#6--Tony Zinni

Description

In this episode, we discuss:

-How Zinni defines professional military education (PME) and the purpose behind it

-Why we tend to focus more on formal PME over informal PME

-The need for commanders to provide PME to their units

-Zinni’s experience facilitating PME as a unit commander

-Zinni’s use of decision games as teaching tools

-How decision games might feel threatening to some commanders

-Creating an open learning environment in your command

-Laying down ground rules for PME sessions

-The role of formal schools in a Marine’s PME

-Zinni’s approach to self-directed PME

-Having good role models in PME

-Books and subjects that influenced Zinni at different points in his Marine Corps career

-When should we start teaching leaders to think strategically?

-The profound learning experience Zinni had as an advisor to the South Vietnamese Marine Corps

-The virtues of the South Vietnamese Marines

-Some of Zinni’s views on the war in Vietnam

-The cognitive dissonance between what Zinni learned at The Basic School and what actually worked for him in Vietnam

-Zinni’s formal teaching experiences

-Zinni’s advice for senior officers on PME and the danger of “intellectual flatlining”

-Zinni’s drive for formal education outside of the military and the need to “cast one’s net widely” in their learning

-Zinni’s experiences with decision games while on active duty, and how they helped develop vicarious experience

-Zinni’s thoughts on the latest wave of interest in and support of wargaming in the Department of Defense

-How much emphasis the Marine Corps put on teaching decision-making during Zinni’s time in service

-Zinni on his Combat Concepts and the need for leaders to critically review received wisdom and theories and to commit to their own theory of combat

-The unsung contributions and brilliance of Marine General Graves B. Erskine

-Zinni’s recent PhD work on leadership

-Zinni’s relationship to the “maneuver warfare movement”

-How, if at all, has maneuver warfare made a difference for the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan?

-The effects of a lack of a clear strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan

-The gap between what the Marine Corps says about maneuver warfare and what it actually does

-The need to allow leaders to make forgivable mistakes

-How rampant the “zero defects mentality” is in today’s Department of Defense and determining what is forgivable and what is unforgivable

-On the obligation of senior leaders to speak out about wrongdoing

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