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What strategies used by the armed forces personnel to communicate

effectively can be used by you as manager? Explain in detail.

I work in Information Technology (IT) where things are in general are verydynamic, the environment changes quick like that Army faces, but not as lethal as Army

does.

Before I go for a technical solution, I would like to have my staff learn how tocommunicate like Army. The staff during stressful periods should be able to speakcomplete and unhesitatingly sentences like army officers. And the staff needs to be goodlisteners, with an ability to get to the crux of difficult issues. I will identify the staffneeding training in listening and communications and take it up with the humanresources department. These two capabilities needs to emphasized and reminded onregular basis. I will bring this time to time in staff meetings. Such capabilities will bevery valuable within IT and in interacting with business who are customers for IT.

I will implement intranet website where my IT staff could share the developingknowledge real time. The website will encourage real time collaboration in differentfunctional and technology areas. Since the website could grow large, soon informationmight be difficult to find, I will also implement good search engine with it. The searchengine will allow the staff to have any required information to solve problems in theirhands in seconds.

As technology keeps changing and the business keeps running, many new and oldsituations develop daily. For new situations, the IT staff needs to do some research,think creatively or get trained. Once solution is found, the staff could post the solution tothe internal website, which could be helpful if the situation appear again.

Another feature I will implement will be to have some member of staff to gothrough the postings to find patterns and create newsletter. The patterns could indentifyregular recurring problems which IT users face. This information will set mydepartments agenda for future work. And the newsletter will provide summary ofhappenings to IT staff. The staff will feel more educated and more connected. Whenthey see their postings being reviewed they will be more encouraged to continue to postand will bring any situation as it starts to develop to everybodys attention.

Some of the problems IT deals with are procedural. I will have a tool on every staffmembers computer with which the staff can record the screen shots while installing andimplementing a program or fixing a problem. These recordings will be available in the

intranet web site search results if same steps were to be done again.

I also vision a widget which will keep pulling the changing information as

headlines from the collaboration website to the staffs computer. The widget runs

automatically each time the staff starts the computer and shows information without

requiring the person to open web browser and visit the website. The widget will also

show critical system metrics from the persons responsible area so that the person could

become more proactive and take required steps before hand.

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To encourage collaboration, I will have employee participation mandatory and as

a part of the annual employee evaluation. The evaluation could be on the number of

postings employee made and on how effective the information was. The collaboration

technology I will implement needs to have these features so that evaluation

measurements could be made. Since being collaborative is part the annual review, I am

sure employees will be more sharing and help the company to run business efficiently

and effectively in the long run. My goal will be to create learning communities, where

"groups of IT staff engage in intellectual interaction for the purpose of learning, sharing

and solving problems.

How has communication in the armed forces changed as a result of a

changing environment and the move toward more strategic

communications?[

For long time, Army was using one way communication with its

soldiers.

Most of the soldiers are trained traditionally to learn doctrines and

standard operating procedures, in a way which made them to follow orders

without thinking. The whole army system was geared to make soldiers to be

reactive instead of proactive, complaint instead of being creative and show

adherence instead of audacity. The fear was if soldiers at ground level

innovate then failure will be the result.

Such course of action was all right in traditional wars, but in lastthirty years Army is fighting wars where enemy is not visible like that of

older wars. The enemy, which Army fights these days, hides among civilian

population and uses varieties of non traditional methods to hit the Army.

The new enemy learns fast from Armys actions and changes tactics daily.

The normal guidelines which Army used to distribute to its soldiers felled

short in equipping the soldiers with knowledge about current changing

ground realities. The Army would identify such changing situations,

prepare response and hand it down. But it will be late as the situationwould have changed again. Most soldiers felt the information was stale and

too much immersed in Army doctrine.

Things started to change when Generation X joined Army ranks.

Generation X is often more self-reliant and confident of their own

capabilities, compared to the older baby boomer officers. The Generation X,

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often questions authority and relies on their creativity to find solutions in

unpredictable environment like that of Iraq. This new environment, needs

flexible and cohort group eager to learn from each other to survive and

carry on unexpected irregular tasks.

Couple of new army officers created a collaborative web site, where

army men can post questions and ask for any advice. The web site allowed

unmediated, real-time cross-chat and debates. Suddenly soldiers found

themselves exchanging ideas and they started to receive stream of

information to unlock complexities of fighting an urban war. As soon as

enemy created a new tactic and any of the Army members found how to

face the new tactic it was immediately shared among other soldiers who

was also facing same problem at same time. New cadets were also able to

find introductory information and norms about the foreign country theywere being sent.

Army found the website had become very useful and provided official

sanction to it. Army liked the sharing and learning of knowledge as it got

created in real time as ground realities. The one direction information flow

has become bidirectional.

Army also found that it needs to provide such communicative

platform for its soldiers else the soldiers would create on their own. Thatswhat actually happened and the danger was that the secrets could get

exposed to the enemy. Army created different channels for sharing different

categories of information. Army has Call for training units in US;

Companycommand and Platoonleader are for building leadership skills and

sharing general tips and tricks about fighting in Iraq.

Army also learned the troops were working with considerable lack of

detailed guidance from the headquarters. The troops were capable of

varieties of jobs which they were not trained for and that too in the countrywhere natives did not speak English. Army also overcame some of its

reservations about allowing lower ranks to innovate and found that the

soldiers were teaching themselves how to fight the war. The system for

recycling combat experience improved hundred fold after a period of forty

years.

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With the ability to share, the lower ranks feel a sense of

empowerment. A lone soldier now feels more confident and powerful since

if time comes the entire collective mind power of the Army could be called

with just one mouse click.