April 2021

Leaders!

Spring is officially here.  We here at the CJO are excited about the changes this time of year brings – we hope you are too.  Our apologies if we were not responsive to any of you over this past month.  Among other things, Major Plenge and LTC Swain supported the Army’s People First Solarium as group moderators and were out of the officer for several days.  CJO has produced and distributed content related to the topics discussed at that Solarium (racism/extremism, suicide prevention, and sexual harassment/assault) that you and your units might find useful.  Of course, our content isn’t limited to just those areas.

Highlights from the past month

As mentioned, we generated new content on some of the topics discussed in the Army’s People First Solarium, but we also featured several articles on other relevant subject areas.  New articles since last month follow:

• Leadership Lessons Learned from Covid Command
• America’s Counting on the Army: Revisiting Why Black Officers Fail
• The Best Initial Counseling I Ever Received
• The Army’s Onboarding Problem
• Do We Really Understand
• Professional Military Education Must Change
• Company Command: A People Business
• Dual Military: How to be Successful
• Watch2Lead: Creativity in the Army

One of our Leadership Fellows, Captain Don Gomez, also launched a new “Making the Switch” initiative focused on senior / post KD Captains.  We encourage you to check it out and reach out to Don if you’d like to support the effort.

Coming up

Some things we have in the works that you’ll see in the weeks ahead:

• Army Leadership and Peer Evaluations
• Servant Leadership
• Negotiation Lessons Learned

We’d also like to highlight upcoming articles and tools from leaders in the field who responded to our call for support last month.  Keep an eye out in the coming weeks for articles on the following

• Tips for Navigating the AIM 2.0 Marketplace
• First 90 days as an XO and an XO Toolkit

Join the team

If you’re an active-duty junior officer who is interested in obtaining a fully funded advanced degree  (or if you already have an advanced degree from a top tier institution in a topic related to organizational behavior, I/O psychology, MBA, or related area), will have completed your key development position requirements as a Captain by May 2023, and want to PCS to West Point to join the Center for Junior Officers team, please reach out and let us know.   Or – if you know of a junior officer who might be a good fit, let us know.  We can reach out and answer questions.   You/They do NOT need to be a West Point graduate to apply.

While they don’t mention this position specifically, the following recent articles offer information and insights that are relevant to anyone interested in applying to become the Operations Officer of the Center for Junior Officers.

• https://fromthegreennotebook.com/2021/03/17/educate-train-inspire-west-point-broadening-opportunities/
• https://fromthegreennotebook.com/2021/03/22/duty-honor-country-broadening-opportunities-at-the-u-s-military-academy/
• https://fromthegreennotebook.com/2021/03/24/usma-broadening-tactical-officer/

Additional information is here.

Where we can use your help

Some specific projects we could use your assistance on include:

• Is anyone interested in working on an article about returning to operations “after COVID” in the Army? What challenges will leaders face?  Anything we stopped doing because of COVID that we need to ensure we bring back ASAP?  Any practices we implemented out of necessity that should remain as “best practices?”  The preferred focus would be on the Company-level and below most likely, but open to ideas. Reach out and let us know if you’re interested in sharing your insights.  This could be a collaboration where we capture insights from multiple folks and have 1 or 2 authors consolidate the ideas/points.   Contact us at: CJO@westpoint.edu

Research Opportunity

A team of researchers is undertaking groundbreaking research to understand what behaviors and characteristics distinguish high-performing early-career leaders and how organizations can better identify and develop them. The goal is to help organizations more effectively identify and develop successful and impactful early-career leaders.  If you’re an officer with between 3 – 6 years of service and would like to be considered for the study, please sign up at the link below.

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=EYj_mRc1qUC_EEXqCjIfC0os1B7piV1LlCGEhCPXV6VUNUFVWllYT0pWM0ZLOTZSNVRaMUFBUEJVNC4u

In closing

Until next month – lead well my friends