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The Army’s 1st Cavalry Division (1st Cav) is a 30,000-strong organization respon-sible for the conduct of a full range of operations, from establishment of essential

civil infrastructure to conduct of combat in and around Baghdad, Iraq.The majority of1st Cav’s leaders are living through their first combat deployment, and though theyexperienced an extensive predeployment training regimen, they do not know it all. Itis simply impossible to replicate in training the range of possible situations that peoplewill experience in fluid environments and against keen competition.

Harnessing Real-Time Lessons

In Iraq, junior officers and noncommissioned officers (NCOs)—the Army’s midlevelmanagers—are learning cutting-edge lessons every day: from how to conduct more

effective combat operations to how to grasp the role of culture, from how to detectand avoid roadside bombs to how to build water mains through densely packed neigh-borhoods.While it is impossible to predict all the lessons a leader in the 1st Cav willlearn while spending time on the streets of Baghdad tomorrow, it is critical that the ju-nior leaders of the 1st Cav share that knowledge once it is learned. Harnessing thesereal-time lessons and sharing them across the larger organization of the 1st Cav enablesthe 1st Cav to learn from itself, which is critical in its efforts to adapt to a new typeof conflict in a country where the U.S. Army has limited experience and many forcesworking against it to prevent success. The U.S. Army is in the most competitive en-vironment possible.

The current process the Army and many civilian organizations use to learn from ex-perience and translate these lessons into future actions is called the After Action Re-view (AAR). It is a simple methodology that gets to the core of a past event in orderto bring forward the lessons learned and to figure out better ways of doing the task in

B Y M A J O R P A T R I C K R . M I C H A E L I S

A N D M A J O R E V E R E T T S . P . S P A I N

KnowledgeShared

Is Power

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the future. It asks four simple questions in a nonjudg-mental fashion: What was the mission? What actuallyhappened? Why did it happen? And the key:What arewe going to do differently next time?

This methodology has worked well formore than 25 years and has been ingrainedinto the cultural DNA of the Army. Butthere has always been a critical shortfall inthe AAR process of the military and civil-ian organizations: these lessons learned gener-ally are not shared with sister units in the samemajor organization, and those that are sharedare not shared consistently nor quickly. Why?S.L.A. Marshall describes it best in MenAgainst Fire:

During war, it oftentimes happens that one com-pany, by trial and error, finds the true solutionfor some acute problem which concerns everyone.But when that happens to a company, I can as-sure you that it is the exceptional company offi-cer who takes the initiative and passes his uniquesolution along to his superiors even after he hasproved in battle that the idea works.A good com-pany idea in tactics is likely to remain confinedto one company indefinitely, even though itwould be of benefit to the whole military estab-lishment. Such omissions are not due usually toexcess modesty or indifference on the part of theofficer, but to his unawareness that others are hav-ing the same trouble as himself.

The essence of what Marshall capturedmore than 50 years ago is as applicable to-day—in any organization—as it was then.The problem has only been amplified by the swiftnessof the technology-accelerated competitive landscape. Inthe past, the long periods between major armed con-flicts allowed the Army to learn using a slow, viral pro-

cess of knowledge sharing.This process was unmanagedat most levels and often took years to manifest itself in theform of new standard operating procedures and doctrine.Similarly, slow-moving competitors and an incremen-tally changing consumer base allowed for-profit cor-

porations to be moderately successful whilebeing lethargic in their internal informationsharing.

But today we no longer have time to processlessons into standard procedures before wehave to move to the next challenge. Quickorganizational learning is key.The enemy the1st Cav fights on the streets of Baghdad com-municates horizontally with each other via a network of cell phones, the Internet, andword of mouth—instantly sharing what theyhave learned about the coalition forces. Tomeet the challenges of confronting this dis-persed and networked enemy, the 1st Cav hasdeveloped a capacity to share lessons from itsfrontline leaders in a near real-time fashion, toprovide them with relevant knowledge thatcan be immediately incorporated into theirdecision making in order to maintain a com-petitive edge.

Preparing for the Next Battle

Major General Peter Chiarelli, the com-manding officer of the 1st Cav, built

the Internet-based CAVNET as a real-timeenabler to “prepare for the next battle, notthe next war.”The cumulative effect of giv-ing everyone in an organization the capac-ity to rapidly share near real-time lessons

about the competition, the situation, and themselves—and then incorporating this capacity into each leader’sindividual decision-making cycle—builds competitiveadvantage.

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Patrick R.Michaelis is battlecommand officer

and task force chiefknowledge officer

for the 1st CavalryDivision, and justredeployed fromBaghdad. As alieutenant in the

1st Infantry Divi-sion, he servedwith one of thefirst U.S. unitsdeployed into

Bosnia. He hasalso served as aground cavalry

troop commanderand as a leader-ship instructor

at the U.S. Mili-tary Academy.

He earned a degreein history from

Texas A&M Uni-versity and holdsan MPA fromHarvard’s JFK

School ofGovernment.

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This competitive edge creates a momentum of organi-zational learning and execution at a tempo so muchhigher than its adversary’s that it offsets the horizontallynetworked enemy’s ability to understand and orient onthe operations conducted by the 1st Cav. Inmilitary terms, this is getting inside the de-cision cycle of your opponent; in the cor-porate world it is carefully analyzing yourcompetition and opportunities in order tobe the first to embrace and exploit the nextsustainable competitive advantage at a ratethat denies the competitor the ability to evercatch up. As John Boyd expressed it in Pat-terns of Conflict: “Operate inside adversary’sobservation-orientation-decision-actionloops to enmesh adversary in a world of un-certainty, doubt, mistrust, confusion, dis-order, fear, panic, chaos, . . . and/or foldadversary back inside himself so that he can-not cope with events/efforts as they unfold.”

With the advent of the Internet, all organi-zations—no matter how large and geograph-ically dispersed—now have the technologicalcapacity to share and exploit their internallearning for competitive advantage. Over aclassified version of the World Wide Web, the1st Cav has created an online knowledgetransfer system based on a commercially avail-able “community of practice” software pack-age. CAVNET, which has been up andrunning since May 2004 in Baghdad, is thefirst major effort by the U.S. Army to estab-lish a professional forum that enables the shar-ing of near real-time lessons in a deployedcombat environment.

CAVNET has been tailored to meet the specific needsof the Army’s junior leaders. Simplicity and ease of usewere clear evaluation criteria in creating the actual in-

terface, based on the recognition by Chiarelli and theCAVNET team of the extremely busy 16–18-hourwork days of their primary target audience, the juniorofficer.The taxonomy,or subject-matter organization of

the site, outlines the 30 or so most commonmission categories that each junior leadermay be required to perform. Junior officerseasily go to each mission folder with rele-vant information dedicated to that missionalone and download or input the most re-cent trends in that subject area. Addition-ally, each discussion area includes feedbackon the posts from others in the communityand has optional alert mechanisms a usercan activate to receive information aboutthe latest ideas via e-mail.The system’s pri-mary interface is a hot-topic list of the mostrecent postings, allowing each user to keepaware of the most recent conversations andjoin in any conversation about the opera-tional lessons learned that day.The CAVNET’sstraightforward layout, deliberate taxonomy,and multiple feedback mechanisms are de-signed to make users comfortable with asimple system whose usefulness comple-ments, rather than complicates, a juniorleader’s busy life.

The 1st Cav is dispersed in numerous basesthroughout the 50-square-mile area ofBaghdad and its surrounding communitiesand districts—not unlike major civilian cor-porations and firms, which typically havetheir profit centers and divisions workingin different physical locations from eachother. Through interconnected access toCAVNET at all these locations, junior lead-

ers have a venue to share and discuss what they arelearning about the enemy and themselves with everyother junior leader in the 1st Cav. With periodic visits

Everett S. P. Spain isan assistant professorat the U.S. MilitaryAcademy and teaches“Leading Organi-zations ThroughChange.” He is aUSMA graduate,

holds an MBA fromDuke’s Fuqua School,

and is a registeredprofessional engineer.

When he was acaptain, Everett’s

company earned theItschner Award, givenannually to the out-standing engineer

company in the U.S.Army. Everett has

served with the 82ndAirborne Division inNorth Carolina, withV Corps in Germany

and Kosovo, and with the 1st Cavalry

Division in Iraq.■

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to the Web site, junior leaders can post ideas and drawlessons that they can instantly add into their decision-making cycle.Based on their specific situation, the lead-ers can adopt, adapt, or discard one another’s ideas.Thekey idea is that they should be exposed to the ideas andobservations of the full spectrum of their peers. Thisallows the junior officers and NCOs to make better plansand better decisions when they run into similar chal-lenges in the future.

This is how it should work. It would be easy to just cre-ate a Web site to post lessons learned and say to theworld, “Look what we’ve done,we are now a learning organiza-tion!”—and then hope the cul-ture changes to align itself withthe technological change.But thereality is that any new structuralchange will just drop into thedustbin of good ideas unless the culture is conscientiouslyaligned to accept and cherish theadded value of an idea such asChiarelli’s CAVNET.

Changing the Culture toAccept New Solutions

The idea of CAVNET itself was a shock to the tra-ditional organizational structure of the 1st Cav.

When General Chiarelli added “sharing knowledgeacross the division instantly” to his organization’s ob-jectives required to achieve the vision of winning thepeace in Baghdad, he threw his organization’s structureout of alignment with its existing culture. To try tobring his organizational strategy and operational cul-ture into congruence, Chiarelli first introduced theCAVNET technology and built multiple user interfacesthroughout his division. Then he took the reins of adeliberate cultural change effort to flatten the vertically

oriented culture of his hierarchical organization. Heknew he had to create a culture that facilitated hori-zontal information sharing even though the verticallyoriented formal structure was not officially changing.His “stay-vertical but share-horizontal” idea cuts acrossthe grain of the culture and structure of most militaryand civilian hierarchical organizations.

Further, when introducing change into a system thatmany believe is running just fine “because it has alwaysrun that way,” a wise leader must expect that the institu-tional antibodies will actively fight to protect the status

quo, and must plan to overcomeor reduce that resistance.

In addition to overcoming activeresistance from status-quo loyal-ists, a second required culturalchange is convincing the indi-vidual junior leaders—who arelearning through doing—of theimportance of actively sharingwhat they have learned withtheir peers. As S.L.A. Marshallcorrectly stated, “Omissions arenot due usually to excess mod-esty or indifference on the partof the officer, but to his un-

awareness that others are having the same trouble ashimself.”The technological part was relatively easy, butthe cultural change at the heart of any large change ef-fort is ongoing.

Though the future of the conflict and CAVNET is stilldeveloping, the 1st Cav has certainly learned much inthe past months about instituting a cultural and struc-tural change while in the midst of ongoing military op-erations. Fundamentally, building a mature organizationinto a community of practice that actively uses andlearns from a knowledge transfer system is primarily a

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Create organizational

learning that gets

inside the decision cycle

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cultural change issue, not a technological one.The follow-ing sections present some of the things the CAVNETteam has discovered that may be of interest to other or-ganizations who are considering implementing a knowl-edge transfer system that requires them to change theinformal norms of their organization correspondingly.

Culture and Knowledge Transfer

First, understand the what and why of change. Creating aknowledge transfer system should be done only after me-thodically studying your organization and identifyingmajor performance and oppor-tunity gaps that could be closedwith a knowledge transfer sys-tem. In the 1st Cav,we identifieda clear gap in the extended timeit took to gather lessons from ju-nior leaders on the ground andget them to fellow leaders. Fur-ther institutional understandingstarted to reveal that it wasn’t justa system that CAVNET repre-sented, it was a total cultural shift.The challenge became that muchmore apparent when the unitfactored in the reality that thissystemic and cultural change hadto occur while the organization was involved in an in-tensely competitive battle where all functional areaswere fully engaged.

Connect the head to the idea. The concept of horizontalknowledge transfer across an organization’s hierarchycould not have progressed beyond the idea stage withoutthe support of those leading the organization.The chiefproponent and tone-setter in the division is the com-manding general of the 1st Cav,Major General Chiarelli.As the commander, he sets the tone for the organizationas a whole. He uses his own set of cultural levers to help

shape the culture of the 1st Cav toward knowledge trans-fer acceptance.Through personal demonstrations of use,he models the behavior he hopes to encourage in his ju-nior leaders. In some instances he personally shares ideashe has seen as effective via the CAVNET,and he respondsto and encourages postings from several of his junior lead-ers on the Web site itself. Fundamentally, he is role mod-eling the type of behavior he believes can provide adecisive edge if uniformly adopted by his junior leaders.He also pays close attention to the daily postings and reg-ularly discusses what the junior leaders of the 1st Cav aretalking about in actual conversations with the executive

level of leadership within the or-ganization. Chiarelli’s attentionhelps set the tone for cultural ac-ceptance by catalyzing the mid-level managers to think aboutthe value the boss places onCAVNET and how they couldcontribute in turn. There is ar-guably nothing more powerful ininstituting large-scale organi-zational change than role mod-eling, giving of attention andrecognition, and constant trans-mission of the message that ”thisis important; use it,” by the chiefexecutive of the organization.

Create Engagement to Generate Momentum

The 1st Cav’s foundation for its cultural change strategyis to place culturally aware, embedded proponents inall of its brigades (4,000 person subunits).The embedsare themselves midlevel managers whose role is to in-tegrate with and spend time with the 1st Cav’s smallunits and junior leaders to discover what they are learn-ing that would contribute to CAVNET and educatethose same junior leaders about the utility of the siteitself.The embeds work at getting to know the junior

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Any new change

will just drop into the

dustbin of good ideas

unless the culture

is aligned to accept it.■

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leaders by spending time with them doing what theydo during a typical day and by actively participating inas many actual operations on the ground as possible, allwith the crucial intent of establishing rapport and trust.Once this trust is built, the embeds interview the ju-nior leaders, focusing on pulling out potential lessonslearned that would likely be useful to share with oth-ers in the organization, and finally showing the leadershow easy it is to actually share those ideas themselvesvia posting on CAVNET and reading and consideringthe recent posts of others.

During the process the CAVNETteam has rediscovered that ourofficer corps and many values-based civilian leaders are a hum-ble breed,uncomfortable talkingabout themselves and abouttheir experiences. But whenframed around what they havelearned about the competitionand the emerging lessons theyhave developed to overcomethat, it is analogous to opening awaterfall of knowledge.Captur-ing that waterfall, sharing the re-ward of knowledge gained, anddemonstrating utility is what theembed does.

Focus on value. This is the basic question that constantlydominates the CAVNET’s team:What is of actual valueto the junior leaders in Baghdad and how do we deliverit to them in the quickest possible fashion? We tried toachieve a deep understanding of the requirements of thoseleaders.The result is action-oriented knowledge—knowledgethat is useful today to accomplish their mission tomor-row.The CAVNET team puts together a weekly newslet-ter that comprises the week’s most valuable contributions.This “best of” list empowers all leaders in the organization

to read about and consider adopting or adapting one ormore of the emerging lessons learned, and it also indi-rectly publicizes the CAVNET itself and draws many ofthese leaders into the conversation.

Focus on the goal. Since the activation of 1st Cav’s knowl-edge transfer system, many who have seen strong utilityand value in CAVNET have suggested numerous ex-pansions and linkages for the site to pursue making a good thing even better.The original vision of being acultural change mechanism to enable junior leaders todiscuss and share emerging lessons for the organization’s

collective benefit is a constantreminder of the fundamentalpurpose of the CAVNET. As itassesses each inquiry to expandthe categories of the discussionforums or to add to the func-tionality of the technical Web sitefeatures, the team uses the orig-inal purpose as a lens. If notspecifically oriented toward help-ing the junior leaders do theirjob better, even if it doesn’t addto the logistical cost (time and ef-fort) of participating on the site,the answer is usually no. In manyways, the suggested expansions

and spin-offs are a testament to the quality of the origi-nal CAVNET idea,but there is a bigger risk that the im-plementation of auxiliary ideas may seriously detract fromthe primary design and purpose.

Ease of use leads to use with ease. Change theorist EdgarSchein tells us that the conscientious design of systems isa major reinforcing mechanism for leading culturalchange. Making the CAVNET system as easy to use aspossible directly combats two major sources of resistanceto change—the fear of having to learn new skills and notwanting to sacrifice one’s most valuable resource, time.

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CAVNET was a

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CAVNET runs on an off-the-shelf, relatively simple com-mercial software package that has been tailored to meetthe specific needs of our junior leaders. The CAVNETteam fine-tuned the site over a series of months to makeit as user-friendly, simple, and convenient as possible.TheCAVNET’s deliberately designed and uncluttered layout,multiple feedback mechanisms, and ubiquitous access aredesigned to make users comfortable with a simple systemthat genuinely supports and assists with their busy lives.

Curiosity versus contribution. At times it takes a set of smallpushes from the organization’s executives to demonstratethe power of a new system or tool. One method alreadydescribed is the use of culture-changing embeds.Anotheris using the existing administrative systems to change be-havior. For example, the 1st Cav requires all companies(about 220) to post their mid-tour After Action Reviewsto CAVNET. This mandates that their junior leaders willcome to the site and experience the effect of hundreds ofusers observing and taking notice of what they added.Since any military unit with access to the classified Inter-net can use CAVNET, it also has a secondary effect of ex-posing stateside units who are about to deploy to the mostrecent lessons learned. Otherwise, use of CAVNET hasbeen optional, operating on the premise that if users aregiven an opportunity to discover the value through goodcontent, there is no need for major forcing mechanisms.

Guiding the conversation. Among professionals, censor-ship is rarely needed, though focus occasionally is.CAVNET’s first six months have proven that allowingfor a virtual community of junior leaders to self-policesomeone’s posting of inappropriate knowledge throughfollow-on postings is usually sufficient in itself. Occa-sionally, the CAVNET team takes rapid action to pro-fessionally shape a questionable conversation, or tofurther develop an embryonic idea presented by a ju-nior leader so as to avoid discouraging the primary users

from sharing what they’ve learned.With this conscien-tious intent, the CAVNET team moderates about oneout of fifty ideas to ensure the conversation remains fo-cused on organizational learning and oriented in ahealthy direction that does not directly attempt to un-dermine the organization’s formal structure in regard toanything besides the cross-fertilization of emerginglessons learned.

Building the Bridge as We Cross It

Aknowledge transfer system is designed to enablean organization to learn from itself on cumulative

scale and thereby attain a competitive advantage. Byproviding the technological solution of the CAVNETWeb site and simultaneously leading a deliberate cul-tural change effort that encourages junior leaders toshare knowledge across formerly prohibitive bound-aries, the 1st Cav in Baghdad is creating a new capac-ity for a sustainable competitive advantage. Across thespectrum of modern organizations, all competitivelandscapes demand new and innovative thinking andways to share lessons with others on our teams both ef-fectively and efficiently.The CAVNET represents a flat-tening of a culturally hierarchical organization for thesake of winning. Acceptance of the utility of such anidea into the very fabric of an organization can onlybe achieved by real results that provide value to the tar-get audience, our junior leaders. When senior leadersdevelop a vision of the importance of their organizationactively learning from itself, demand structural changesin the way their organization does business in order toenable knowledge transfer for competitive advantage,and then implement a deliberate cultural change effortto encourage their midlevel managers to tap into theircollective experiences—they are on their way to em-powering a professional forum within their organiza-tions that helps them achieve decisive results. ■

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