Selecting for Adaptability

I borrowed this from Chet’s site, Defense and the National Interest.

Background: Chet and I have been working (Chet far more than I) with the Norwegian Naval Academy for the past couple of years. They are using my book Raising the Bar to assist in their evolution toward turning their officers into adaptive leaders. Chet and Bruce Gudmundsson (my favorite military historian) recently did an outstanding visit and lecture to the faculty and cadets there on Boyd, adaptability and leadership (I was originally invited, but was committed to taking the Georgetown University’s John Carroll Scholars to Antietam with my good friend LTC (ret.) Allen Gill who is the Director of the Office of Leadership and Applied Ethics at Georgetown.

Below is the excerpt from Chet.

The Norwegian Navy is doing some interesting work in developing tools to measure how well individuals and groups are able to function under a climate that encourages mission-type orders. The development of such a climate is a component of the Joint Operational Doctrine of the Norwegian Armed Forces.

Here is a recent master’s thesis that introduces the SPGR (Systematizing the Person-Group Relationship) methodology. Although this paper is concerned with selection rather than development, it provides an excellent introduction to SPGR and its role in creating a maneuver warfare force.

About the author: Commander Stein Forsdahl is a program officer at the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy in Bergen where he leads the candidate selection function.

Selection of the Officer Candidate in a Maneuver Warfare Context (1.4 MB PDF)