Manning the Future Legions of the United States: Finding and Developing Tomorrow's Centurions (Contemporary Military, Strategic, and Security Issues) - Hardcover

Don Vandergriff

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0313345627 ISBN 13: 9780313345623

Publisher: Praeger, 2008

Synopsis

An Industrial Age model continues to shape the way the Army approaches its recruiting, personnel management, training, and education. This outdated personnel management paradigm―designed for an earlier era―has been so intimately tied to the maintenance of Army culture that a self-perpetuating cycle has formed, diminishing the Army's attempts to develop adaptive leaders and institutions.

This cycle can be broken only if the Army accepts rapid evolutionary change as the norm of the new era. Recruiting the right people, then having them step into an antiquated organization, means that many of them will not stay as they find their ability to contribute and develop limited by a centralized, hierarchical organization. Recruiting and retention data bear this out.

Several factors have combined to force the Army to think about the way it develops and nurtures its leaders. Yet, Vandergriff maintains, mere modifications to today's paradigm may not be enough. Today's Army has to do more than post rhetoric about adaptability on briefing slides and in literature. One cannot divorce the way the Army accesses, promotes, and selects its leaders from its leadership-development model. The Army cannot expect to maintain leaders who grasp and practice adaptability if these officers encounter an organization that is neither adaptive nor innovative. Instead, Army culture must become adaptive, and the personnel system must evolve into one that nurtures adaptability in its policies, practices, and beliefs. Only a detailed, comprehensive plan where nothing is sacred will pave the way to cultural evolution.

About this title

Book Description

This book looks beyond recruiting. It is a holistic view of today's Army and addresses the fact that in order to effectively recruit the soldiers and leaders of the future, the nation needs to take the Army - its personnel management system and structure - from the Industrial Age into the Information Age.

About the Author

Major Donald Vandergriff (U.S. Army retired) is a consultant on leader development, adaptability, and how to create and sustain learning organizations to the U.S. Army. The U.S. Marines and Navy SEALs, as well as several corporate organizations, have sought his insights on adaptability. He is the author of 50 articles, as well as three books.

About this edition

• Publisher: Praeger
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0313345627
• ISBN 13: 9780313345623
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 200