The TRADOC Senior Leaders Conference really kicked off with a great speaker this morning. It was Mr. John Rendon from The Rendon Group. The Rendon Group is a consulting firm that works with government and military clients to provide Strategic Communications. Last year they were in the news when it came out they were profiling bloggers and embedded journalists to rate them and see if they were considered favorable or not to the military.
The Rendon Group has been around for a long time and John Rendon is a very smart guy who knows what he is talking about and can and did provide very thoughtful comments to military leaders in order to make them think. Last night at the icebreaker social, GEN Dempsey explained how much he values John’s input an perspective.
On of the first things that John did was show the video titles Do You Know 4.0. I have seen this video in the past and it does a great job at highlighting what a technology-connected society we have become. Some may question the relevance at this conference, but I can see that as these leaders in the Training and Doctrine Command meet and talk about the future’s training. The video also shows not only how much technology has changed the world, but more so how much the new media and Web 2.0 has developed and matured.
John then went around the world talking about different counties and how their actions and culture effect what we do in our country both in the areas of technology but also in military practice. He talked about some of the obvious like Russia, India and China but also others like Brazil. In fact he emphasized Brazil and how much we need to pay attention to Brazil and what they are learning from us, compared to what we are not learning from them.
John Rendon had some great quotes that I want to highlight in this blog. Some of them were:
1. “nobody in this room is going to win this war” By that he meant that this war we are fighting today against Terrorism will outlast the careers of many of the leaders in the room. He was demonstrating that it will be the replacements of these leaders or even later replacements that will be in the job when this war ends.
2. “we should reward risk and not punish failure” The point of this quote was to highlight the downfall of the risk adverse culture that has been over-emphasized in the Army today. He was trying to point out that taking risks is a good thing and that those leaders whom do should be recognized and rewarded for doing that.
3. “the adversary is defining our intentions, goals, and outcomes and we are not” When I heard John say this, it reminded me of the old military saying of “the enemy always has a vote”. In other words, too many times we are reactive and respond to the enemy versus being proactive and having us shape the battlefield and what happens on it.
