JO Forum:

I share a weekly email with my Cadets that I’d like to start ghosting on this platform as well. I hope you all enjoy!

Someone approached me following TAC Time on Tuesday and asked about how to work on self-development. So this week I’d like to focus on methods that SFC Lawson and I use personally to keep engaged across a variety of mediums. These are by no means a finite list, rather just a starting point. I profess I am not the most diligent reader, nor do I effectively use my time that I could be spending improving myself, so I tend to focus on military blogs and podcasts because they’re typically shorter and easier to digest lessons (and easier to share with you all). I’m going to share a cornucopia of stuff, but also don’t forget that from time to time you need to learn about your doctrine. It sounds gross, but it helps. You don’t have to do it all the time, but keeping yourself smart on your profession is critical. For example: in my last job prior to coming to USMA, I printed out “CPT Mierva’s Big Book o’ Manuals” that included a ton of doctrine so I could read, take notes, and get smarter. It was boring at times, but I’m glad I did it to stay sharp. Also, please stay until the end, the most important method (in my opinion) is last.

 

General Leadership Blogs:

https://3x5leadership.com/ Written by an Engineer Officer, awesome resource for development. Start by reading the reflections from company command series to get a look into what your company commander in the future is looking at.

https://angrystaffofficer.com/ Military history and comedy (and Engineer Officer). I’ve worked with Staffer on a podcast before, he’s awesome. Definitely a little different, but you can get some great nuggets of wisdom (or snark) from him.

https://fromthegreennotebook.com/Written by an Armor Officer (just finished as a Brigade S3 at Ft Carson). Arguably the most prolific/popular Army blog. Awesome resource for a ton of insightful articles.

https://www.themilitaryleader.com/ Run by an Infantry Officer (current BN Commander). Doesn’t post often, but posts are usually very insightful and bring in some widely respected professionals from across the force.

http://fieldgradeleader.themilitaryleader.com/ Same as above, but focused on Field Grade officers. Could be fun for you all to read and see what your senior rater is focused on.

 

Higher-tier blogs (smart people stuff):

https://thestrategybridge.org/ Military Writer’s Guild shining star and national security/policy stuff. I am not as religious a reader as I used to be, but if you want to stay smart on upper-echelon stuff, this is a great start.

https://warontherocks.com/ Same, and their twitter presence is great (the post a ton of articles every morning to get your day started).

 

Books:

Don’t limit yourself to just military and/or leadership books. I try to balance a military, civilian leadership, and sci-fi/fun book at any given time.  For example, I’m currently reading Black Hearts, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and LikeWar. There are so many good professional reading lists out there from various sources that I won’t give you a list of my own recommendations, but I will reiterate to sometimes read things just for fun. I recently finished up an audio book version of the We Are Legion, We Are BOB series that was pretty cool and completely non-developmental. Sometimes you just need to enjoy something for the hell of it.

 

Peers, former bosses, mentors:

SFC Lawson brought this up and I couldn’t agree more. We have arguably learned more from talking through issues with peers, bosses, and mentors than any other medium. Bonus points: you build a stronger team in the process of engaging with your peers.

 

Websites:

https://usacac.army.mil/ I use the Center for Army Lessons Learned the most of their programs, but they’ve got a ton of material on any topic you’re interested in. From their own description: The US Army Combined Arms Center (CAC) is the force modernization proponent for unified land operations, combined arms operations at echelons above brigade (Division, Corps and Theater Army), mission command, airspace control, information operations, irregular warfare, knowledge management, personnel recovery, OPSEC, military deception, security force assistance, UAP interoperability, and the Army Profession. CAC is also the US Army’s lead organization for lessons learned, doctrine, training, education, functional training, fielded force integration, managing the Army Leader Development Program, Army Profession Program, Army Training Support System Enterprise, Army Training and Education Management Enterprise, and the Combat Training Center Program.

https://juniorofficer.army.mil/ If you’re not on this already, you should be. I was on the precursor to this (platoonleader.net) when I was a Cadet and was able to interact with officers across the Army to learn about…anything. Got a question? Put it on the forum. Looking for a resource? Search it and somebody probably shared one.

https://login.milsuite.mil/ This is a newer initiative by the Army and I’m still not sold on it. Think of it like a militarized Wikipedia, YouTube, Contact List, and forum combined. It has got a ton of potential, I just don’t think enough people engage on it.

 

Podcasts:

Leaders Huddle — Done by CALDOL at West Point (and sometimes hosted by yours truly). Great resource for company grade leaders.

The Military Leader — Put on by the Military Leader blog (and current BN commander). Absolutely amazing resource to listen as he interviews incredible officers and NCOs from across the force.

NPR’s Up First — Good 10 minute morning news update.

Freakanomics Radio — I love the books, and the podcast is high quality. Lots of unique things to be learned.

Planet Money — Twice-weekly NPR show that has almost 900 episodes, frequently talks about really interesting issues.

Hidden Brain — Talks about psychology things, sometimes weird, sometimes super interesting.

TED Radio Hour — Brings together 3 TED talks along a common theme. Usually super interesting.

RadioLab — My personal all-time favorite (their most recent episode called Punch Line was incredible). Science, tech, strange stuff, almost always incredibly interesting.

99% Invisible — A design/architecture show that goes down very strange rabbit holes. For example, one episode was about military challenge coins. Most recently they talked about a small town in Indiana that the government made school kids get tattoos of their blood types in case of nuclear war. Almost always super fascinating.

Intelligence Squared Debates — Oxford style debates about random issues. Great to hear from both sides of contentious subjects, and the people debating are the top of that particular field.

Modern War Institute  – Done by MWI at West Point. They bring in some super smart folks to talk about awesome topics. They also have one called “The Spear” that is about combat that a bunch of my friends have been interviewed on.

Invisibilia — Great “hidden world” podcast that covers some really oddball stuff at times. Definitely not for everyone.

Revisionist History — Malcom Gladwell’s podcast where he goes on tangents about weird events in history that are not as they seem. Super interesting (except the stuff about music, I don’t personally find that stuff very interesting).

More Perfect — RadioLab offshoot that focuses on the supreme court. Absolutely awesome.

War Stories — Done by 2 army officers (one is Angry Staff Officer) where they dive into a season-long subject across history (season 1 was tanks!). They also did a bunch of short episodes called “Loose Rounds” that were one-off subjects that were super interesting.

Serial — The one that probably everyone knows. Season 1 and 3 were incredible, season 2 wasn’t as good in my opinion, but it was about Bowe Bergdahl (who was abducted in my AO in Afghanistan, like, we were briefed about him in all our missions).

Embedded — Deep dive into a random (and usually topical) subject. Equal parts interesting and infuriating when you hear how things are run behind the scenes.

WorkLife with Adam Grant — Great discussion about topics related to my graduate program in organizational psychology. Some super interesting stuff.

 

Last and I argue the most important and underutilized- Writing:

One of the most effective methods to digest events and learn is to write. On the recommendation (threat?) of a family friend, I wrote “dispatches” from Afghanistan on a semi-frequent basis to family and friends back home. I reread these from time to time, and one of them sparked me to try and get published on a blog I liked. This sent me down a road of personal reflection, growth, sharing, and ultimately back here to serve as a TAC. As I’ve engaged with the greater military writing community (it’s much larger than you might think), I’ve met some incredible people and learned so much more than I expected. I’ve attached two of my completely unedited dispatches from a couple of points in my deployment as a PL. I really believe these helped me process the things I experienced in combat, and I’m truly thankful I wrote them and can look back and see how far I’ve come.

Feel free to check out some other things I’ve written as well. This isn’t meant as a shameless plug, rather to show you that if you take a chance and put yourself out there, you might be surprised at the positive feedback you receive. Some of them might sound familiar…

https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2016/7/1/essays-on-war-warrior-ethos

https://fromthegreennotebook.com/2016/08/21/be-the-duck/

https://fromthegreennotebook.com/2016/12/16/be-the-duck-the-rubber-duck/

https://3x5leadership.com/2017/09/29/followership-a-missing-component-limiting-your-leadership-ability/

Hopefully this ridiculously long email can serve as a future resource for you. Apologies that this turned into something larger than expected, but hopefully you can pick and choose what interests you and find value.

Run ‘em Down!

CPT M

“Let me not fail them”