Command Wing | Commando Training Centre Royal Marines

The article is interesting and offers much food for thought. However, the concept of ‘free will’ is subject to debate and may provide unnecessary complexity to the art of NCO and officer training. If free will is to be discussed then it should be explained in terms of internal constraints (such as the mind, brain and neural processes) and external constraints (such as rules, regulations, and legal considerations). The free will argument, unless appropriately situated in object lessons and examples, may cause an NCO or officer to over-simplify the proposition and consider that criminal actions including breaches of the Law of Armed Conflict are not necessarily attributable to free will but rather are an “ expression of our life experience”. It is true that in meditation, thoughts and ideas arise in one’s mind without any obvious cause, and one could argue that they have no free will in that situation. If, however a person watched a violent, sadistic movie, it may stimulate their desire to act violently, but whether they do so or not will depend on a combination of factors including social conditioning during their childhood development and their individual and collective training in civilian or military environments. Essentially, they have free will and they have choices. The free will debate is open to philosophical deviance and should be avoided unless in guided academic debate and research. Royal Marine Commando leadership training might be better centred on understanding critical thinking and how to apply developed critical thinking skills in a range of simple and complex quick and deliberate decision exercises.

I agree with James Ayliffe, a previous commentor on this article. The RM Command Wing effort is a great step towards recognising the importance of decision making skills, hopefully at all levels of the force (strategic corporal and all that). The USMC had a similar realisation in the mid 90s tied up in the maneouvre warfare and mission command doctrine and implications for decentralised decision making by small unit leaders (e.g. Squad Leaders). Deconstucting decision making in terms of "free will" and things going on inside people's heads minimses the importance of the assessing situations effectively and utilising experience to interpet what is going on in order to make 'good enough' decisions. This approach is described in Gary Klein's (and others) work with the USMC making use of tactical decision games and experiential learning with a training wrapper that focuses on learning through feedback and AARs which explore the situational (rather than internal/mental) attributes which become the situation assessment/threat analysis/terrain analysis models stored in experience which become the action options for future decisions. Critical thinking and problem solving for the previously unexperienced situations plays a key role, but developing expertise in reading terrain, reading the enemy, building the situation-action repertiores that support adaptive decisoin making under uncertainty, etc. is a core component of effective decision making, without getting into philosophical debates about free will. We all need to strive to be better so that we can adapt in a fast changing, complex, ambigusou world, and these kinds of efforts are necessary, in a safe-to-fail, improvement/growth-focused organisation. (Dstl have been doing some work in this area refering to "adaptive expertise" and "cognitive agility" (since 2016) and the most representative work by Gary Klien in this area is the book "The Power of Intuition" and, also the articles in the USMC Gazette by Gary Klein and John Schmitt (USMC; R). For examples see: https://mca-marines.org/gazette/how-we-decide/ https://mca-marines.org/gazette/page/42/ and https://mca-marines.org/gazette/response-to-improving-marine-commanders-intuitive-decisionmaking-skills/

RE. Training EVOLUTION OF ROYAL MARINES COMMANDO LEADERSHIP TRAINING By Command Wing | Commando Training Centre Royal MarinesJuly 22, 2020 “Command Wing’s approach to developing leadership is to enable students to reach the highest levels of learning; where they can analyse, synthesise and evaluate knowledge.[1] The outcome is to create agile decision makers who make good decisions when they are leading Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Civilians in barracks and on Commando operations. These leaders are expected to act according to the Commando mindset – to be the first to understand; the first to adapt and respond; and the first to overcome. Not to stifle tempo and initiative by relying only on orders to act.” Thoughts on how agile decision makers can be developed by considering - 1. what role thoughts and intentions play in decision making; This is a relatively simple question with a relatively simple answer. Any small business accountant will tell you “You can’t manage what you can’t count” or to put it another way “You can’t manage what you don’t know”. The article then explores free will and extols “mindfulness” as a powerful tool to build self awareness and self regulation on a pathway to “emotional Intelligence”. “Mindfulness” and “emotional intelligence” are intangible concepts and not ones I would like to put to class of 30 Commandos being instructed in skills they need to live long and prosper in battle. “Self awareness” and “self regulation” are almost as intangible and also not concepts I would like to put to a Commando class. The article goes on to briefly reference “meditation” which to my mind is also an intangible and not one I would like to put to a Commando class. It describes the effects of meditation – “One of the first things you become aware of with any mindfulness or meditation practise is that you have no control of how and when thoughts appear in your mind. If you close your eyes and concentrate on nothing but your breathing, you cannot control what thoughts arise, you merely acknowledge them and wait for the next one.” Meditation means stopping conscious thought and allowing your subconscious to do what it was designed to do and that is to sort through all the impressions and memories in your conscious mind and put them in some sort of order. The thoughts that arise are directly related to the amount of energy needed to move forward from them. Every human is a self contained electrical system and your subconscious is the part of your mind that deals with repairs and maintenance. Your subconscious controls every single molecule of your existence and can override your conscious during times of extreme stress. Your conscious mind is that part of your electrically driven system that controls your interactions with your physical surroundings. Your conscious mind forms memories and references them when making conscious decisions. The knowledge and experience of every Commando I have ever served with came from their stored conscious memories of their past lives, and in particular their military skills set came from their past training. I’m happy to say that Australian and British military instructors are among the best in the world and the results demonstrate this as true. Australian and British military training is something I would be happy to put to a Commando class, not least because I know the results of this training lead to the Commando mindset – to be the first to understand; the first to adapt and respond; and the first to overcome. Not to stifle tempo and initiative by relying only on orders to act. The role your conscious thoughts and intentions play in decision making are a combination of your training and experience backed up by the over riding ability of your subconscious to instantly take control. During extreme stress your subconscious accesses your training and experience and blends that with the ability to micromanage every molecule in your body. As a Commando you have probably seen happen many times. Those are the times when you say to yourself, or someone else says to you “I have no idea what happened there but I’m glad it did.” “You can’t manage what you don’t know” and to manage your thoughts and intentions in decision making you need training and experience. Thoughts and intentions regarding any situation are formed from a base of training, knowledge and experience held in your conscious mind. And in extreme situations your subconscious takes over and blends this base of training, knowledge and experience with the power to instantly control every molecule in your body and shape your thoughts and intentions based on your total being. 2. how values-based system of decision making can be developed and The article goes on to explore “ritualising” _ In Legacy[5], James Kerr describes how “inspiring leaders establish rituals to connect their team to its core narrative” and that “rituals make beliefs real and tangible – they make them a thing”. I need simple words if I am to understand what I need to survive so to me “ritualising” means making something a habit. This core training approach has been used by the British and Australian defence forces for hundreds of years to good effect. When you make something a habit it means it happens subconsciously without thinking. Remember the last time you drove to work in every detail or the last time you put on a pair of socks. Often when you do something habitually you have no conscious memory of forming a thought or intention to do it. It doesn’t mean you weren’t exercising free will when you did it, it just means that you saved a lot of conscious energy by relegating the thoughts and intentions to subconscious control. Driving the car habitually doesn’t mean you were unsafe, it simply means that your subconscious was using less power to do the same job more efficiently. How many time have you pondered the coming day’s work while driving to work. You could do that because your total conscious attention wasn’t being used to keep you safe on the road. Values-based systems of decision making can be most effectively developed by building the core values into a habit. And building a habit takes at least 28 days and preferably 56. The reason for those times to form a habit is as follows. Millions of years ago we came from the sea onto the land. Every diver knows it’s easier to go ashore on a beach and not up an iron bound cliff. That means in all probability that we came ashore gradually over millions of years across beaches. And every Commando knows beaches are controlled by the tides. And tides are controlled by the moon and it’s 28 day cycle. So a 28 day cycle is most probably built into our evolution and it is highly likely that any habit formed over a 28 day cycle has good chance of becoming embedded into our subconscious by our 28 day evolutionary duty cycle. 3. why we need to acknowledge probabilistic outcomes to differentiate between good and bad decisions. “You can’t manage what you can’t count“ definitely applies here. Unless you have the numbers in front of you then any decision you make will be semi informed guesswork at best. The climbing training catch phrase “a neat knot is a safe knot’ is a good example here. The reason a neat knot is a safe knot is simple. When knots are tested for the breaking strain compared to the breaking strain o0f the rope they’re tied in, they are always tied as a “neat knot”. What that means in practice is that if your knot isn’t neat, you have no9 idea what the breaking strain of it is and it becomes an unreliable and unknown factor in your rope chain. What I call a “psychological” knot. That is a knot you will send someone else down on but you wouldn’t use yourself. Summary:- from marketing executive and author Seth Godin,[8] “we need to teach two things; one, how to lead, and two, how to solve interesting problems… The way you teach to solve interesting problems is to give interesting problems to solve.” Every small business owner on earth handles these scenarios every day of their working life and it would undoubtedly be beneficial if an understudy arrangement with small businesses could be organised. Our free will is succinctly encapsulated in the sailing directions for any yachtsman. You can't change the wind direction or wind speed or sea state but you can set your sails to get to your destination. We are bound to a 28 day duty cycle by our evolution, a planetary duty cycle by the system we live in, we are bound to be driven by our ancestors evolution, we are bound by the capacity of our minds, we are bound by the laws of physics, but we are not bound to set any particular destination. The 28 day cycle, the planetary cycle, our ancestors, the capacity of our minds, and the laws of physics set the bounds of the tools we can use to get where we want to go. Just saying Bruce Parr C4L