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 very dynamic, 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 to communicate like Army. The staff during stressful periods should be able to speak complete and unhesitatingly sentences like army officers. And the staff needs to be good listeners, with an ability to get to the crux of difficult issues. I will identify the staff needing training in listening and communications and take it up with the human resources department. These two capabilities needs to emphasized and reminded on regular basis. I will bring this time to time in staff meetings. Such capabilities will be very 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 developing knowledge real time. The website will encourage real time collaboration in different functional and technology areas. Since the website could grow large, soon information might be difficult to find, I will also implement good search engine with it. The search engine will allow the staff to have any required information to solve problems in their hands in seconds. As technology keeps changing and the business keeps running, many new and old situations 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 to the 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 go through the postings to find patterns and create newsletter. The patterns could indentify regular recurring problems which IT users face. This information will set my departments agenda for future work. And the newsletter will provide summary of happenings to IT staff. The staff will feel more educated and more connected. When they see their postings being reviewed they will be more encouraged to continue to post and 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 staff members computer with which the staff can record the screen shots while installing and implementing 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.

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 last thirty 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 situation would 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,

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 they were 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. Thats what 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 country where 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.

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.