The Army is pursuing talent management initiatives that are transforming how future leaders are selected and promoted to more senior ranks. In September, the Army launched the “Colonels Command Assessment Program” (CCAP). Modeled after similar assessment programs for special mission unit candidates, and now future battalion commanders, CCAP will determine an officers’ readiness for command and strategic leadership potential. Programs that assess a leader’s strategic potential require continued investment, development, and expansion.
The CCAP program will assess cohorts of Colonels in areas of physical fitness, written and verbal communication skills, behavioral psychology, and non-cognitive attributes. Most importantly, the assessment will evaluate a leader’s cognitive attributes and complexity.
Each area being assessed is important for different reasons. For example, the Army requires leaders that are physically fit so that they can lead from the front, maintain resiliency, and have the stamina to endure through sustained conflict. We require leaders capable of clearly communicating up and down a chain of command to multiple audiences that include subordinates, peers, superiors, and others. We want leaders with behavioral and non-cognitive attributes that ensure they have personality traits and a temperament that is productive and complimentary to command and organizational leadership.
So, why are military leaders’ cognitive attributes and complexity most important?
A leader’s level of cognitive complexity influences their intellectual curiosity and ability to understand and retain knowledge, exercise good judgement, and incorporate these variables into the exercise of sound reasoning, decision-making, and strategic advice. Individuals with low levels of cognitive complexity tend to be incurious, unconcerned with details, and lack the mental acuity, stamina, and attention span to cope with and understand complex challenges. What does this mean in practical terms?
Leaders with preferences for narrow, service-specific, tactically focused, risk averse career paths may possess low cognitive complexity. By contrast, leaders with higher cognitive complexity may pursue more broad experiences; be less conforming and less risk averse; more comfortable with uncertainty; and seek broadening experiences outside of their service or conventional professional military development programs.
Unconventional broadening experiences, with interagency partners, civilian academic institutions, or industry, for example, can help develop strategic leaders with a more wide-ranging intellect. Select leaders in these programs may demonstrate, for example, a greater grasp of international relations, economics, geography, and history; as well as a sophisticated understanding and comprehension of national politics, bureaucratic politics, and interagency process. Cognitively complex leaders may more easily grasp and understand the roles, responsibilities, authorities, and integration of the military services, Service Chiefs, Combatant Commands, and the Joint Staff. Exceptionally complex strategic leaders blend non-cognitive attributes that demonstrate a strong moral compass, ethical character, trustworthiness, innovative thinking, and the ability to adapt.
Given the opportunity to lead major commands in large-scale, global contingency and combat operations, the most elite of strategic leaders are able to combine these attributes through experience in a manner that allows them to communicate with and provide best military advice to National Command Authorities, Congress, foreign leaders, and the public with credibility, candor, and discretion, particularly in times of crisis. They demonstrate willingness to disagree with a President and Secretary of Defense in private, while providing support and effective leadership of military forces once decisions are made. Finally, they possess a healthy respect for civilian control of the military, coupled with compatibility with the leadership of the Secretary of Defense and the President.[i]
What challenges do future generations of leaders face in developing the cognitive attributes required to lead in a future strategic environment?
In 2010, the Army’s Strategic Studies Institute published a study analyzing U.S. Army War College student cohorts from 2003 and 2004. A primary finding? Army leaders “may be inadequately prepared to lead the profession” in a complex, future strategic environment. Why? The leadership attributes we value at the tactical level are not necessarily the leadership attributes required to lead at the strategic level.
In a 2018 study of military elites, a retired U.S. Army four-star general described how young general officers have done exceptionally well in their career to a point.[ii] However, they are typically not intellectually equipped or primed to make the transition to general officer ranks. He stated,
“They aren’t prepared for it. If you look at the one-star promotion board, we promote maybe 40 out of 4000. In that group of 40, you’ll have maybe one or two that are capable and intellectually equipped to think and perform at the strategic level. You may not have any…They just don’t necessarily see the world strategically…We still promote GOs to four stars that are ‘frozen in time’ as great brigade commanders.”
A second retired U.S. Army senior leader reinforced this observation, stating,
“The military has a lot of two- and three-star senior leaders that were confident, charismatic commanders at the O-6 level. But that’s the end of the story. One in 50, maybe one in a 100 truly have what it takes to operate successfully at the strategic level and make a real difference for their service. The problem is that they all tend to think that since they have stars on their shoulders, they’re the one. They quickly forget the good fortune, grace of God, and relationships that got them to where they’re at.”
Complicating the selection and promotion process of O-7’s is a conventional process that rewards conformity. A recent 2020 RAND Study determined that in the selection and promotion of officers to the rank of O-7 across all military services, “ducks pick ducks.” In considering who to pick to become general/flag officers, promotion board members tend to select candidates that look like them. Weighted more than the guidance of a service’s most senior civilian leaders, promotion boards favor potential general officers with experiences that mirror their own narrow, service-specific, tactically focused, risk averse career paths.[iii]
Institutionalizing and expanding assessment programs, such as CCAP, are imperative. Why?
The future strategic environment will require leaders that have the cognitive complexity to understand, decide, and act while leading large military organizations in complex, chaotic, multi-dimensional environments. Increasing this complexity will be the incorporation of future technologies that are exponentially increasing the velocity of war. The time and space available for national security decision-making, potentially existential in nature, will shrink.[iv]
Great power competition and the race to lead development in biotechnology, quantum and “edge” computing, artificial intelligence, robotics, augmented reality, unmanned weapons, hypersonic vehicles, and space- and cyber-based capabilities, will only make this decision-dynamic a more acute challenge. We will face a simultaneity of multi-dimensional contests against an expanding array of threats; continual evolvement of international relationships; and the consequences and implications of rapidly changing human geography, and persistent disorder and conflict.[v]
At the most strategic levels, military leaders will be advising elected officials and political appointees – civilian elites that direct the strategic objectives of the U.S. military. There are, no doubt, exceptional civilian elites that are immensely qualified to do the jobs to which they are appointed. However, there is a significant population of novice actors that are underqualified. Their valuable and diverse backgrounds in electoral politics, policy, industry, and academia do not always translate into the leadership required to direct America’s extraordinary military power.
So, while assessment programs, such as CCAP, may be in their infancy, they are imperative to the future of military command. Given the investment and commitment they deserve, they will transform how the U.S. military selects and promotes future strategic leaders and how these leaders advise their civilian counterparts. It is a much needed and belated transformation, the scope of which should be expanded to ensure cognitive dominance in a future cognitive domain.
[i] Rumsfeld, Donald. 2001a. “Characteristics for the Next Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS).” April 27, 2001. Certified as Unclassified January 9, 2009 IAW EO 12958, as amended, Chief, RDD, ESD, WHS. Washington, D.C.
[ii] Schmidt, Todd. 2018. “Silent Coup of the Guardians: The Influence of Military Elites on National Security.” Dissertation. University of Kansas. June 3.
[iii] Jackson, Kimberly, Katherine Kidder, Sean Mann, William Waggy, Natasha Lander, Rebecca Zimmerman. 2020. Raising the Flag: Implications of U.S. Military Approaches to General and Flag Officer Development. The RAND Corporation. Santa Monica, CA. Found at: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR4347.html.
[iv] Brose, Christian. 2020. The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare. New York: Hachette Books.
[v] Joint Chiefs of Staff. 2016. Joint Operating Environment 2035: The Joint Force in a Contested and Disordered World. Washington, D.C. Found at http://www.airuniversity.af.mil/Portals/10/CMSA/documents/Required_Reading/Joint%20Operating%20Environment%202035%20The%20Joint%20Force%20in%20a%20Contested%20and%20Disordered%20World.pdf.