CSA: Great leaders as great editors

Weekend listening on professional discourse and other topics

Take a listen to this great podcast from our friend Joe Byerly at From the Green Notebook and GEN Randy George, the Chief of Staff of the Army. The podcast covers a ton of ground: asking better questions, DTMS, setting boundaries and recharging, how leaders edit out tasks for their formations, what he’s reading, and others.

But the podcast also explores professional discourse. Read below for passages that covers professional writing and the Harding Project, a broader definition of professional discourse, and thoughts on what to write about—and I even link to the article on training management that Gen. George talks about as inspiring then-Captain George.

On professional writing and the Harding Project.

Byerly:  Yes, sir. And kind of bringing the scope out a little bit. Something that's near and dear to my heart is professional writing and what you guys have done with the Harding Project. How important is that to you when it comes to the profession of arms?

George:  Well, I think that's--I always tell the story of being a company commander and back then we got all the hard copies and looking through those. That was gold for us, looking through that. We were getting lessons from across from our peers across. So, I think that that's critically important. People are--I know you have established a culture of that in your battalion and just had one of your captains wrote something for Modern Warfare Institute. Just was down at Cavazos and thanked the lieutenant in 1-8 Cav for what they're doing. So, I think it's great and they're sharing that. What we really want to do is make sure that it's tablet and phone friendly so that people can just pick it up and they don't have to search through the pdf format. So, we're working towards that. That's one of our goals to get that knocked out this year. I think that from what I'm seeing, and we're trying to recognize all the great things that are happening out there, that the pace has actually picked up. That's kind of what we're seeing. We've got a lot of great leaders out there with a lot of great ideas, and it's wonderful to hear them all.

Byerly:  Yes, sir. Even looking at From the Green Notebook in the last seven months, this is a website that's pretty much run by captains across the Army that haven't even met each other in person yet. I'm thinking of like Captain Jack Hadley, Captain Rebecca Segal, Captain Jake Pettit. I mean, they're editing articles like in their free time, helping everybody from cadet to colonel, full bird, edit and make stuff publishable to share lessons. I think it's just such a great tool, and I remember being scared the very first time that I ever published something. But you quickly get over that fear, and it's really cool to see it make an impact beyond your circle. And there's so many people out there that are just helping right now, like helping people edit, and it’s just I think the ecosystem right now is awesome.

George:  Yeah. Well, and I appreciate all that you're doing. And there's a bunch of commanders out there, and anybody who--I know the Harding Project can help with any of the units that are wanting to get some of that started. The other thing that I talk to commanders about too, is some of this is just sharing lessons also inside your formation, and you can do a lot of that informally and passing things around. So, I think wherever we can do that, it's going to strengthen our profession.

On a broader view of professional discourse:

Byerly:  And on that, sir, you're talking about the hard copies of Armor Magazine or Infantry Magazine back in the day. And even when I started From the Green Notebook, the landscape has changed even more. Podcasting was still pretty decent when this blog started, and now it's more popular. There's YouTube videos out there, there's Instagram reels, there's particular Reddit forums, and even social media. Do you see the professional discourse just solely in the writing and sharing lessons learn at unit, or do you kind of see it as a much larger ecosystem?

George:  No, I think it's part of it. This is why I applaud what you're doing. I think that it's got to be more broad. I do want—for us, what we wanted to do also was let everybody know that they can come inside the Army and have these kind of conversations. And that was kind of the idea behind the Harding Project. But I think all of these, and we talk about all of them to include From the Green Notebook, I think are ways that professionals want to share ideas and learn and grow and get better. And I think that it's all good. We need to embrace all of these mediums, I think, to help make us better and more professional.

And then later in the conversation on what to write about:

Byerly:  All right, this is the stuff that's going to get edited out of the show. So, talked about professional discourse, we talked about the Harding Project, talked about revitalizing journals. What are a couple topics just kind of to throw out there that you'd like to see some leaders across the Army writing on?

George:  Well, I've seen a whole bunch and we're looking through a whole bunch of the articles. One of the things that I've seen, it might have been your captain who would talk about it. Just like the basics of assuming command. I don't remember if that was--was that yours? But what I really like on the stories are just, again, this gets back to good units are really good at the basics and do basic things well. And I always remember one of my articles from way back in, I don't know, this was like ‘93, ‘94 timeframe was somebody who wrote an article about a company training meeting and something just as basic and as simple.¹ So, I don’t think, you know, I’m not looking--I think a lot of people are looking for dissertations and big things and I think that those are powerful. Those are little things like that that are critically important. If you can't get your training meeting right at that level, then you're going to have all kinds of other struggles. So. I can't think anything off the top of my head that I'm not seeing. I'm seeing quite a bit actually out there. Is there something I should ask for?

Byerly:  No, I think it's really important. A lot of people think that, ‘Well, my idea is not good enough. I don't think that there's any reason to publish.’ And what I learned it from--what I've learned doing this blog now for a decade, is that there yet, maybe somebody did write on that idea 15, 16 years ago, but you have a spin on it, you have a story on it, and all you're doing is putting it back in the consciousness of the reader right now. They may not find that article from Infantry Magazine from ‘86 or the Military Review article from ‘77, but the article that you wrote in this month's issue of Infantry Magazine or at Modern War Institute or From the Green Notebook, that's going to get folks talking and having discussions, right.

George:  Yeah. And I will tell you, too, it's modern and it's different. And I think what company commanders, with all that they're dealing with, we've infused all this tech. It's harder, I think, dealing with this and everybody wanting data and doing everything else that somebody writing their contemporary stories about the challenges that they're facing with that, I do think are needed and wanted and will be read. So, I agree with you 100%. We're seeing a lot of that. I love when I see stories from NCOs talking about building, you know, what they're doing to get after building cohesive teams or with their PT program and their challenges. And there's a lot of professional literature out there. It's quite different, actually having to do that as a platoon leader and a platoon sergeant, as a company commander and a first sergeant, there's just different challenges with that. So, I think all of that is good.

Listen to the whole podcast here.

1. I’m pretty sure Gen. George references “Training Management Tips” in the May-June 1992 issue of Infantry. With improved archives, dusting off old articles like this one would be easier.