Military Review English Edition November-December 2013 | Page 47

TEAMS OF LEADERS
mentor for Army KM developing what is now
called the Battle Command Knowledge System
(BCKS). CAVNET and Iron Horse Net and forums
such as NCO Net and S1 Net flourished as social
media grew. Army KM expanded, generating
shared actionable knowledge. Actionable understanding was yet to come.
When I was asked to explain BCKS more
broadly to Army leadership, I conducted workshops in every major TRADOC school and in all
corps level commands, worldwide. Each BCKS
workshop engaged the commander and his/her key
subordinates. Explanation of BCKS was followed
by a discussion of how it could be employed to
solve command issues raised by subordinates.
BCKS was to be shaped by them to be their tool
created bottom-up, not imposed top-down. Then

The shared trust required
for high performance broadens
horizons.

the leaders adjourned for the day, returning later
to describe to the commander how they proposed
to employ BCKS. I was available to counsel both
seniors and subordinates about alternatives for
implementing BCKS.
About halfway through the BCKS workshop
explanations, I realized that what we were doing
was building actionable understanding to use BCKS
in leader teams formed within organizations or units
for that purpose. The IM and KM were necessary
but not sufficient. Leaders working together to a
common purpose and crossing various borders
as required to develop positive relationships had
to be the practical desired outcome for chains of
command.4 We were quickly approaching the need
to generate the shared consensus and relationships
characteristic of “soft power,” and were now seriously into supporting mission command.
I found I really had to think through what, then
develop how, to build leader teams to advantage
MILITARY REVIEW

• November-December 2013

the IM and KM of the Battle Command Knowledge
System for both teams of equals and for teams
composed of leaders and subordinates. The central
insight was that these workshops were essentially
team building exercises—later described as leader
team exercises (LTX). Proofs of principle preceded
or took place concurrently at I Corps and in the 10th
Mountain Division developing shared actionable
understanding in leader teams preparing for service
in Afghanistan.
The next step was to establish just what made
leader teams really good. Fortunately 12 years of
unit command combined with numerous observation visits to various combat training centers
produced an experience-based hypothesis reconfirmed by continuing personal research for another
5 years. Leader team high performance is based on
shared skills, knowledge, and attitudes of shared
purpose, shared trust, shared competence, and
resultant shared confidence by every member of
the particular leader team be it composed of peers
or seniors and subordinates. These results were
documented in several contemporary documents.5
Influenced by the growing success of BCKS in
the Army, Gen. John Craddock, commanding general, European Command (EUCOM), asked me to
apply information and knowledge management to
EUCOM—Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental
and Multinational (JIIM). We conducted multiple
workshops in all directorates at EUCOM headquarters then at 10 offices of defense collaboration
and with their country teams. By now, improving IM and KM had almost become secondary;
the desired outcome was high performing teams
of leaders across the many JIIM boundaries of
organization, function, level, or culture. In 2007,
I renamed the effort Teams of Leaders portraying
it essentially as a Venn diagram existent at the
intersection of information management, knowledge management, and the building of high performing leader teams.6 A ToL culture both within
EUCOM and networked vertically from the joint
staff through “front-line” organizations provided
the freedom for intensive collaboration between
existent and fully operational leader teams. These
three ToL components, interacting, facilitate a continuous collaborative environment, team building,
and shared trust, which enable JIIM operations to
make and execute decisions while rapidly sharing
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