Identifying How the CES Basic Course Learning Objectives Support the US Army Mission Command Strategy

Abstract

The Chief of Staff for the US Army has commanded that “all Army leaders [including civilians] will understand and practice Mission Command.” The Army Management Staff College is tasked with managing leader development in the Civilian Education System (CES). The Basic Course is the only resident CES course available to all army leaders. This study examined how the CES Basic Course learning objectives support the army’s Mission Command strategy. In the literature review I examined and attempted to ascribe meaning to each learning objective and principle of Mission Command, and discovered how they may interact. Then, I surveyed two groups consisting of thirty faculty and ninety-four students. In the survey, the participants ranked how they perceived each learning objective in its support each principle of Mission Command. I then compared and contrasted the perceptions of the two separate groups. In order to compare and contrast the results I forced the participants to rank each learning objective on a scale of one to five; each objective must have a different ranking. Then I averaged each group’s rankings and compared them. I also ran Hoteling T² to check the significance of difference in the rankings. If there was significance, I ran the Bonferroni test to check for type two error in order to examine if the phenomenon happened by chance. This study found that the work force, faculty and students, are empowered by the CES Basic Course learning objectives. However, the two groups are empowered slightly differently. The faculty was consistent in their belief that effective communication is most influential in their understanding and practice of Mission Command. There appears to be a gap between faculty and student perception of the understanding of Mission Command. There also appears to be a gap between the students understanding and practice of Mission Command. Student’s ranked development as the most influential learning objective to support their understanding of Mission Command, but ranked effective communication as the most influential learning objective to support their practice of Mission Command. While CES appears to be supporting the empowerment of the army civilian corp, the findings in this study suggest that greater clarity could serve the corps leader development. The army commanded that all army leaders understand Mission Command in order to encourage inclusion into leader development curriculum at all levels. The active component has and the civilian corp. must follow suit in order to be a part of the profession of arms.