 --> 00:09:57,850 What product do you want? What capacities, competencies? 102 00:09:57,850 --> 00:09:58,930 Abilities do you want? 103 00:09:59,260 --> 00:10:06,280 The graduate of whatever it is you're doing to have a by the way, learning and learning or we're not found in the Concise Oxford. 104 00:10:07,130 --> 00:10:09,920 There's why I'm not sure that they weren't there. 105 00:10:11,440 --> 00:10:18,429 Now, under these more modern things learning organisations, this is defined by the name of Peter Singer, 106 00:10:18,430 --> 00:10:21,880 the education guru in the United States in the last decade or so. 107 00:10:22,480 --> 00:10:27,520 A learning organisation demonstrates constant reflection and improvement. 108 00:10:27,850 --> 00:10:33,430 So trying to make things better in a military context, what we call that a lessons learned, 109 00:10:34,030 --> 00:10:40,360 an after action, reflection sort of concept, perhaps mental models that help and taking action. 110 00:10:41,230 --> 00:10:44,210 Gosh, that sounds like doctrine manuals that the military uses all the time. 111 00:10:44,240 --> 00:10:51,010 That sounds like public policy statements and commitment rather than acquiescence to a shared vision. 112 00:10:51,760 --> 00:10:53,350 Robin, I talked about this over lunch. 113 00:10:53,350 --> 00:10:58,090 When the general comes into the room and says, I think we're going to do a left flanking, and everyone says, that makes sense to me. 114 00:10:58,660 --> 00:11:01,270 Is that commitment to or is it acquiescence to? 115 00:11:01,670 --> 00:11:09,730 We simply agree because we have to or do we agree because we're committed to that course of action or that philosophy and finally open dialogue? 116 00:11:10,060 --> 00:11:15,760 And we can come back to that in questions, too, because that's not something that we would normally associate with the officer corps. 117 00:11:17,320 --> 00:11:22,990 And I use the WI in the broadest context because I would disagree with what I just said, but like I say, we can come back to it. 118 00:11:23,290 --> 00:11:33,129 Lifelong learning, largely a result of the rapid pace, the exponential development of technology over the last 30, 119 00:11:33,130 --> 00:11:38,170 40 years, but not necessarily because knowledge and technology go hand in hand. 120 00:11:38,740 --> 00:11:41,649 Are we committed to being lifelong learners or are we? 121 00:11:41,650 --> 00:11:48,219 As Dr. Murray said last week, he knows generals in the U.S. Army who have not read a book since they went through staff college. 122 00:11:48,220 --> 00:11:52,180 And I know an anecdote from Canada where a general was interviewed about what was he reading? 123 00:11:52,180 --> 00:11:58,120 And he said, reading, I don't have time for reading. I'm too busy doing my job. Well, that's kind of scary, actually. 124 00:11:59,350 --> 00:12:02,620 Okay. I'm going to stay on this education thing for a few more minutes. 125 00:12:03,040 --> 00:12:07,779 In the 1950s, an American writer, Benjamin Bloom, developed a taxonomy of learning. 126 00:12:07,780 --> 00:12:09,250 So we call it Bloom's taxonomy. 127 00:12:09,730 --> 00:12:15,400 When I took this idea to higher command and staff directory staff about ten years ago, they said, this is something to do with horticulture. 128 00:12:16,240 --> 00:12:21,459 I said, No, not so much. But that kind of confirmed for me that they weren't necessarily on the same page that I had 129 00:12:21,460 --> 00:12:26,020 just found because I didn't know much about Bloom's taxonomy until about 15 years ago. 130 00:12:26,470 --> 00:12:30,910 But he breaks bloom breaks learning down into three large domains. 131 00:12:31,430 --> 00:12:34,710 Psychomotor doing things, you know, can I fly the aeroplanes? 132 00:12:34,730 --> 00:12:38,200 Register the number of landings. I haven't seen the number of takeoffs, hopefully, yes. 133 00:12:38,710 --> 00:12:43,270 The cognitive. Do I understand the process of flying and effective? 134 00:12:44,320 --> 00:12:48,440 Am I going to use that aeroplane, that war machine in the right way? 135 00:12:48,470 --> 00:12:54,100 I'm relating this to the military profession, but it can be related to any profession, to any undertaking. 136 00:12:55,000 --> 00:12:58,710 I'm going to use my safe cracking skills to work with the police here against the police. 137 00:12:59,110 --> 00:13:05,680 And so values and morals come into being able to do things and thinking about how I do or why I do things. 138 00:13:06,190 --> 00:13:12,010 Also, talk quickly about spouse learning. It's not associated with bloom, but for those who learn by seeing things, 139 00:13:12,340 --> 00:13:17,830 you are the visual learners who are appreciating these slides for those who learn by listening. 140 00:13:18,250 --> 00:13:22,240 Those are the. Early learners and you're hopefully getting something out of my babbling. 141 00:13:22,630 --> 00:13:29,290 And for the kinaesthetic learners in a sort of an ideal environment, hopefully by question and answer by toying with some of the things I've said. 142 00:13:29,290 --> 00:13:37,150 And John, you'll learn that way. Well, we all know the people who get this get something from IKEA, and they're going to put it together immediately. 143 00:13:37,810 --> 00:13:41,800 The instruction sheet, those are the kinaesthetic learners, the hands on people. 144 00:13:42,850 --> 00:13:49,240 Back to balloons for a second. So you can see it's not just a blob of knowing about stuff or knowing about values. 145 00:13:50,080 --> 00:13:53,830 If you look at that, look sorry does get backwards. Okay, let's go to values for a second. 146 00:13:54,700 --> 00:14:03,070 We receive values. Okay. We we listen to sit and listen to somebody talking about the different sort of ethical models. 147 00:14:03,880 --> 00:14:11,230 Great. Fine. I can regurgitate that. But do I really believe it? Maybe not if I get right into it. 148 00:14:11,230 --> 00:14:18,220 If I'm a philosopher, or perhaps if I'm a practitioner of a certain philosophy, then I'm going to act based on my values. 149 00:14:19,570 --> 00:14:25,510 And so that's the range here. Psychomotor reflex movements of the baby or part of my knee. 150 00:14:25,520 --> 00:14:31,569 Sometimes if it's working right through being able to do skilled movement of movement. 151 00:14:31,570 --> 00:14:38,230 Sorry feel I can actually land the aeroplane without scaring most people in it to non discursive communication. 152 00:14:38,560 --> 00:14:43,530 This is the Olympic ice dancer who was say, how can anyone possibly do that? 153 00:14:43,540 --> 00:14:44,709 Well, perhaps they don't even know, 154 00:14:44,710 --> 00:14:51,280 but they have been able through practice and and certain physical abilities to do something magical with with their body. 155 00:14:51,880 --> 00:14:58,810 I want to focus on the cognitive movement to know something is not necessarily the same as the ability to synthesise new ideas. 156 00:14:59,620 --> 00:15:03,310 And we'll talk about that a bit more using not so much this slide as this slide. 157 00:15:03,730 --> 00:15:10,990 When I apologise for the heavy water off of the Internet, all the words you write, but you can see some of the words. 158 00:15:10,990 --> 00:15:14,530 So at the bottom end, can I remember things? Can I regurgitate facts? 159 00:15:14,950 --> 00:15:19,350 Okay, fine. What does that give you? It gives me some knowledge. 160 00:15:19,360 --> 00:15:23,500 Do I understand the facts that I'm regurgitating? That's important too. 161 00:15:23,770 --> 00:15:30,880 And can I apply things really without challenging what they work, the way they work, or why ideas or why certain knowledge does go together? 162 00:15:31,240 --> 00:15:37,900 That's all great stuff, but that is what are called these are what are called lower order competencies. 163 00:15:38,260 --> 00:15:41,950 It's really getting up into being analogue, being able to analyse things and say, 164 00:15:42,340 --> 00:15:47,170 Know this isn't working and I wonder why you taking it a part of me then to evaluate whole systems? 165 00:15:47,620 --> 00:15:54,670 Well, paradigms would say, well, you know, this might have worked in 1842, but it's not working so much today in 2014. 166 00:15:54,970 --> 00:16:02,890 Why might that be? And then create say, okay, that's all the information I have from those previous cases. 167 00:16:03,220 --> 00:16:07,030 I am slightly different case. How can I come up with a solution that works today? 168 00:16:07,390 --> 00:16:13,210 So I'm creating something that's new and appropriate for my circumstances. 169 00:16:13,660 --> 00:16:19,420 So that's really where I would see and most of us, I hope, would see the general officer operating. 170 00:16:23,170 --> 00:16:27,130 Breaking it down into something simpler for Germans and others. 171 00:16:27,850 --> 00:16:32,560 And I say that with great affection because the Marines I know are thinking men and women. 172 00:16:33,130 --> 00:16:37,120 So they have anecdotally been attributed with this notion of these notions, 173 00:16:37,120 --> 00:16:42,820 educational items and reasons that they say in response to an unpredicted set of circumstances. 174 00:16:43,650 --> 00:16:48,430 Whereas training produces a standardised response to predicted circumstances. 175 00:16:49,480 --> 00:16:54,460 I for you back in simple pilot mode, when I go out and practice emergencies and somebody closes the problem on me. 176 00:16:54,820 --> 00:16:58,690 I know what to do because I practised it a thousand times. However, 177 00:16:58,690 --> 00:17:03,069 when someone says deploying the squadron to assemble more than I'm really going to 178 00:17:03,070 --> 00:17:06,610 sit and think about it because that's not something that I can practice how to do. 179 00:17:08,620 --> 00:17:12,220 Is there a clear distinction between training and education? I would argue not. 180 00:17:12,790 --> 00:17:16,180 Some things that look very simple, in fact, take a whole lot of thinking. 181 00:17:16,480 --> 00:17:18,610 Some things that look fairly complicated. 182 00:17:18,910 --> 00:17:26,560 Maybe I can put into a bit of a process that helps me move along quickly until I get to the parts where things mark a little bit. 183 00:17:28,570 --> 00:17:32,560 Professional education. Is there any difference between professional education and education generally? 184 00:17:32,830 --> 00:17:40,330 I don't really think there is so much as to say that it's nothing more than learning for military is where brackets for any profession. 185 00:17:40,510 --> 00:17:43,000 Think about the medical profession, the engineering profession. 186 00:17:43,690 --> 00:17:49,510 Do these professions need some sort of competencies over which they have a range of control? 187 00:17:50,890 --> 00:17:56,230 So I don't think that's unique to the military. Is it unique to the individual or is it pan professional? 188 00:17:57,250 --> 00:18:04,140 Do I need a brand new doctor who can do certain things and more experienced specialist who can and can collaborate with that new 189 00:18:04,150 --> 00:18:15,550 doctor and maybe somebody who's running the hospital or the NHS Trust who understands how both of those other sets are working. 190 00:18:16,150 --> 00:18:23,380 Is it turn your education? I think it's both of those and more lifelong learning. 191 00:18:23,410 --> 00:18:28,990 Yes, absolutely. Medical practice changes circumstances in a real world change. 192 00:18:30,460 --> 00:18:35,650 Do you ever think there would be an Arab Spring? Imagine a general officer who's sitting here thinking they're going to turn in 193 00:18:35,650 --> 00:18:39,400 Oxford and just this week I'm going to explode my brain by going to Holy Summer, 194 00:18:39,820 --> 00:18:42,190 as mentioned. That's part of lifelong learning. 195 00:18:42,730 --> 00:18:48,970 Hopefully that lifelong learning is not happening just in one general's mind or one doctor's line, but across the entire organisation. 196 00:18:49,330 --> 00:18:57,670 If it's not, then you've got a problem because one or two champions of a new idea probably won't take that idea through any sort of implementation. 197 00:18:59,110 --> 00:19:04,540 Two professions have some sort of a system where I take somebody who goes through a life 198 00:19:04,540 --> 00:19:08,980 sciences program and I put them in a medical school and I give them a specialist certification. 199 00:19:09,340 --> 00:19:17,170 Ultimately, they may be the head of a research institution in a university, or, as I said, the head of an NHS trust. 200 00:19:17,770 --> 00:19:22,839 Hopefully, yes. And hopefully there is some sort of system. Does it have to be very disciplined or very defined, 201 00:19:22,840 --> 00:19:28,510 or can it be just something where the profession understands that there are phases and stages of development? 202 00:19:31,300 --> 00:19:37,670 Okay, so let's park education for a minute and look at the profession of arms who say all of this is about generals. 203 00:19:37,690 --> 00:19:41,740 Well, I want to look at the profession and drill down into the general and then expand it back out to the profession. 204 00:19:42,670 --> 00:19:48,280 So if we accept that a profession provides a service to appear society good so far, 205 00:19:48,310 --> 00:19:57,460 and the military profession provides service to the state slash society, if you will, it is the last resort of the state of the nation state. 206 00:19:57,850 --> 00:20:03,370 Generally speaking, if the military fails, it's largely because diplomacy has failed. 207 00:20:03,520 --> 00:20:08,319 Maybe the economy has failed. There is no recourse but a military one. 208 00:20:08,320 --> 00:20:12,220 And if it fails, then arguably the state is in a bad way. 209 00:20:13,180 --> 00:20:16,240 Okay, so far. But it's generals who lead the profession. 210 00:20:16,900 --> 00:20:21,970 So if the generals have lost their way, then arguably the profession is now at some risk. 211 00:20:23,050 --> 00:20:27,970 And for Richard Gabriel, the other thing that's unique and we can talk about police services, 212 00:20:27,970 --> 00:20:34,390 we can talk about fire services, but the military can send people to members of the profession to their deaths. 213 00:20:35,800 --> 00:20:41,830 The the ethos and ethic of the police services in Canada is protect yourself, protect your body, then protect the public. 214 00:20:42,460 --> 00:20:45,730 And they look at that and scratch my head and say, that's not how I think it should be. 215 00:20:46,030 --> 00:20:49,630 But that, in fact is the professional ethic of the police services in Canada. 216 00:20:50,410 --> 00:20:54,280 And I suppose if you're a constable up there all by yourself and you're lying in the ditch, 217 00:20:54,670 --> 00:20:57,970 shot or dead, then you're not of much value to protecting anyone else. 218 00:20:58,210 --> 00:21:06,670 So there perhaps is a good reason for that. But the military tends to put the well-being of the state before the well-being of the individual. 219 00:21:07,540 --> 00:21:10,960 Okay. Finally, generalship or General is up there, 220 00:21:11,320 --> 00:21:18,580 and this is a true extract from my work and I have the drone war expert in the back to tell me if I've taken out of context. 221 00:21:18,580 --> 00:21:22,070 But hopefully you will do that. But feel free to. 222 00:21:22,980 --> 00:21:29,719 So it's all about intellect. It's all about being sensitive, indiscriminately, using judgement, skills, intelligence. 223 00:21:29,720 --> 00:21:34,460 So Clausewitz has said this is a really nasty business we're involved in, but if you're going to get it right, 224 00:21:34,550 --> 00:21:38,630 if you're going to deal with the fog, you've got to have a mind and intellect. 225 00:21:39,020 --> 00:21:45,370 You've got to be able to sort through the problems. What's skewed ahead here to a British model? 226 00:21:45,410 --> 00:21:48,530 We've all had that other place about 2 hours as the crow flies. 227 00:21:48,830 --> 00:21:56,510 Is that roughly you don't know? Well, as the helicopter flies, probably about an hour from here, just east or north of east, the 1939, 228 00:21:56,510 --> 00:22:02,809 he says in his Generalship series, he says a general and I'm paraphrasing here, generals have to manage. 229 00:22:02,810 --> 00:22:07,580 And I thought when I read this the first night, manage what happened to lead or command, which says, no, 230 00:22:07,580 --> 00:22:15,170 you have to provide the general at that point in the professional continuum has to be able to provide for the needs of the army. 231 00:22:16,340 --> 00:22:20,030 And then he goes on to say, and the general must be able to work with politicians. 232 00:22:20,420 --> 00:22:28,130 And if we think of the experience of the Great War and the interwar period with lots of cuts to defence and our build-up towards the Second World War, 233 00:22:28,550 --> 00:22:33,590 being able to work with politicians is fundamentally important for the health of the institution. 234 00:22:35,270 --> 00:22:40,130 He looks at a couple of human more or would say human personal traits be strict but not stern. 235 00:22:41,060 --> 00:22:49,490 And so don't be a complete, you know what, freedom, nasty sort of piece of work and have strength of character. 236 00:22:49,610 --> 00:22:50,689 So you have to know what you're about. 237 00:22:50,690 --> 00:22:59,780 You have to have personal courage, as I think what he's saying, you have to be able to say yes or no, mean it without being personal or vindictive. 238 00:23:01,730 --> 00:23:05,120 So what about General as a manager? Is it a manager in the field? 239 00:23:05,270 --> 00:23:09,169 What level of war in today's parlance is it the tactical level brigade? 240 00:23:09,170 --> 00:23:13,880 And below is at the operational level level Afghanistan writ large, 241 00:23:14,210 --> 00:23:18,380 or is it the strategic level sitting in Germany and trying to figure out where the army 242 00:23:18,380 --> 00:23:22,790 or the Air Force or the Navy or the or the three services of the whole are going next. 243 00:23:23,450 --> 00:23:27,350 What level of manager do we want? And the institutional manager, in other words. 244 00:23:28,850 --> 00:23:33,410 And there is an operational corporate divide that I'm going to come back to in a few minutes. 245 00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:39,170 Where do the generals come from, from the military profession as a whole? 246 00:23:39,170 --> 00:23:47,300 Is it a closed system nationally? Generally it is, although we exchange officers from time to time at various points in their career. 247 00:23:47,660 --> 00:23:54,230 By and large, you cannot walk out on the street today, look for somebody with a big brain or a lots of brawn and say, 248 00:23:55,190 --> 00:24:00,140 you know, make it to the general if you put on a uniform, let's go because we're short of you and you really do the fine art. 249 00:24:00,530 --> 00:24:05,540 No, we grow that individual from the point of being a very junior officer to the 250 00:24:05,540 --> 00:24:10,910 point where they're deemed to have the professional competencies and experience. 251 00:24:10,970 --> 00:24:15,740 And I'll come back to the experience part in a bit so that they can fulfil the functions 252 00:24:15,740 --> 00:24:20,570 of a general officer to be a manager of the profession and of the institution. 253 00:24:23,490 --> 00:24:30,000 And here are those here. Here are the three large chunks of activity that that I'm going to talk about now and again a little bit later, 254 00:24:31,920 --> 00:24:38,790 a Stewart pardon me the fox to be here but leaders and stewards of the profession. 255 00:24:38,790 --> 00:24:45,150 So this is the effect of domain. We're having a big deal in Canada right now of sexual assault. 256 00:24:45,300 --> 00:24:51,150 And so the Chief of Defence Staff has come up with a statement saying this will not be tolerated, 257 00:24:51,300 --> 00:24:55,800 it's already happened in other countries, Australia already and to some degree in the States, 258 00:24:55,800 --> 00:25:00,570 I think so as a steward of the profession, as the one person, 259 00:25:00,570 --> 00:25:06,060 the pinnacle of protection who must espouse and demonstrate that he espouses the values of the profession. 260 00:25:06,330 --> 00:25:14,120 Is that the start? So that's the professional end of the paradigm, the strategic end of the paradigm. 261 00:25:14,120 --> 00:25:19,460 That's really the management at the national level, trying to deal with the government, 262 00:25:19,760 --> 00:25:25,460 with the public and with private organisations to make the institution as effective as it can be. 263 00:25:26,300 --> 00:25:31,040 And then finally, the easy part, if you want to call it the easy part operations, including warfighting. 264 00:25:34,330 --> 00:25:39,559 All right. So we're going to dive into the Canadian experience for a bit. 265 00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:45,650 But as I said, having spoken to people at Defence Academy here and spoken to Australians, the Americans, 266 00:25:46,580 --> 00:25:50,809 the Canadian national experience over the last 50 years is really not that much different, 267 00:25:50,810 --> 00:25:56,930 I think, than what other nations have have done over time or the challenges that they've confronted over time. 268 00:25:57,680 --> 00:26:04,010 So in 1969, just by way of background, the three Canadian services had been smashed together by Act of Parliament, 269 00:26:05,420 --> 00:26:10,790 the corporal turned politician, not necessarily a sinister man, 270 00:26:11,180 --> 00:26:16,880 and had decided that that from his experience in the Air Force and then the Army in the Second World War, 271 00:26:17,270 --> 00:26:19,849 where he'd been seen off because the Air Force didn't need any more people. 272 00:26:19,850 --> 00:26:24,079 So he had to do basic training again, if not more, in a different coloured uniform. 273 00:26:24,080 --> 00:26:28,100 He said that wasn't very practical and when he became a minister in the mid 1960s he said, 274 00:26:28,610 --> 00:26:33,169 I think we're going to have one service and so now we've got one service. 275 00:26:33,170 --> 00:26:41,060 How are we going to develop officers for the one service? This is the point in time when lieutenant commanders were majors, but only briefly. 276 00:26:42,680 --> 00:26:46,940 Right. So Rolly and his team, all of them combat veterans. 277 00:26:47,490 --> 00:26:54,560 This is where I had my little baguette. I think it's okay. We developed this this model of officer qualities. 278 00:26:55,550 --> 00:27:03,320 And they said and it's in the original document that soldierly values, ethos and ethics were the most important thing regardless of rank. 279 00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:08,060 The most important in command ability was the next most important. 280 00:27:08,120 --> 00:27:13,760 And these were invariable across the career. So you might be commanding yourself in the cockpit of a fighter, 281 00:27:14,300 --> 00:27:22,730 a platoon of infantry or a boarding party or your ship's division, or perhaps a supply section in a logistics depot. 282 00:27:22,910 --> 00:27:29,120 But you were commander. So whether it was that or whether you were commanding the entire Canadian Forces, it didn't really matter. 283 00:27:29,120 --> 00:27:33,079 It was fundamentally important and fundamentally important to do it within some 284 00:27:33,080 --> 00:27:38,960 sort of a military ethos or an ethics model that was good in terms of society. 285 00:27:39,410 --> 00:27:51,470 Everything else was variable. So I wanted a junior officer who was exceptionally skilled in whatever that occupation might be flying now, 286 00:27:51,500 --> 00:27:55,190 moving across the ground, sneak and peek or doing something else. 287 00:27:55,580 --> 00:28:04,880 By the time that officer reached a position of Chief of Defence Staff, oh my goodness, no head in the trenches stuff was relatively unimportant. 288 00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:11,930 I wanted a mid-career officer to have service competence. 289 00:28:13,100 --> 00:28:19,129 So here I know how to fight my organisation, my subsub organisation, my little group of ten or 15 people here. 290 00:28:19,130 --> 00:28:25,550 I know starting at that point how to fight the unit, my ship, my squadron, my battalion. 291 00:28:25,850 --> 00:28:29,959 And by this point, I'm really capable at the formation level. 292 00:28:29,960 --> 00:28:37,640 So a brigade or flotilla or a fleet, maybe a couple of airways, that too becomes relatively less important. 293 00:28:37,640 --> 00:28:41,480 If I reached the strategic level, relatively less important. 294 00:28:41,540 --> 00:28:42,560 You're not going to forget about it. 295 00:28:43,100 --> 00:28:50,360 You're going to compare notes and say, Well, what's the difference between Brigade and the Navy when you're having chats with general officers? 296 00:28:50,360 --> 00:28:55,700 Nice, but relatively less important. The third thing is that's about the time you reach mid rank relative. 297 00:28:55,700 --> 00:29:03,680 Moderate is military expertise. How do I understand how all of the services fit together and provide service to the state? 298 00:29:04,880 --> 00:29:10,580 And it becomes absolutely important when you reach the top of the food chain. 299 00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:17,420 Now, three other things that are less related to the doing of the business in the last. 300 00:29:19,280 --> 00:29:23,940 Want your lieutenant to be relatively capable of kind truth from knowing why. 301 00:29:23,960 --> 00:29:32,870 So you want somebody, in fact in the role among all officers, even before you would possess a rudimentary degree or be put in contact with troops. 302 00:29:33,710 --> 00:29:37,570 So you want somebody who has that big range of competent intellectual competency, 303 00:29:38,270 --> 00:29:42,440 and by the time that person reaches Chief of Defence Staff, you would like them to be operating. 304 00:29:44,160 --> 00:29:50,060 And here with the doctoral view of the world. You want somebody who can deal. 305 00:29:50,240 --> 00:29:57,050 He calls it executive ability. But really the larger definition of someone who can deal with big, messy issues and big mess issues, 306 00:29:57,380 --> 00:30:02,390 but problems that seem to have no solution officers have to solve problems that have no solution. 307 00:30:03,350 --> 00:30:05,590 So relatively important for the junior officer. 308 00:30:05,600 --> 00:30:16,669 Again, fundamentally important are the upper echelons and finally, military executive ability to be able to focus in on problems, huge, 309 00:30:16,670 --> 00:30:24,860 huge systemic problems, national problems that have a military aspect to them and provide advice to government and other organisations. 310 00:30:25,160 --> 00:30:32,330 So that's really a model. Now I think it's close to brilliant, I'm sure many years ago to. 311 00:30:32,870 --> 00:30:36,260 For General Morrison from Australia, the chief of army right now. 312 00:30:36,710 --> 00:30:41,140 We said, wow, this is worth the price of my ticket from Australia just to see this one slide. 313 00:30:41,150 --> 00:30:48,080 So I feel kind of good about it. But I attribute it to people who have been through war, who had lived through the amalgamation of three services, 314 00:30:48,350 --> 00:30:54,260 who had had to deal both on the battlefield and in the boardroom with problems that defied solution. 315 00:30:56,060 --> 00:30:58,000 Okay, I'm going to skip over that. 316 00:30:58,010 --> 00:31:04,460 That certainly says that the problems facing Canada and in fact, Natal in 1969 are not that much different than they are today. 317 00:31:04,470 --> 00:31:10,549 So I think role model is still applicable. His guiding precepts for education, I think are more important. 318 00:31:10,550 --> 00:31:17,060 Remain considers the scientific technological. You can read it as well as I can remain in contact with the world. 319 00:31:18,080 --> 00:31:20,420 Don't try and study things in a vacuum. 320 00:31:22,280 --> 00:31:29,300 Provide the right material at the right time for the orderly development of qualities demanded of the officers succeeding ranks. 321 00:31:29,630 --> 00:31:34,820 So a a well-structured series of professional learning activities. 322 00:31:36,690 --> 00:31:45,540 Who's going to build one officer factory? That's one of one of his his study members called it the Canadian Defence Education Centre. 323 00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:51,540 If you scratch that out and wrote in Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, you'd have roughly the same sort of construct. 324 00:31:52,320 --> 00:32:00,930 Eight One Cadet College or officer cadets would get an undergraduate degree in either science, engineering or humanities, 325 00:32:01,560 --> 00:32:09,030 and then a K Defence College, which had a staff school providing basic understanding of the processes of running an organisation. 326 00:32:09,540 --> 00:32:12,179 An army staff course really was an army guy, so he said, Well, 327 00:32:12,180 --> 00:32:20,340 we have to have an army staff first because we always have had an Army special master where we kind of agreed a joint command and staff college. 328 00:32:20,460 --> 00:32:31,560 So what JCS, JCA, JSC is he is now Canada had in the late 1960s in philosophical construct an advanced military studies course, 329 00:32:31,560 --> 00:32:38,880 which looks awfully like what Commodore Mason has just come through not too many months ago. 330 00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:42,990 And finally, a national security course, which was the Penn National Defence College. 331 00:32:42,990 --> 00:32:48,600 When I say Penn National, about a third of the students were Canadian military, a third were Canadian civilians, 332 00:32:48,840 --> 00:32:52,950 some public servants, some private sector, and a third were foreign, military or civilian. 333 00:32:53,520 --> 00:32:56,850 So it was all about national security. It wasn't about defence. 334 00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:06,320 Um, another quick one here. The courses must be sufficiently demanding to help build intellectual ability. 335 00:33:06,340 --> 00:33:10,090 Holy Crown. I was gonna say Holy crap, but it would be more gentle. 336 00:33:11,650 --> 00:33:16,330 Intellectual ability and executive ability. So this was all about building intellectual capacity. 337 00:33:17,680 --> 00:33:25,630 Not to forget the military virtues, ethos and ethics, but to focus on brainpower and must include a postgraduate program. 338 00:33:25,930 --> 00:33:32,440 This is being said in 1969 amongst a group of officers, most of whom do not have an undergraduate degree, 339 00:33:32,440 --> 00:33:37,990 but recognise the value of learning of education and are calling for a post graduate program. 340 00:33:39,850 --> 00:33:45,339 Let's talk about staff colleges for a couple minutes because staff colleges feed into the general officer population. 341 00:33:45,340 --> 00:33:51,430 So when my favourite picture of the RCAF staff college in 1943, the first course, 342 00:33:51,870 --> 00:33:55,779 it's got an army officer, so it's already joint and it's got a large dog. 343 00:33:55,780 --> 00:34:02,760 So already has some, some class. There's their philosophy in 1943. 344 00:34:03,570 --> 00:34:09,840 Not only did the officers learn how to do staff work, but they also have well-qualified speakers who talk about the broader context. 345 00:34:10,110 --> 00:34:17,550 They liberalised this staff learning so that the graduates can put what they have to do on a day to day basis in a broader context. 346 00:34:17,640 --> 00:34:23,110 They push the intellectual envelope out and this is what they say. 347 00:34:23,130 --> 00:34:27,270 In fact, only by such a means can students be given a broader, more authoritative outlook. 348 00:34:28,380 --> 00:34:33,730 So I'm not just sending aircraft to against Germany. I'm not just training thousands and thousands of people. 349 00:34:33,750 --> 00:34:40,350 There's a broader global perspective that I have to think about that continued in 1945, 350 00:34:40,350 --> 00:34:44,340 when the course is first expanded to six months, and then by 1959, it was a year long. 351 00:34:45,750 --> 00:34:49,950 And what I would draw your attention to is get his thoughts down clearly on paper. 352 00:34:50,370 --> 00:34:53,759 So this was about being able to wrestle the problem down to its constituent elements, 353 00:34:53,760 --> 00:34:58,230 build some sort of solution, and explain that solution clearly on paper for someone reading it. 354 00:34:59,100 --> 00:35:03,690 It was the days before PowerPoint, obviously by 1959. 355 00:35:04,140 --> 00:35:10,980 Much the same argument is there with the utilitarian part of being able be making this something useful to the profession. 356 00:35:12,300 --> 00:35:17,190 By 1959, there's also something that I think I didn't want to let the cat out of the bag at lunch. 357 00:35:17,190 --> 00:35:24,420 But looky here, I say does not expound any easily, universally applicable doctrines. 358 00:35:24,840 --> 00:35:32,820 The RCAF Staff College in 1959, I would argue, had recognised the fact that it was not about preparing people to do anything specific, 359 00:35:33,180 --> 00:35:37,020 but giving them the intellectual skillset to do any next job. 360 00:35:39,150 --> 00:35:43,770 Sound stage decisions in any situation. The Army. 361 00:35:44,760 --> 00:35:49,649 Quite that far along, but able to deal with a range of problems. 362 00:35:49,650 --> 00:35:54,060 And I would say here, when I went looking for evidence of what the Navy was doing, 363 00:35:54,180 --> 00:35:57,690 any Navy to this point, they were sending some officers to Greenwich. 364 00:35:58,290 --> 00:36:04,020 But articles written about naval professional development tended to focus back on the how to fight the ship, 365 00:36:04,350 --> 00:36:12,540 which is vitally important, but wasn't at the same level as this, you know, an institutional bund fighting at this time. 366 00:36:12,540 --> 00:36:13,919 The Navy was doing perfectly well. 367 00:36:13,920 --> 00:36:19,650 So I suspect they reckon that their professional development system prior to integration of the services was good enough. 368 00:36:21,450 --> 00:36:24,870 Okay. What was Canada doing at this time? In fact, what was most of Natal doing? 369 00:36:24,870 --> 00:36:29,570 There was a Cold War on, so we were arming ourselves and sitting there ready to go and we were doing peacekeeping. 370 00:36:29,590 --> 00:36:36,720 This was sort of the quintessential Canadian peacekeeping picture from Cyprus, where we spent 50 odd rotations of six months each. 371 00:36:37,500 --> 00:36:42,900 So things were pretty stable. And then staying with the Canadian paradigm, things got really rocky. 372 00:36:43,350 --> 00:36:50,970 Not only was Gulf War One taking place in 1990 where we sent some folks, but we also had an indigenous population uprising in one part of the country, 373 00:36:51,420 --> 00:36:56,640 and it was the army, the federal service, that was called out to deal with a provincial problem. 374 00:36:57,210 --> 00:37:05,220 Chief of Defence Staff at the time said We cannot fail. Which goes back to an earlier thought I had that kind of went away fairly. 375 00:37:05,640 --> 00:37:10,380 Fairly okay. Uh, nobody killed, not much burned or destroyed, 376 00:37:10,740 --> 00:37:14,810 but it certainly shocked everybody that we might have to call out the army in 377 00:37:14,820 --> 00:37:20,010 Canada for an armed insurrection because that is an AK 47 on the bad guys back. 378 00:37:21,060 --> 00:37:28,230 And they had killed a police officer early in the standoff, but the other things were worse and started a couple of years later. 379 00:37:28,380 --> 00:37:33,660 There we were in Canada going off to another peacekeeping operation, this time in Somalia and old. 380 00:37:33,660 --> 00:37:38,520 Within a couple of months, we had detained, tortured and killed a Somali teenager. 381 00:37:38,520 --> 00:37:42,030 And we have the evidence there. And it's one of the two perpetrators. 382 00:37:42,030 --> 00:37:48,330 Here is the other one. The first one tried to hang himself. The other one ends up on the cover of a national magazine. 383 00:37:48,780 --> 00:37:58,140 And it leads to a provincial I'm sorry, in federal a Crown Commission, the title of which of the report of which was Dishonoured Legacy. 384 00:37:59,340 --> 00:38:05,610 And it found huge problems with what the military was doing, not just after this is done. 385 00:38:05,610 --> 00:38:07,500 In fact, you know, got many years off. 386 00:38:07,950 --> 00:38:17,339 Virtually the same time we sent a Canadian commander to a peacekeeping operation was supposed to be in in Rwanda, and he's there. 387 00:38:17,340 --> 00:38:22,710 And so Canada is not targeted, but Canada feels responsible for the genocide that takes place in Rwanda. 388 00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:30,270 These are not things that a professional military should be allowed to happen at the individual level or the operational level. 389 00:38:30,540 --> 00:38:32,729 And, oh, by the way, at the strategic level, 390 00:38:32,730 --> 00:38:39,180 because two chief of Defence Staff ended up looking for work because they handled the situation very badly indeed. 391 00:38:41,430 --> 00:38:48,690 One is was let go almost immediately and the other one about a year later, while he's trying to manage the process, failed miserably. 392 00:38:49,230 --> 00:38:53,550 So we've had problems at the tactical, the operational and the strategic level within the profession, 393 00:38:54,480 --> 00:38:59,160 and it leads to a decade of darkness with some pretty bitter pills for the military to swallow. 394 00:38:59,610 --> 00:39:03,780 In fact, the minister, having reported to the Prime Minister what he's going to do, 395 00:39:04,050 --> 00:39:07,890 sets up a monitoring committee, civilian oversight of the profession. 396 00:39:08,460 --> 00:39:14,820 And we are told that we will do certain things, particularly in regard to professional development, education and leadership. 397 00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:23,280 Not great. Well, Dallaire, who's recovered sufficiently and has terrible PTSD and tried to kill himself several times, 398 00:39:23,580 --> 00:39:27,990 was recovered sufficiently that he is going to go off now and run a study on 399 00:39:28,230 --> 00:39:33,540 rebuilding the officer corps and produces a document called Officer Ship 2020, 400 00:39:33,540 --> 00:39:40,080 which looks awfully like the sorts of things that really in his crowd had discovered in the early sixties. 401 00:39:40,170 --> 00:39:45,629 So not much had changed. But we're talking now about transparent resource management. 402 00:39:45,630 --> 00:39:49,050 We're talking a little bit about here about the technical sophistication. 403 00:39:49,050 --> 00:39:53,410 These are themes that Rollie has talked about, but they're brought up again. 404 00:39:53,410 --> 00:39:54,600 No. Is this unique to Canada? 405 00:39:54,810 --> 00:40:02,340 I think not, because at roughly the same time, here's a memo document that talks about more than just operations, higher management of resources. 406 00:40:03,330 --> 00:40:09,780 So, again, I think there's evidence that this is a pan western nation, large western nation. 407 00:40:12,350 --> 00:40:21,320 Circumstance and also develop a little bit later a framework that's much simpler of enrolees, but does again look at expertise, cognitive capacities, 408 00:40:21,740 --> 00:40:24,740 intellectual capacities, social capacities, 409 00:40:24,740 --> 00:40:28,970 being able to deal with people that aren't necessarily they don't look exactly the same as you and think the same as you. 410 00:40:29,930 --> 00:40:35,239 The ability to see change in your organisation, transformation potentially and professional ideology. 411 00:40:35,240 --> 00:40:43,730 So five important sets of competencies that all officers have to have, although they can vary with rank and responsibility. 412 00:40:45,320 --> 00:40:51,860 So the bottom bullet here, I think is the is the critical one, critical thinking, embracing and managing change, 413 00:40:52,100 --> 00:40:58,549 embracing, accepting, not acquiescing and participating in a learning organisation. 414 00:40:58,550 --> 00:41:05,780 So this is in our concept document for the year 2020 and now finally in a professional value system, 415 00:41:05,780 --> 00:41:09,860 how are we going to deliver that learning to the rank and file? 416 00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:17,989 I can do some of that through formal courses, but actually I want to break out into some other ways of doing training, more training as necessary, 417 00:41:17,990 --> 00:41:23,080 giving people the lower order information that they might need, education, 418 00:41:23,090 --> 00:41:29,629 hopefully to expand or explode their brain box experience like from experience comes, I think, 419 00:41:29,630 --> 00:41:39,260 wisdom, so that you've run into those big situations and you have seen that they can be dealt with and, you know, or have enough wisdom to say, 420 00:41:39,620 --> 00:41:44,690 I can't fix this today, maybe I ought to fix it tomorrow, but I know that I can with my colleagues, 421 00:41:45,350 --> 00:41:48,380 not necessarily on uniform fix it and finally solve their own. 422 00:41:48,830 --> 00:41:53,060 Do I go off and deploy for a CCW fellowship? 423 00:41:53,090 --> 00:41:58,310 Do I? Rather than playing golf on the weekends, do I get a master's or a doctorate? 424 00:41:58,730 --> 00:42:00,500 So those are the sorts of things we're looking at. 425 00:42:02,060 --> 00:42:09,230 Okay, here is a fairly standard and it's more or less an old version of a Canadian professional development system. 426 00:42:09,590 --> 00:42:12,260 And I'm just going to key in on the senior officer stuff here. 427 00:42:12,260 --> 00:42:18,770 But it's as you can see, it starts with junior officers and gives them what they need to be effective in their rank. 428 00:42:19,130 --> 00:42:24,590 At this point, though, we break into the what's now called the Joint Command and Staff Program Staff College, 429 00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:32,600 either in residence or by distance learning, and then at the higher level, a two week workshop on international relations, 430 00:42:33,320 --> 00:42:37,580 the one year national security program, the PAN government thing, that role you talked about. 431 00:42:37,580 --> 00:42:41,870 And finally, something for the baby general and the executive leaders program. 432 00:42:42,530 --> 00:42:45,769 We'll talk about those for a wee bit now. I'm going to go as fast as ever. 433 00:42:45,770 --> 00:42:49,100 I can all happens here where the Air Force started its college. 434 00:42:49,520 --> 00:42:53,329 And here are the programs anyway. And this picture, just so you can see what it looks like. 435 00:42:53,330 --> 00:42:58,610 Not a big place smaller than the Defence Academy, I would wager, but it satisfies the needs. 436 00:42:59,360 --> 00:43:07,070 Particularly we have a distance learning operation going on in operating environments we have decided can be complex, ambiguous. 437 00:43:07,730 --> 00:43:10,010 They're going from evolutionary to revolutionary. 438 00:43:10,280 --> 00:43:17,090 Officers need general specific knowledge to deal with some of the things, some of the process, but they need the ability to deal with change. 439 00:43:17,600 --> 00:43:23,870 What do I say that? Well, we take that guy and put him in that job. 440 00:43:24,260 --> 00:43:28,670 And almost the first thing he says to the staff and the students and most at the time 441 00:43:29,150 --> 00:43:36,650 is that we have to be capable of avoiding the trap of falling into the default, 442 00:43:36,650 --> 00:43:42,500 that that's the plan and I have to stick with it. He said it better than I just tried to paraphrase it, knowing how to adapt. 443 00:43:43,070 --> 00:43:46,639 And so when this gentleman showed up, he turned the curriculum on its head. 444 00:43:46,640 --> 00:43:51,379 He said, I do not want the usual stuff that we get since staff college. 445 00:43:51,380 --> 00:43:54,440 I want the students to be mentally challenged. 446 00:43:54,440 --> 00:43:59,300 All know that sounds bad too. I want them to be intellectually challenged all the way through. 447 00:44:01,310 --> 00:44:05,240 So what kind of pedagogy, what kind of learning philosophy should we apply them? 448 00:44:05,240 --> 00:44:08,930 Something like this lower end to Bloom's. No, we said [INAUDIBLE] no. 449 00:44:09,620 --> 00:44:15,079 We want something more active, intellectually active, that higher order stuff. 450 00:44:15,080 --> 00:44:18,470 How do you get that research, debate, reflection? 451 00:44:19,010 --> 00:44:23,719 Lots of our time. What? Twice while I was there that I had the hand on the throttle, I said, 452 00:44:23,720 --> 00:44:27,860 we're going to cut 10% out of the curriculum content and we don't have we do that. 453 00:44:27,950 --> 00:44:33,500 I said we're going to do it because there was no time for people to go away, think about what they had heard or read. 454 00:44:35,030 --> 00:44:39,769 And it's hard to do because it appears to be free time, but it's not. 455 00:44:39,770 --> 00:44:45,410 It's actually highly productive. So all have to say, if we do those things, we do them well. 456 00:44:45,650 --> 00:44:52,190 We've created a graduate learning environment, so there's all that stuff over in the first box. 457 00:44:52,970 --> 00:45:00,110 We want to practice some of the complex world, particularly those things that are time sensitive military activities. 458 00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:03,560 So we're going to run exercises and simulations. 459 00:45:03,980 --> 00:45:09,710 We would not be doing our job properly. We could not validate ourselves as being, I think, fully effective. 460 00:45:10,010 --> 00:45:19,230 And I use we in the largest. The word if we didn't try to apply some of this knowledge and those processes that we're not very knowledgeable in, 461 00:45:19,530 --> 00:45:29,999 in some sort of a volatile if it's fairly safe within the classroom, a volatile scenario, at least we ought to expose herself to real people. 462 00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:35,970 And I'll come back to that in a second. Some of those real people are are the academic, certainly professionals, practitioners. 463 00:45:37,180 --> 00:45:42,060 Is there a difference between a professional practitioner? Probably not. And high impact speakers. 464 00:45:42,070 --> 00:45:51,570 We started for the general officer course to bring in CEOs, ministers of the crown heads of large non-government organisations. 465 00:45:51,780 --> 00:45:56,850 Why? Because those are the sorts of people we're hoping will share their wisdom with our students. 466 00:45:58,650 --> 00:46:02,880 These are the sorts of learning activities. So lectures, discussions, all of the stuff. 467 00:46:03,420 --> 00:46:07,559 Which. Which staff colleges are jammed with might work well for staff colleges. 468 00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:08,860 But we were talking about, again, 469 00:46:08,920 --> 00:46:15,810 an exercise simulation symposia where we're bringing in speakers who may approach the same topic from different directions, God forbid. 470 00:46:16,350 --> 00:46:20,280 Case studies where we're going to throw a big problem at students and say, okay, what would you do? 471 00:46:20,580 --> 00:46:25,950 And now let's see what was done by those who lived through the circumstances seminar discussions. 472 00:46:25,950 --> 00:46:29,010 And we all know that seminar discussions can go any which way. 473 00:46:29,970 --> 00:46:37,260 And finally causing the student to do a little bit of thinking and research on their own, getting him to write something. 474 00:46:38,070 --> 00:46:42,300 Free criticism, Fuller said in 1922 of each other's ideas. 475 00:46:42,820 --> 00:46:45,960 That's what we were intending to have. 476 00:46:46,350 --> 00:46:50,490 Now, back to this model for a second. What is it we were going to teach? What we were going to teach, 477 00:46:50,910 --> 00:46:58,770 only 30 or 40% of the Canadian general officer cohort is actually involved in operations either directly or indirectly, 60 to 70%. 478 00:46:59,070 --> 00:47:05,400 And of course, the numbers are going to vary over different services or at that strategic at that corporate point. 479 00:47:05,410 --> 00:47:15,120 And in the organisation where they're having to deal with public service both within defence and across government, with NGOs, 480 00:47:15,120 --> 00:47:21,930 with public organisations, with politicians, with academics, with people who don't look, smell and walk to walk the same way. 481 00:47:22,380 --> 00:47:24,720 People in this venue, how do we prepare them? 482 00:47:24,840 --> 00:47:29,399 You know, by the way, the 100% who have to be able to deal with the ethos and ethics of the organisation. 483 00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:32,790 So what does our curriculum look like then when the National Security Programme. 484 00:47:32,790 --> 00:47:34,260 Oops, sorry, it stop here for a second. 485 00:47:34,680 --> 00:47:43,290 If we don't prepare the generals, the would be generals that we're talking about of four or five sixes only with the four ringers. 486 00:47:44,040 --> 00:47:47,160 If we don't prepare them to work across government, 487 00:47:48,180 --> 00:47:51,059 then we're going to they're going to be attacked by all the other departments who 488 00:47:51,060 --> 00:47:56,340 are looking at Defence as nothing more than a cash cow for other public programs. 489 00:47:57,150 --> 00:48:03,630 And in the absence of good relationships between executives in or out of uniform, 490 00:48:04,350 --> 00:48:07,860 we're going to end up finding ourselves driven by things other than what we might want. 491 00:48:08,730 --> 00:48:12,090 Okay, so what is it then? The National Security Program. 492 00:48:12,090 --> 00:48:16,559 We thought people should know. We reckoned that there were three large leaves. 493 00:48:16,560 --> 00:48:21,540 The first one had to deal with strategic security issues, global strategic environment, 494 00:48:21,540 --> 00:48:26,850 which is going to change where we're going to give people a snapshot of what's up there in the particular year, 495 00:48:27,210 --> 00:48:35,490 but try to give them the tools to deal with understanding and assessing and living within that context. 496 00:48:35,490 --> 00:48:37,850 Largely what's happening in other government departments. 497 00:48:37,860 --> 00:48:45,030 Is it important to know that education is a very it's a it's a resource rich activity, that health care is resource rich? 498 00:48:45,540 --> 00:48:49,260 We've had Medicare in Canada for longer than I've been alive. 499 00:48:49,590 --> 00:48:52,770 It's not something that's going to go away. Defence be damned. 500 00:48:53,850 --> 00:48:57,900 So you have to understand that and accept that. General strategic leadership. 501 00:48:58,350 --> 00:49:04,200 How do you how do you read an organisation? I got a rough idea how to lead my crew on an aircraft. 502 00:49:04,770 --> 00:49:12,030 They don't make the flight commander squadron to work out on that badly for how do I not lead the Air Force or how do they need the 503 00:49:12,030 --> 00:49:17,610 Canadian Forces who are two thirds of the people don't wear the same pilot uniform with you and they see me as a bit of a flake. 504 00:49:18,600 --> 00:49:21,970 But I got to do it because that's my job. Resource management. 505 00:49:22,180 --> 00:49:31,450 How do I buy F-35s? Do I want to buy cars? How do I explain to government and to the public when I want to buy a 35 or anything else for that matter? 506 00:49:32,020 --> 00:49:37,690 And finally, security operations. So not to marginalise it, but if I can't get the organisation to run properly, 507 00:49:37,690 --> 00:49:41,830 then I probably am not going to have the wherewithal to do security operations properly. 508 00:49:44,350 --> 00:49:50,650 I talked about some of the exercises and exercises and scenarios are about getting the right people there to challenge the students. 509 00:49:51,130 --> 00:49:57,220 This is not something that can be done in the schoolhouse, we reckon. So if we're going to have students prepare a memo to Cabinet, 510 00:49:57,220 --> 00:50:03,420 then we're going to find a retired cabinet minister who's going to chew that memo apart and say, I don't understand this. 511 00:50:04,030 --> 00:50:09,250 What is it that you really want me to do with this? And we had one minister who said, I'm having trouble. 512 00:50:09,640 --> 00:50:12,740 So you want you've got frigates and you want to buy destroyers. 513 00:50:12,790 --> 00:50:17,439 But are they both not sort of three ships at the Navy operates that are about 4000 tons each. 514 00:50:17,440 --> 00:50:22,330 And the officer said, yeah, okay. So like I'm not understanding the problem. 515 00:50:22,690 --> 00:50:28,810 Well, that too someone in uniform is going to feel ludicrous, but it is the reality of government. 516 00:50:30,010 --> 00:50:40,120 So we want those sorts of people to to listen, to, to contribute and if necessary, to contribute very critically towards what it is needs to be done. 517 00:50:41,320 --> 00:50:42,790 Keystones here are just just that. 518 00:50:42,790 --> 00:50:48,580 For example, here are the three case studies from the Kennedy School of Governance that we used on the first national security program. 519 00:50:48,940 --> 00:50:53,450 So where's the war fighting? Well, it's a very sort of historical war fighting scenario. 520 00:50:53,800 --> 00:50:57,420 But the other two relate to public policy. That's my do that. 521 00:50:57,420 --> 00:51:05,950 If you're going after Hurricane Katrina, we look at how the homeland was a homeland security above your what was your organisation? 522 00:51:06,040 --> 00:51:09,090 Sorry, or FEMA? 523 00:51:09,310 --> 00:51:11,590 Yeah, FEMA. How? FEMA failed miserably. 524 00:51:11,950 --> 00:51:21,220 We looked at the the tension between, uh, between Margaret Thatcher, the Army and the government and police of Northern Ireland. 525 00:51:23,140 --> 00:51:28,330 Um, worked out over a long period of time during the Troubles. 526 00:51:30,280 --> 00:51:33,790 No easy solution to any of that. And solution has changed over time. 527 00:51:33,800 --> 00:51:37,570 And that's what we wanted our students to appreciate the learning environment. 528 00:51:37,720 --> 00:51:42,180 Who are these people that we have here? Clearly, academics are appropriate, permitted sometimes. 529 00:51:42,190 --> 00:51:44,319 Other times we might want project practitioners. 530 00:51:44,320 --> 00:51:49,510 And so this gentleman here, he was the commander of the Air Force and then the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, 531 00:51:49,510 --> 00:51:52,290 the guy responsible for procurement and policies. 532 00:51:52,900 --> 00:51:59,229 He's one of our facilitators because he can bring his experience to the students and this is actually 533 00:51:59,230 --> 00:52:05,650 are getting city in China several years ago so that's a translator an F a military student over there. 534 00:52:06,580 --> 00:52:10,780 But it's not about simply putting a directing staff in front of students, 535 00:52:11,410 --> 00:52:17,500 somebody who has been given a set of pink solution sets and is told to get on with it. 536 00:52:18,460 --> 00:52:26,410 It's about trying to find the right people for the right learning outcomes and getting them with the students who are the learners. 537 00:52:26,410 --> 00:52:34,240 As I said, probably about a third Canadian military, a third public servant or public, uh, member of the public. 538 00:52:34,570 --> 00:52:40,000 Corporate executives, absolutely. And we want them to understand us as much as we want to understand them. 539 00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:46,840 And more importantly, as I said, we do not want a classroom filled with military practitioners who are going to 540 00:52:47,170 --> 00:52:50,460 either explicitly or implicitly understand each other without much problem. 541 00:52:50,470 --> 00:52:56,080 We want people that are to challenge what the military mind thinks is the right way to do something. 542 00:52:59,200 --> 00:53:03,820 Curriculum, philosophy. You can read all that or just the bottom line here. 543 00:53:03,850 --> 00:53:07,900 Building institutional capacity. One graduate, if you will, at a time. 544 00:53:08,830 --> 00:53:16,570 So if the generals are well educated, not just on the national security program, but all through their staff college experience, 545 00:53:16,840 --> 00:53:21,249 then hopefully we have people who can deal with transformation, not transaction, 546 00:53:21,250 --> 00:53:26,980 build informal networks, get out there and represent the profession as it needs to be. 547 00:53:27,550 --> 00:53:30,880 You know, a couple of next steps, and I think we're almost at the end here. 548 00:53:31,360 --> 00:53:34,330 So the national security program, what it is, 549 00:53:34,360 --> 00:53:44,440 is a program which like a CFD that produces a cohort for which new general and white officers and air officers rules with that point will be selected. 550 00:53:45,550 --> 00:53:51,129 But what happens when they get knocked on the head in the Army and the general officers, they come back for a one week course. 551 00:53:51,130 --> 00:53:55,110 That does not look at all like the American capstone program that goes for several weeks. 552 00:53:55,900 --> 00:54:00,910 They get one week to learn how to operate in strategic order because several of our peers 553 00:54:00,910 --> 00:54:05,379 have avoided going to the national headquarters until we all of a sudden become generals. 554 00:54:05,380 --> 00:54:08,020 And then it's too late. It's much too late. 555 00:54:08,710 --> 00:54:16,690 So two or three years ago, Chief of Defence Staff ago, uh, the incumbent and the fellow who replaced him said, 556 00:54:16,960 --> 00:54:20,590 you know, we need something to fill in the gaps in professional. 557 00:54:22,080 --> 00:54:29,070 We need to send people to Fiji here for war, or if we had one, we have one, one, I think graduate of the World Fellowship. 558 00:54:29,820 --> 00:54:34,860 These are the sort of broadening experiences that we we absolutely have to target to fill in the gaps. 559 00:54:35,700 --> 00:54:43,170 Individualised plans. Mentoring. Well, mentoring actually is a failed initiative at this point. 560 00:54:43,560 --> 00:54:51,120 We can't figure out who's going to provide a little bit of this sort of advice to our general officers. 561 00:54:51,510 --> 00:54:56,880 Why? Well, because they're general, you know. Right. Some of them think they do. 562 00:54:57,360 --> 00:55:03,180 Others recognise that there's more out there than what their past experience will prepare them for. 563 00:55:04,050 --> 00:55:07,560 So this is this is still a work in progress. 564 00:55:07,560 --> 00:55:10,860 And there's a steady team working through going through it right now, 565 00:55:10,860 --> 00:55:16,830 figuring out how to do it and then hopefully getting it approved at the highest levels. 566 00:55:17,880 --> 00:55:25,380 Concluding Thoughts. I hope I heard the long and complex process is one that I have, 567 00:55:25,590 --> 00:55:30,210 which I was totally ignorant of when I walked through the door of the staff college 21 years ago. 568 00:55:31,470 --> 00:55:35,640 And unfortunately and with this, I would agree with Dr. Murray last week, 569 00:55:35,640 --> 00:55:42,330 we have a bunch of practitioners who are all of a sudden cast in the role of educators and don't have any of the theoretical background, 570 00:55:42,660 --> 00:55:49,500 don't understand the institutional world what they're going to do the job well, because that is the military mindset. 571 00:55:49,860 --> 00:55:52,770 Get in there, figure it out quickly and do it as best you can. 572 00:55:53,310 --> 00:55:59,900 And sometimes that just doesn't work because it is complex and it is all about a national capacity that we cannot deal with. 573 00:56:01,080 --> 00:56:08,510 And so from time to time, we have to debate things like what did we learn and when do we learn? 574 00:56:08,520 --> 00:56:13,680 Because we learn something as a captain that we need to learn in the game as a control, arguably the context for the Colonel. 575 00:56:13,890 --> 00:56:19,950 My role is moral is largely different. So the title of the activity might be the same, but the actual activity is different. 576 00:56:20,610 --> 00:56:27,600 We have to get the right teachers in the classroom. There I was in the very first day with my students bringing a three hour seminar on formal logic. 577 00:56:28,200 --> 00:56:36,719 The only thing I knew about formal logic was that I had not understood it in the second year years and the second time I had to run that seminar. 578 00:56:36,720 --> 00:56:42,750 A year later, I walked around the room, said, You know, I think reinforce what we want in my students. 579 00:56:42,750 --> 00:56:48,030 Then I said, Here you go, you have 3 hours, deal with it, and I still don't understand it. 580 00:56:48,240 --> 00:56:51,300 But the end of that go round. So we have to get the right teachers. 581 00:56:52,950 --> 00:57:00,089 So arguably a retired chief or chief of defence staff would make an excellent practitioner teacher, 582 00:57:00,090 --> 00:57:03,480 but not necessarily the right academic teacher, the right learners. 583 00:57:04,140 --> 00:57:10,920 We want people who are open to this sort of thing and who will recognise that it's part of their professional duty, 584 00:57:10,920 --> 00:57:19,950 their responsibility to internalise the knowledge that we're going to share with them and the values and the intellectual openness. 585 00:57:21,060 --> 00:57:24,740 And do that. We can probably create a learning orientation now. 586 00:57:25,550 --> 00:57:32,070 Now is it? So I will stop there. I have for myself quite often more questions than I have answers. 587 00:57:33,510 --> 00:57:41,940 It's I don't know if if my questions are related purely to military education or if they are related to all professional education. 588 00:57:41,940 --> 00:57:47,790 And so the thrust of my research while I'm here is to try and understand the long history of military education. 589 00:57:48,660 --> 00:57:52,260 But I would certainly like to test that again once I figured out what it looks like. 590 00:57:52,650 --> 00:57:54,809 Test that against what happens in other professions, too, 591 00:57:54,810 --> 00:58:00,990 because I think it's it's important for us as a society to know that our professions are capable as they possibly can be.