FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (May 14, 2015) --- Representatives from 42 Army and Joint organizations met on April 28-29 at the Frontier Conference Center to discuss the Army Lessons Learned Program and integrate topics, collection efforts, and products across the force in FY 16.
The Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) hosted the conference as the Army's office of primary responsibility for the Army Lessons Learned Program. Col. Paul Reese, the CALL Director, said, "In a time of declining resources it is important to leverage the lessons learned community's extensive network to focus activities on Army priorities while capitalizing on each organization's capabilities."
Brig. Gen. Bill Burleson, director, Mission Command Center of Excellence, said, "Very rarely do things not touch each other in some way, shape, or form. The ability here to talk with those that you know and those that you don't know to develop a network is very important. Your ability to get work done increases when you have a network of those you can reach out and talk to."
The two-day conference started with an update on the Army Lessons Learned Program; then the organization representatives explained their command's priorities and planned collection efforts. CALL analysts facilitated discussions on potential collection topics by the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war.
The second day of the conference continued the tactical-level discussion and featured small-group break-out sessions to collaborate on topics, collection opportunities, and products that will result as a culmination of the lessons learned community of practice efforts.
Reflecting on a recent trip to Army units in Europe involved with OPERATION ATLANTIC RESOLVE, Brig.
Gen. Burleson commented, "One of the big things we are seeing now is interoperability, not just with other services but with multinational partners. The things we glean about this from the lessons learned program are tremendously important. The Army's work on the warfighting challenges is greatly informed by the products you develop."
Col. Reese closed out the conference with an overview of what the group accomplished and outlined post-conference activities. The work started at the conference is to be refined through several virtual collaboration sessions resulting in a final FY16 Department of the Army Lessons Learned Plan going to the Army G3/5/7 in August.
Participants agreed that the conference was worthwhile and should continue as an annual event. The conference made strong headway in identifying topics and collection opportunities for the next fiscal year and getting "buy-in" from the community. The conference also highlighted some areas for improvement, such as how to share information more rapidly.
Overall, the conference accomplished the goal of bringing the Army lessons learned community together and synchronizing topic and collaborative collection opportunities, along with nesting other related lessons learned activities for the upcoming fiscal year.
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