Learning lessons – the British Army’s

experience

Rupert Lescott

The author worked as an analyst in the British

Army’s Lessons Exploitation Centre (LXC) from

May 2009 to May 2012. He served as an infantry

officer for 10 years and, before returning to the

military environment, worked as an analyst in the

City of London. He now advises organisations on

how to manage knowledge and enhance their

capacity for learning.

Background

In June 2009, Patrick Little wrote an article for the

RUSI journal entitled, “Lessons Unlearned. A

Former Officer’s Perspective On The British Army

At War”1, in which he made some pointed

observations on the British Army’s cultural

unwillingness to embrace self-criticism. In May

2012, Frank Ledwidge’s book, “Losing Small Wars

– British Military Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan”2,

another criticism of the British Army’s culture and

its failure to understand modern conflict, was

published in paperback.

These 2 works act as ‘book-ends’ to the 3 years I

spent as a lessons analyst in the British Army’s

Lessons Exploitation Centre in Warminster,

Wiltshire, UK.

Neither Little nor Ledwidge refer to its attempts to

identify and learn lessons3, indicating that such

efforts had yet to become embedded in either the

1 Patrick Little, “Lessons Unlearned: A Former Officer’s Perspective on the British Army at War”, RUSI Journal (Vol. 154, No. 3, June 2009), downloaded from http://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/Journal_Little.pdf on 31 May 2012.

2 Frank Ledwidge. (2011) “Losing Small Wars”, Yale University Press, London.

British Army or wider defence consciousness.

Consequently, this article seeks to demonstrate

that, during that 3 year period and since, much has

been done to develop and improve the British

Army’s capacity for learning.

However, whilst significant work is under way, more

is required and I offer some ideas on the changes

needed before the British Army can truly claim to

be a learning organisation4.

Expanding analytical capacity

In May 2009, I began work as a lessons analyst in

the Land Lessons Learned team, part of the Land

Warfare Development Group - expanded to include

civilian contractors following direction from the then

Director General Land Warfare, Maj Gen Andrew

Kennett CBE. The team’s traditional role was to

identify and manage enduring tactical lessons from

the land environment, otherwise known as the ‘long

lessons loop’.

Following a Business Process Review 4 months

later, the Lesson Exploitation Centre (LXC) was

formally established through the merger of the

Lessons Learned team with the former Mission

Support Group5. Additionally, the LXC was to be

merged with its equivalents from the Army’s

3 “In simple terms, a lesson is an experience, example, or observation, which imparts beneficial new knowledge or wisdom…that can be analysed to produce recommendations and/or actions and as such can be positive or negative.” Defence-wide Lessons Management Defence Information Note (DIN). (2009) MOD, London.

4 Learning organisations, according to Peter Senge, are “…where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.” Peter Senge. (2006) The Fifth Discipline, Random House, London, p. 3.

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Service Inquiry branch and the overseers of

environmental issues and accidents to form the

Centre for Army Lessons and Safety6. At a higher

level, a new 3* command was formed under Lt Gen

Sir Paul Newton KBE CBE - Force Development

and Training (FDT), modelled on the US Army’s

TRADOC7 to combine doctrine, training, force

development and lessons under one command.

The LXC’s role is to receive information feeds from

theatre and elsewhere (including weekly reports,

post-incident reports8 and, as part of Mission

Exploitation, Post-Operational Reports and Post-

Operational Interviews) and make deductions from

the fused material which can support those

deployed in theatre or inform Force Development.

5 The Mission Support Group’s role was to provide on-going support to a deployed force, focusing on lessons immediately identified from incidents, otherwise known as the ‘short lessons loop’.

6 These are the Directorate of Personal Services (Army) (DPS (A)) and Chief Environmental Safety Officer (Army) (CESO (A)), respectively. This merger remains partial as the 3 elements are not collocated but their governance and procedures were partially aligned to enable synthesis of multiple sources and facilitate understanding of ‘the bigger picture’.

7 TRADOC, the US Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, was formed in 1973.

8 Incidents resulting in death or serious injury are reported using an Operational Learning Account & After Action Review (OLAAAR), to report the facts as they are understood at the time and notify the deployed force, its successor and the Army HQ of any immediately identified lessons.

Example of LXC output 1

Within 30 days of returning from a deployment, a

brigade is required to identify and record lessons in

a Post-Operational Report which is ’sifted’ by the

LXC lessons team, who check its categories (i.e.

lesson, good practice, theatre issue etc), that the

lessons were allocated to the correct Defence Line

of Development (DLoD)9 for resolution and, where

appropriate, re-word them for the purposes of

brevity or clarity.

Following further analysis, we would ‘socialise’ the

report to a wider audience in order to validate our

judgement10. Once this second sift was complete

(following a little horse-trading to get DLoD staff to

agree on their lessons allocation), confirmed

lessons would be entered into the Defence Lessons

9 Lessons are managed within the DLoD framework. The 8 DLoDs are: Training, Equipment, Personnel, Information, Doctrine and Concepts, Organisation, Interoperability and Logistics/Infrastructure.

10 This includes staff from the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) (now Joint Force Command (JFC)), Army HQ and the capability directorates of the Army (i.e. Combat, Combat Support etc).

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Identified Management System (DLIMS) and staff

action to ‘learn’ the lesson would begin.

We received 7 Brigade reports during my time at

the LXC and our analysis developed with each one.

We moved from receiving lessons in word

documents to using formatted spread-sheets that

filtered specific types of issue and enabled a

statistical breakdown of each report’s lessons. We

developed a taxonomy to show which types of

lesson were most prevalent and used keywords to

identify themes and trends.

Example of LXC output 2

In time, these results will enable root-cause

analysis and the identification of some of the

underlying issues of which individual lessons are

but a symptom. However, beyond the LXC itself,

there seemed little appetite for this approach - the

dominant view being that lessons are just more

work, rather than evidence of any sort of deeper

malaise. Perhaps it was just a matter of resources,

time and effort – there appearing never to be

enough of any of these.11

11 For a more thorough, broadly accurate account of the structural and procedural changes summarised here, I recommend reading, “Transformation in contact: learning the lessons of

Socialising knowledge

A significant development in the British Army’s

efforts to learn from operations is the 2-day

‘Mission Exploitation Symposium’ (MXS). The main

purpose of this is to gather as many people as

possible from those that deployed to theatre and

those that trained, equipped and administered them

from the UK, to examine what worked and what

didn’t. Historically, units returning from an

operation had grown tired and frustrated with ad

hoc requests for visits and briefs from defence

contractors, academics and other interested

parties. Covering the same ground repeatedly

several months after the deployment meant there

was no ‘break-clean’ point and, because each

briefing was discrete and isolated, information was

repeated many times, albeit to different audiences.

MXSs address this problem by offering all

interested parties an opportunity to interrogate

recently-returned personnel in a series of syndicate

discussions, each focused on a specific area (e.g.

clothing and equipment, operational welfare,

targeting and influence etc). Each syndicate has a

dedicated page on the MXS intranet web-site on

which attendees post their intended questions

beforehand, achieving economy of effort for the

troops and cross-pollination of questions and ideas

for the audience, who benefit from other attendees’

questions as well as their own.

Following these discussions is a series of ‘deep

dives’, attended on an invitation-only basis,

enabling more detailed exploration of issues.

MXS is a new way of socialising knowledge and

has been adopted with vigour by the British Army,

with attendance for each first day sometimes

exceeding 1000 people. Indeed, some commercial

modern war” by Robert T. Foley, Stuart Griffin and Helen McCartney, (2011) International Affairs, Vol. 82 No.2, pp253-270.

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organisations, hearing of this process through

exploratory meetings with the LXC, have shown

interest in using it to socialise the knowledge

captured at the end of projects.

However, MXS is not without flaws. It has a

weakness in that the Chair and scribe for each

syndicate are usually a senior officer and

subordinate from the Army HQ department

responsible for resolving the issues raised. Whilst

this might sound like common sense (i.e. they have

a direct, daily involvement with the topics under

discussion), the reality is that the Chair often holds

the most senior rank in the room and is culturally

more attuned to ‘batting away’ certain topics for

being ‘minor’ or having been ‘overtaken by events’.

Also, for those issues that do make it through to the

typed-up notes, how likely is it that the scribe

(usually the Chair’s subordinate, on whom he or

she depends for their annual performance

appraisal) types up a frank and accurate record

that does not sit easy with the Chair’s intentions?

This problem is compounded by the room layout -

unconducive to an honest and constructive enquiry

into challenging issues - with Chair and scribe sat

at a table directly facing rows of attendees. A more

explicitly antagonistic framework would be hard to

design and the Chair and scribe would not be

human if they did not sometimes feel, as

shortcomings in current policy are raised, that they

are being ‘got at’ and react accordingly.

Interestingly, in an experiment at a recent MXS,

several sessions were successfully facilitated in a

highly interactive way, enabled by collaborative

technology.12 Shortened presentations prompted

conversations in small groups, captured directly

from participants anonymously, via wirelessly

12 This was facilitated with the support of TEAMWIN practitioners from Beechwood International – www.beechwood.net, www.teamwin.com.

connected laptops, and subsequently produced as

a transcript. This is welcome, as the Army is at

least acknowledging the above cultural problem but

is perhaps only side-stepping it, rather than

addressing it directly.

Example of LXC output 3

Risk management

Earlier, I mentioned the lack of appetite for root

cause analysis or anything indicating much more

than the work associated with each lesson.

Nevertheless, in the area of risk management, the

LXC has begun to show that lessons can be used

to reinforce or clarify messages that the Army is

receiving from other sources.

In December 2011, I was tasked with reviewing all

lessons that had been closed but for which no

resolution had been identified.13 I considered

13 In DLIMS, lessons are closed ‘green’ or ‘black’. ‘Green’ means that a solution to the issue has been identified and successfully implemented. However, closing a lesson ‘black’ indicates disagreement with the lesson per se, there is insufficient funding for the proposed solution, the lesson has since been overtaken by events or “it’s all a little bit too difficult”.

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whether each lesson was now genuinely out of

date or whether there was a possibility, however

small, that the issue identified might recur at some

point - in other words, was there any latent risk

associated with it? My guiding principle was that of

caution and I imagined a rabidly anti-Army

journalist looking over my shoulder – if he or she

might think there was an opportunity for a story

about potential negligence, then I presumed there

was a risk that needed to be captured, measured

and managed. Following this initial sift, my findings

were reviewed by LXC colleagues and elevated to

British Army HQ, to marry up the risks we had

identified with the various capability areas to which

they corresponded.

Whilst the detail remains classified, this

nevertheless provides an example of forward and

lateral thinking on the part of the LXC and those

that direct its work. Lessons are slowly being

viewed as evidence of more fundamental and

enduring issues rather than just bald statements of

problems isolated in time and space.

The Army Inspectorate

It should be clear that the British Army is trying to

learn from operations; whether these efforts are

having the desired effect is less so. Nevertheless,

one encouraging sign is the 2011 decision by the

Army Inspectorate to conduct a review on whether

the Army is a learning organisation. This work was

not complete when this paper was written but it is

worth noting that the original remit – to review the

British Army’s lessons process and the LXC – was

expanded to look at learning capabilities across the

wider Army. Whilst this broader examination is

welcome, one should not conflate the LXC’s

capabilities with the wider question of the Army’s

claim to be a learning organisation because many

of the changes needed to achieve this are beyond

the scope of the LXC’s role as presently conceived,

learning lessons being but one feature of a learning

organisation.

Again, the details of the interim Army Inspectorate

report are classified but 2 points stick out. Firstly,

their team was sufficiently impressed with the

LXC’s method for capturing and managing lessons

to resolution that they are adopting this very

process to track the progress of their own reports’

recommendations. Secondly, the position and

purpose of the Army Inspectorate, described by

some as the ‘conscience for the Army,’ strikes me

as entirely appropriate for the LXC itself. It is

answerable only to the (4*) Chief of the General

Staff and, commanded by a 1* Brigadier in his or

her final appointment, is unencumbered by the

political considerations that plague younger,

ambitious colleagues.

Small signs of progress

A significant oversight in the current set-up of the

LXC is the lack of any basic measure of

effectiveness. Instead, there is the commonplace

appetite for measures of ‘effort’ and a mistaken

belief that these are one and the same. When

senior officers seek an overview of the LXC, they

are shown long lists of the work underway or of

projects completed, statistical breakdowns of

lessons closed over a specific period and perhaps,

if they are lucky, a comparison of closure rates

across DLoDs. However, none of these metrics

give even the remotest hint as to whether learning

is actually taking place.

So I can only offer up some small anecdotal

examples of what I consider to be progress and

urge others to consider how best to judge whether

these efforts are succeeding.

An organisation has a ‘learning culture’ when

everything it does is infused with the desire to

improve and for evidence of such progress to be

shared as widely as possible. Some commercial 5

organisations (notably some of the international Oil

Majors) embed learning into standard project

activity14, expecting every project manager to

produce a ‘learning plan’ at the initiation stage,

whereby he or she identifies what knowledge is

required, where it is held and how to get it.

Unfortunately, in the British Army to date, this

would still be considered ‘good initiative’ rather than

an instinctive response to direction from above.

For example, in the weeks before OP

DEFERENCE (a non-combatant evacuation

operation conducted in Libya in February 2011), I

retrieved the Post-Operational Interviews from

Commanding Officers (CO) that had conducted or

prepared for similar operations in recent years and

sent them to the lessons team at PJHQ. An initially

cool response was followed up days later with

gratitude as planners were able to anticipate some

of the pitfalls that had beset previous deployments.

My point is that it should not have been as a result

of good initiative that such knowledge was passed -

such flows need to become embedded15.

Nevertheless, there was pleasant surprise in my

final months at Warminster, when a 1* Brigadier,

due to command Task Force Helmand, approached

the LXC in person and asked for some interview

synopses to help him prepare. Up until now, the

effort had been on ‘pushing’ the knowledge

captured from operations with relatively time spent

encouraging the wider British Army to ‘pull’ it for

14 Based on conversations between the author and the organisational learning (OL) teams at BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Knoco Ltd (August 2011-May 2012).

15 There needs to be an instinctive presumption that someone somewhere has undertaken any given activity before and will have knowledge from which the latest participants will benefit. Similarly, anyone undertaking a new activity should seek to tell others what they have learned from it – for good or bad.

itself. But when this happens (and the 1* example

was an encouraging sign), then a learning culture

might be growing.

The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge

I first read Peter Senge’s “Fifth Discipline” in early

2010 and began, with the zeal of the convert, to

urge it upon my LXC colleagues, none of whom

had ever heard of it. However, change is obviously

afoot as I proof-read 3 Masters degree

dissertations in my final 12 months at LXC, all of

which used Senge as a reference. I was further

encouraged in my final week at the LXC when I

saw Senge’s book on the desk of a new staff officer

who had “read it at Staff College and thought I’d

better re-acquaint myself with it”16. Given that one

of his predecessors spent his final week in the job

recovering all emails and documents that he had

worked on whilst at the LXC and saving them to

disk (apparently in order to defend himself in the

event of any potential investigations), this was

progress indeed.

Suggestions for the future

So how can the British Army develop a learning

culture?

16 Conversation with LXC staff officer, May 2012.6

At the LXC, we would occasionally discuss what

changes we thought might improve the Army’s

ability to learn. I would ask my uniformed

colleagues to think beyond their military confines

and not rule out ‘obviously civilian’ options as a

matter of course. In return, they would try to rein in

my utopian enthusiasm and remind me of the limits

on their freedom of action. I still believe that, when

looking for examples of good practice in

organisational learning, the British Army should

consider all options but have, begrudgingly,

restricted my suggestions to those not too far from

its comfort zone.17

Learning about learning

The British Army should embrace the ideas of

Peter Senge and his books should be read at

Sandhurst, Shrivenham and beyond. Furthermore,

‘systems-thinking’ would enable the British Army to

move from its current stove-piped view of lessons

and adopt a more holistic approach. In Senge’s

words, the current methods demonstrate a

“reinforcing reliance on quick fixes…and an

unwillingness to take the time to work out

integrative solutions.”18

Furthermore, whilst Senge should ideally be for

everyone, those with specific responsibility for

organisational learning should also acquaint

themselves with the works of Chris Argyris, Arie De

Geus and Nick Milton.19

17 I would love to recommend that each MXS be held in civilian clothing, without rank and for all to be on first name terms but I know this would be unthinkable to many, if not most.18 Senge, p344.

19 Chris Argyris’s work on organisational defence mechanisms and ‘mental models’ greatly influenced Senge’s 5th Discipline; Arie De Geus’s 1997 work, “The Living Company” ((1999) Nicholas Brealey, London) is also a source. De Geus worked at Royal Dutch Shell for 4 decades and pioneered

Lessons Learned Handbook by Nick Milton

A lessons cadre

As with many staff posts across the British Army,

those in the field of learning are normally filled on a

“best-fit” basis, without interviews. Consequently,

some people fill roles for which they are unsuited.

Given the potential impact of such roles, the criteria

should be amended to facilitate the selection of

those with the requisite qualities of complete

integrity (about their own limitations and failings),

moral courage (so as to challenge the chain of

command robustly to uncover the truth) and

intellectual curiosity (the “personal mastery” sought

by Senge).20 Better a post is gapped than someone

lacking integrity or intellectual ambition fills it. A

learning cadre should be created, attracting the

very best in each recruitment pool.

Moving LXC up the chain

their use of ‘scenario planning’. Nick Milton was a core member of BP’s Knowledge Management team in the 1990s and recently wrote the very practical guide to learning, “The Lessons Learned Handbook” (2010) Chandos, Oxford.

20 “People with high levels of personal mastery are more committed. They take more initiative. They have a broader and deeper sense of responsibility in their work. They learn faster.” Senge, p133.

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The LXC should be removed from its current

position within the Directorate of Land Warfare and

should report directly to the Chief of the General

Staff, in the same manner as the Army

Inspectorate, in order for it to be able properly to

‘speak truth unto power’. The messages and

warnings from lessons have lacked impact due to

the dilution from the ‘value’ added by each level of

the chain of command21. The response to a 2010

British Army Review22 article by Captain John

Bethell (Intelligence Officer to the Welsh Guards

Battle Group on their 2009 Helmand tour) entitled,

“Accidental Counterinsurgents” is a case in point.

The article criticised the British Army’s approach to,

training for and understanding of the campaign in

Afghanistan. Its publication was permitted in the

Review only with a LXC ‘response’ to the article

printed below it – a response drafted with the

understanding that it had to be seen to nullify the

criticisms and demonstrate that they were useful,

gratefully received but now very much out of date.

Performance appraisals

21 “Language in briefing becomes more bland and insipid, and in particular, relies on extensive euphemism, leading to great difficulty in communicating the undesirable….[This} has led to a command climate in which bad news is routinely camouflaged.…” Little, p. 14.

22 BAR is classified at ‘Restricted’ (akin to ‘For Official Use Only’ (FOUO)) and is therefore unfortunately unavailable as a reference – a debatable point in its own right. A summary of Bethell’s criticisms can be found in “Dead Men Risen” by Toby Harnden (2011) Quercus, London, p540.

Supporting, enabling and encouraging

organisational learning should be criteria against

which all military personnel should be judged. The

British Army should reward and promote those that

demonstrate honesty, modesty, curiosity and an

incessant desire to understand why things happen

as they do. If someone is formally assessed in a

particular aspect of their work, they are more likely

to view it as important. London’s Metropolitan

Police Service has already introduced such criteria

for the performance appraisals of senior officers.23

The British Army should investigate this initiative

and do the same, from recruitment onwards.

Dialogue, not discussion

The structural tensions within MXS should be

removed through the use of independent dialogue

facilitation for each syndicate discussion.24 Whilst

the ‘gold-plated’ solution would involve external

civilian facilitators running each session, a half-way

house addressing the key flaws within the current

model would be for uniformed officers outside the

direct chain of command to run and write up for

each meeting. Regardless of which option is

adopted, greater openness and transparency will

most likely be achieved if those in authority really

want it to happen and are willing to make some

sacrifices to achieve it.25

23 Based on email exchange between the author and an OL analyst at the Metropolitan Police (April 2012)).

24 Peter Senge differentiates between discussion and dialogue thus, “In a discussion, different views are presented and defended….In dialogue, different views are presented as a means toward discovering a new view. In a discussion, decisions are made. In a dialogue, complex issues are explored.” Senge, p. 230.

25 “…everyone involved must truly want the benefits of dialogue more than he wants to hold onto the privileges of rank. If one person is used to

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Good old-fashioned leadership

To make such changes requires leadership. At its

heart, good leadership, as traditionally taught at

Sandhurst or West Point, enables learning to take

place. Good leaders are humble, self-effacing and

honest, recognising that their staff often know more

about a topic than they do. They admit to making

mistakes, are not weighed down by excessive pride

and understand the value in their own errors being

heard, understood and avoided.26 Failure to do so,

given the often unconscious ways in which people

lead by example, can seriously damage any

organisation’s ability to ask, and answer, difficult

questions about its own performance.27

having his view prevail because he is the most senior person, then that privilege must be surrendered in dialogue. If one person is used to withholding his views because he is more junior, then that security of nondisclosure must also be surrendered.” Senge, p. 228.

26 In 2011, one CO, briefing on his Afghan tour, spoke of the lack of understanding and misconceived ideas with which he had deployed. One particular operation, involving 3 sub-units, was undone “by 2 blokes with a moped and a mobile phone”, forcing him to re-visit his assumptions about his environment and his role within it. This taught him much and his modesty enabled those of us in the audience to benefit as well. No-one thought any worse of him for this; rather, we respected him all the more for it.

27 By contrast, another officer’s briefing offered up some “enduring tactical imperatives” of which the final one was, “Be a learning and adaptive organisation.” When questions were invited, I asked, “I notice that the tenth of your enduring imperatives talks of “a learning and adaptive organisation”. Bearing that in mind, what mistakes did you make, personally, and what did you learn from them?” The response was, “Hmm, good question. I must admit I did not come prepared for that one…. we always talk about the good points,

Don’t be so defensive

Conversely, just as honest, self-critical leadership

should prosper, so should defensive behaviour be

discouraged – to consider the short-term cover-up

of mistakes or wrong-doing as evidence of ‘loyalty

to the team’ is misguided and anything but loyal to

those servicemen and women that may suffer

death or injury if the true causes of incidents and

accidents are not revealed, shared and rectified.

Other objections to revealing the truth include

‘maintaining morale’, ‘not thinking ill of the dead’,

‘operational security’ and ‘consideration for the

next-of-kin’. Whilst their intentions may be noble,

their effect is to obscure the facts and inhibit

learning.

One team - really?

Many organisations claim to possess and

encourage ‘team spirit’ but it was not until leaving

the Army that I realised how shallow and transient

this concept is in civilian life. I define team spirit as

‘sticking round late to help someone out, despite

not having any obligation to do so’. This happens

in the Army – especially so in its fighting units:

Regiments and Corps with long, proud histories.

The thing is, the bonds that join men and women

together to fight for one another on the battlefield

can, on occasion, turn them against other

colleagues of different cap-badges. Moreover,

internal competition inhibits collective learning and

knowledge sharing28. Too often, people forced to

don’t we? Can I come back to you later on? Right, next question…”

28 A former LXC colleague, on reading a draft of this paper, emailed thus: “…whilst we may share a passing concern for those who wear the same uniform as us and wouldn't want to see any real harm come to them, we really like nothing better than seeing other units/regiments or our career competitors make mistakes and be embarrassed - why? Because in the zero-sum game of regimental

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choose between ‘honesty’ and ‘loyalty’ will choose

the latter as the path of least resistance.

Furthermore, there is a pecking order of credibility

within the Army, along roughly the following lines:

Special Forces at the summit, then the Combat

Arms (i.e. infantry, armoured and aviation units);

next come the Combat Support Arms (i.e. artillery,

engineers, communications etc.), followed finally by

the Combat Service Support Arms (i.e. technical,

administrative and logistical support). There are

exceptions to every rule but, generally speaking,

those nearer the top of this pecking order are more

highly regarded than those lower down.

I alluded to ‘mental models’ in an earlier footnote.

These are deeply-held beliefs about the world,

which simplify our experience of it and without

which we would have to assemble and analyse

data in order to be able to perform the most basic

of mental deductions (i.e. since we can’t be forever

checking whether every single chair on which we

intend to sit will take our weight, we use a mental

model of a chair to simplify things).29 They are a

form of prejudice, for good or bad.

The Army’s regimental system and rank structures

are its most obvious mental models – requiring

loyalty between people where honesty is needed

for learning to take place; furthermore, the

credibility of any knowledge is tested many times

before it passes the filter of cap-badge (or rank)

prejudice. An audience of officers at Staff College

would happily listen to a Friday afternoon lecture on

pay and promotions policy if delivered by an officer

with a sandy beret and blue belt; however, a

fireside chat about a recent combat operation

would need to be very exciting indeed if delivered

by a logistician or technical officer, alas.

bragging rights or career advancement, their loss is your gain.”

29 Senge, p. 164.

I don’t call for the Regimental system of rank

structure to be abolished; merely for their effect on

knowledge transfer and learning to be

acknowledged and options on how to mitigate them

should be considered.

Mission command – learning by doing

The British Army professes to use ‘mission

command’ to plan and conduct operations – the

decentralised execution of orders through the

maximising of trusted subordinates’ freedom of

action within clearly-defined constraints. However,

the increase in operational staff-work for a

combined arms operation nowadays appears

inversely proportionate to the extent to which a

belief in mission command is professed.

Commanders should be given greater continuity in

post to establish the relationships on which mission

command depends and the greater trust

established should enable more freedom of action,

more risk-taking and more learning.

Towards a just culture

In the world of air safety, the consequences of not

reporting accidents or ‘near-misses’ have led to the

development of a ‘just culture’, which

acknowledges mistakes can be made30. The British

Army should examine such an approach. This is

nothing new - examples are already found in the

use of ammunition ‘amnesty boxes’ throughout

Army barracks and the ‘range declarations’ given at

the end of each live firing practice31. If the negative

consequences of coming forward to admit errors

30 Taken from http://flightsafety.org/files/just_culture.pdf, accessed on 31 May 2012.

31 Amnesty boxes permit soldiers to hand in discovered ammunition safely, without consequences. After a range declaration that they have no live rounds or empty cases in their possession, soldiers are advised that if they do find

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outweigh the benefits, then soldiers and officers

alike will continue to keep the ‘truth’ under wraps.

Learning from others

The LXC has established links with both the US

Army’s Centre for Army Lessons Learned (CALL)

and the Marine Corps Centre for Lessons Learned

(MCCLL) and with its equivalents in other armies.

It has also shared ideas and issues with companies

such as Royal Dutch Shell and BP, as well as

organisations as diverse as the London Fire

Brigade and the OXFAM charity. Such

relationships offer valuable insights into how other

organisations learn and should not be neglected.

The LXC should be bolder still and approach

consultancies, IT companies and the nuclear

industry – anyone willing to share ideas, frankly –

to learn ‘what works’ and not just ‘what works for

the Army’. Furthermore, the British tradition of

over-classifying official documentation impedes

both the internal sharing of knowledge hard-won on

operations and its critical analysis by outsiders

who, however unwelcome, may nevertheless

provide valuable insights. To make the point, you

can buy the US Army/Marine Corps

Counterinsurgency Field Manual online whereas

tracking down its British equivalent requires agility,

cunning and tenacity. It’s certainly not the enemy’s

efforts that are most frustrated by such constraints.

Conclusion

The British Army has made many attempts to

identify “the lessons of failure in Iraq and

Afghanistan”32 and is trying to learn them. Its

allocation of extra resources, time and effort do it

credit but it will not reap the potential rewards

unless matched by a shift in culture33 – from one in

which very few own up to errors to one where

such items, they can hand them to a member of staff and “nothing more will be said”.

32 Ledwidge, p. 267.

leaders are confident enough to admit their own

personal failings, safe in the knowledge that doing

so will win their soldiers’ respect, not diminish it.

The final words go to Major Giles Harris DSO, who

commanded the Prince of Wales’s Company of the

Welsh Guards on their bloody tour of Afghanistan in

2009,

“The British are very good at whipping ourselves

into a sense of achievement….we almost have to,

to make it bearable. You can’t do something like

this and analyse it all the way through and think:

“Actually we got that wrong.” You just can’t. It

takes so much emotional investment. I’m not

saying we lie to ourselves but there’s an element of

telling yourself that it’s all right and it’s going well,

just to keep going.”34

Such honesty. We need more of it.

33 “It is the organisational culture of the military institution that determines whether innovation succeeds or fails.” John A Nagel, “Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife” (2005) University of Chicago Press, Chicago, p. 215.

34 Harnden, p. 558.11