A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words (or 3,110 Words)

by LTC James Armstrong People process pictures holistically and process words sequentially, piec ing them together. This is why pictures can express multiple, complex ideas quickly and inspire countless discussions. While the benefit of a written vision and approach to command forc es a commander to provide clarity and logically connect ideas, commanders can use a picture of the same vision as a powerful tool to understand, visual ize, describe, counsel and assess. Using an example visual tool, I will demonstrate the rich benefits in how a commander can better create shared understanding for the organization’s mission, leader development, risk, re sources and assessment methods with a picture rather than relying solely on a statement. Army writings which de scribe the usefulness of systems think ing and visual modeling as part of de sign have value as part of a command er’s vision for and assessment of their organization, but are not commonly used as part of command preparation. Why a visual tool? A visual tool for commanders to un derstand, visualize and assess/reas sess enables them to more clearly de scribe and direct their organizations. As they develop their operational approach as part of their role in the operations process, their ability to rep resent their understanding and visual ization in a picture allows them to more effectively create and share their vision across the organization, and it enables deeper conversations than re lying on a vision statement by itself.1 This picture gives commanders the ability to, literally, distribute a vision from which the organization can as sess if it is on/off glidepath, describe distractors or changes with impacts, and identify where commander and subordinate actions contribute to the organization. The visual tool example was devel oped at a battalion level at which Army doctrine emphasizes the impor tance of requiring leaders to be “… adept at establishing a vision, communicating it and deciding on goals and mission outcomes.”2 The ability for the commander and subordinate to point to this picture and discuss the commander’s understanding, visualization, operational approach and how the subordinate, higher headquarters and resources impact the desired end state is extremely influential.3 This article uses a visual tool devel oped during command and recognizes that such tools are unique to each commander or organization. While I created a useful vision statement while at the Pre-Command Course (Figure 1), the visual tool developed while in command captured challenges and the context that led to deeper discussions with all levels of leaders in the unit. Reality not ideal All commanders spend time creating their vision, establishing goals for the organization to achieve and thinking about the culture the commander wants to create. A commander’s ideal accomplishments and culture never meet reality. Commanders must un derstand why the ideal will not meet reality, the impacts of necessary adjustments and what those impacts mean for their organization and its leaders. Acknowledging that ideal will not match reality is not enough. The com mander must have a plan to continu ally assess and make necessary adjust ments. This discrepancy between ide al and reality with required changes leaves commanders with a delicate balance to manage. Too much pressure from top-down may achieve re sults but breaks people, families and equipment while sacrificing leader de velopment. Too little pressure puts mission accomplishment at risk and creates an organization that does not perform to its potential. Figure 2 is the author’s visual tool used to illustrate these various inter actions. Figure 3 is the author’s visual tool overlaid on the doctrinal depic tion of the commander’s visualiza tion.4 Subsequent paragraphs will elaborate on the relationship among the ideal, reality and influencing factors as a means for having key discussions regarding: 1) resources; 2) nesting; 3) leader development; 4) multi-echelon Figure 1. Example of the author’s vision statement.

training; 5) risk, and 6) assessment. The variety and depth of these key dis cussions illustrates the richness of us ing a visual tool. Resources: people, time, materiel Each organization comes with its own strengths and weaknesses. Strengths and weaknesses change as often as the people and the training events the organization conducts. This ever-changing organization reinforces the importance of continuing to reassess the organization’s talent and location on the glidepath toward achieving goals. Every commander also has a time horizon in which he/she is attempting to achieve his/her visualization or goals. Time is often understood as the most important resource. Once spent, it cannot be regained. Commanders’ decisions about what they do with their time personally and how their organi zation uses time is critical. Command er-to-commander dialogue needs to focus on candid and specific discus sions about items left undone which all represent risk. As a result of the importance of how time is used and the resulting risk, a commander provides intent, priorities and resources (time, people and ma teriel). The reality commanders often face is that, depending on echelon, they can provide materiel at varying levels of speed but can rarely provide more people and time. The only sure way of allowing the people and time necessary is to go beyond a list of pri orities and create resources internally by removing tasks from subordinate headquarters while accounting for the associated risk. The friction of limited resources and mounting tasks is often exacerbated by friction of external forces pulling on the organization in various magni tudes and directions other than the commander’s ideal. This friction is a result of conflicting direction com manders take action to mitigate risk; in some cases, commanders can sim ply identify the effects of the friction to ease the organizational frustration. Nesting The concept of nesting is widely accepted, which results in each head quarters pulling an organization in the same direction. Each commander who publishes and explains intent and pri orities should accomplish nesting.5 However, in application, higher head quarters often adjusts its focus, causing a change in priorities. This change could be the result of the leader iden tifying problems from his/her periodic assessments or the rise of completely new problems. Practical examples of problems and corresponding solutions that may dis rupt nested priorities include an in crease of discipline incidents with resulting mitigation measures; a sub standard maintenance inspection which causes renewed emphasis on Figure 2. Author’s visual tool illustrating interactions among major factors. (Graphic by the author) Figure 3. Figure 2 factors overlaid at the bottom with graphic material from Army Doctrinal Publication (ADP) 5-0. (Graphic by the author) maintenance processes and parts in ventory; force-protection changes as a result of a change in threats; or a degradation in funding. While a disruption in nesting among headquarters has its own root causes and solutions, a visual tool can help commanders recognize and address the impacts of the disruption and al lows the organization to make necessary adjustments. The visual tool illus trates this nesting mismatch in multi ple arrow types to show forces external to the organization pulling in various directions (see Figure 4). Pulling in various directions frustrates Soldiers and leaders alike. The impacts include task saturation and competi tion for resources. As a result, commanders must understand these ex ternal forces and adjust their own pull on the organization. Failure to adjust creates frustration as Soldiers and leaders feel pulled in different direc tions. Failure to adjust also dilutes fo cus and does not recognize the practical delay in reaching previously de fined goals. Adjustments without commander’s di alogue about the impacts of adjust ments can cause the same frustra tions. It is critical for commanders to recognize these external forces, be able to assess their magnitude and di rection, and adjust to the associated risks all within a relevant amount of time. Leader development Given time as our most important re source, it follows that its impacts on the organization are the most signifi cant and wide-ranging. Commanders must understand the full impact of time constraints. For example, getting the most tasks done in the least amount of time may be the most effi cient but not the most effective approach. Therefore commanders should make constant assessments to balance leader-development opportunities, achieving results and the effects of the pace on Soldier health (physical, mental and spiritual). Too much focus on achieving results in a short amount of time often looks like a commander dragging the organization to his/her ideal and forsaking leader development, job satisfaction and families along the way. Leaders fo cused on short-term change often start with this approach but fail to ad just to a sustainable strategy. The other end of the spectrum results in an organization that never reaches its full potential, individually or orga nizationally, and it jeopardizes mission accomplishment. The ultimate leader ship laboratory provides purpose, direction and motivation along the path to achieve nested goals, which enables the organization to progress with ap propriate resources with retraining opportunities.7 However, resources are always limit ed. As an organization experiences re source constraints, leaders start to work on gaining efficiencies. A smallarms qualification density is a simple example of a common task where we centralize to gain efficiency. If there is not time or resources (range availabil ity) for each company to conduct its own training event, the unit tasks one company to run the range as others rotate through qualification. As are sult of this gain in efficiency, the train ing, experience and leader-development opportunity for each company to plan and execute a training event is narrowed to one company. Further more, if time is severely constrained and the unit has but one opportunity Figure 4. External forces and their impact, necessitating commander’s adjust ments. (Graphic by the author) Figure 5. External forces pull in different directions. (Graphic by the author) to get the range done correctly, leaders assess the risk of failure too great to allow and attempt to prevent failure through detailed oversight. If leaders are not confident in the dis cipline or training of their subordi nates, they quickly lose trust, and de tailed oversight becomes microman agement. This is how leader development becomes the first element to suffer in a condensed schedule. To gain efficiencies, we centralize events. We lose the ability for commanders at each level to develop their own plans on how to prepare their units for their higher-headquarters’ collective event using the Eight-Step Training Model. Leaders who understand that leader development was sacrificed as a result of efficiency and who can create rep etitions to replace those lost opportunities are more likely to strengthen the foundational discipline and training elements necessary to trust and em power subordinates. Units can also help themselves by guarding against gaining efficiencies through poorly-thought-out multi-ech elon training. Executing multiple events simultaneously is not the same as multi-echelon training.8 Commanders should be wary of making the training audience at one echelon the trainers and certification authority of simultaneous events. For example, if a battalion operations center is providing mission command for a platoon live-fire, and the operations officer is required to execute du ties as the range officer in charge (think in the tower), the executive officer may be required to help run checkpoints to shut down areas of the training area to support conduct of the range (think admin of training-area support). The battalion commander may be on the lane certifying platoons. Then it is not realistic to expect the primary trainers to give the battal ion staff the appropriate level of coaching and training necessary to im prove. If we are to gain efficiencies or seize opportunities to train multiple eche lons, we can consider augmentation from outside the training audiences or scale back expectations of training objectives. Leaders should provide a purposeful nesting of training objec tives, identify primary training audi ences and preserve time for subordi nates to train on supporting tasks pri or to moving to collective events.9 Risk Each adjustment as a result of chang ing goals, resource constraints and the simple business of choosing what to execute well all creates risk. Commanders have far too few real risk discussions for three reasons:

• We are not honest with ourselves about who makes risk decisions;

• We too often worry about the risk of taking action instead of inaction; or

• We expect too much from subordinate headquarters to provide feedback on failure. Who makes risk decisions? Without concerted leader effort and the courage to have dialogue about achievable objectives, the gathering risk as missions get communicated from higher headquarters to subordinate head quarters is assumed by our least equipped personnel to make risk decisions. If brigade tells battalion to do 10 missions with only the resources (time, people, materiel) to conduct five, and battalion turns and gives those same missions and resources to companies – and so on – we eventu ally end at a young sergeant, special ist or private who now has 10 missions and resources to only do five. Often this young Soldier has the least experience, education and training to make risk decisions. This young Soldier has nowhere to pass the missions, so he or she makes the best decision possible about which five missions are not going to get accomplished. After leaders discover the failure of half the originally assigned missions, we then start asking each echelon why we chose to execute these five vs. the other five. Commanders and leaders at echelon confront risk decisions where the experience, education and training match the results of the decision, or they accept the default to that young Soldier making the decision which, in some circumstances may be required but should not be left at that Soldier when unnecessary. The differ ence between accepting prudent risk and accepting risk without reasonable understanding of the possible out comes is the definition of gambling.10 Risk of action and inaction. Army doc trine is sound in balancing the risk of action and inaction. ADP 6-0, Mission Command, begins discussion of disci plined initiative with a quote from Field Services Regulation dated 1941: “Every individual from the highest commander to the lowest private must always remember that inaction and neglect of opportunities will war rant more severe censure than an error of judgment in the action taken.”11 However, in practice, our view of risk is skewed as a result of codifying the risk of taking action rather than de scribing the risk of not acting. The con versation is often “If we take X action, then Y risk may result.” We too frequently turn the conversation on its head and ask “If we do not take X ac tion, then what Z risk may result.” Of ten, Z risk is greater to the formation than Y risk. Let us examine two examples where flipping the conversation reveals a greater risk. As a tactical example, if we put the scout platoon on a screen line, they may get decisively engaged and take casualties. Conversely, if we do not put the scout platoon on a screen line, the enemy destroys the main body; scout casualties, while not desired, are less risk than failing the mission as a result of the main body being destroyed. An operations-security (OPSEC) example would be if we use an unclassified application to communicate information, an adversary could piece together relevant OPSEC details. Conversely, if we do not communicate information in a relevant timeframe, the organiza tion does not move forward and the adversary “steals the march.”12 Reversing this common trend requires a deliberate effort to have the “con verse” discussion and to get back to the intent of our doctrine. Higher headquarters should set conditions for success, not failure. Head quarters exist to enable success of subordinate units and to combine their efforts in away that allows the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts. We have become too reliant on bottom-up feedback and have created intellectual laziness on the part of higher headquarters. Rather than do analysis on troops-to-task, our headquarters are knowingly giving an unfeasible volume of missions to subordinate units and then asking for their feedback on what they cannot accomplish. While bottom-up refinement is criti cal, and many commanders would ap preciate their higher headquarters giving them a chance to shape mission sets as a result of their feedback, we cannot use this as a crutch for poor work. Especially at battalion- to com pany-level echelons, where we have the most significant gap in training, experience and education between the echelons. We can do more work to provide feasible mission sets rather than provide a road to failure and ex pect junior leaders to tell us where they are going to fail.13 This idea does not replace the bottom-up assessment we need from our Soldiers who accomplish the mission, but we are out of balance on this equation and scratch our heads wondering why subordinates are hesitant to tell us about failure and the associated risk we knowingly handed them. Assessment Not one concept presented in this article is helpful beyond initial counsel ing or as a start point for leading an organization without the ability to assess and reassess. Leaders use many tools for assessing their organizations, including inspections, battle-rhythm data points, spending time with Soldiers at the point of execution, formal assessments such as command-climate surveys and planned engagements with different cohorts of Soldiers. The point is that leaders should think critically about their assessment tools and how those tools allow them to see their blind spots. Everyone has blind spots, and the self-awareness to be open to assessments that help illuminate those blind spots is what sepa rates leaders who can make meaning ful adjustments from those who are satisfied with receiving reports that all is well. These assessment tools are what allow leaders to truly understand the magnitude and direction of forces acting on the unit. The leader can then adjust his/her “rheostat” on expectations, engage in real risk discussions, create resources or adjust priorities and intent. The two most likely points of failure in assessment occur because leaders do not create abroad enough tool set for assessment and are too willing to accept good news.14 As Colin Powell wrote in My American Journey, “The day Soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them.”15 Leaders naturally want their organizations to perform to their highest potential but should account for (identify and adjust to) the external forces while mitigating the resulting risk. This leaves the leader with a likely problem statement: The leader must accom plish the mission given resource con straints, while leaving room for leader development and without breaking families or the Soldier’s desire to serve along the way.16 Showing this problem in a picture to share the commander’s visualization is extremely valuable and allows the commander to have discussions with peers and subordinates about how they impact the organization, what changes have occurred and make ac curate assessments. Whatever picture the commander deems most helpful allows leaders to share in the under standing and visualization; informs how subordinates and other organizations fit into assessment loops; and provides a start point for discussion about where along the path the organization lies. While the picture does not replace the clarity and logical trail of the written word, it supports quickly communicat ing a shared understanding across all ranks. If this visual tool and its discussion points created dialogue between the reader and a fellow professional, whether that dialogue was in agree ment or in disagreement with the use fulness or accuracy of the tool, then the reader has experienced the bene fit a visual tool provides for a com mander and the organization. LTC Jim Armstrong commands 2nd Battalion, 70th Armor Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team (ABCT), 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, KS. His previous assignments include concept lead for the Joint Staff Innovation Group, Washington, DC; squadron op erations observer/coach/trainer for Grizzly Team, Joint Multinational Readiness Center, Hohenfels, Germany; brigade operations officer (S-3), 3rd ABCT, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, TX; battalion operations officer (S-3), 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood; brigade plans officer, 3rd ABCT, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood; and Joint Operations Center battle major, Regional Command-East, Bagram, Afghanistan. During his career, LTC Armstrong has also served as Figure 6. A visual tool for a unit’s self-assessment. (Graphic by the author) platoon leader, executive officer and company commander. His military schools include Air-Assault Course, Master Fitness Trainer Course, Armor Basic Officer Leader Course, Armor Captain’s Career Course; intermediate-level education, common-core and qualification courses, Command and General Staff College (CGSC); and Joint Firepower Control Course. LTC Arm strong holds a bachelor’s of arts de gree in systems engineering from the U. S. Military Academy, West Point, NY, and a master’s of military arts and sci ence degree in military history from

CGSC.

Notes 1 ADP 6-0, Mission Command, July 2018. 2 Field Manual (FM) 6-22, Leader Development, June 2015. 3 Army Technical Publication (ATP) 5-01, Army Design Methodology. 4 ADP 5-0, The Operations Process, July 2019. 5 A “nested” concept illustrates how the actions of subordinate units fit together to support a mission of the higher head quarters. 7 While the author understands the mili tary’s penchant to allow subordinates to learn from failure much like industry’s “fail, fast, forward,” we must maintain that our profession requires winning. We should be careful about learning and re training vice propagating the idea of ac cepting failure. 8 FM 7-0, Train to Win in a Complex World, Oct. 5, 2016. 9 Ibid.

ADP 6-0.

Ibid. 12 ATP 5-19, Risk Management, April 14, 2014. 13 Battalion commanders with 17-20 years of experience, in comparison to company commanders, most likely at five to eight years of experience. 14 Jim Mattis and Bing West, Call Sign Chaos, Penguin Random House, Sept. 3, 2019. 16 Colin Powell and Joseph Persico, My American Journey, New York: The Random House Ballatine Publishing Group, 1995. 16 A problem statement should not start out with “how,” which is the beginning of a question. The statement is declarative and describes the dilemma and tradeoffs as a result of the problem. ABCT – armored brigade combat team ADP – Army doctrinal publication ATP – Army technical publication CGSC – Command and General Staff College FM – field manual OPSEC – operations security Acronym Quick-Scan