Strategic learning: Are we failing to adapt?

by LGen (Retired) Mike Jeffery

If Canada is to adopt a more holistic approach to international operations, incorporating the lessons learned will be key to doing subsequent missions better. As Mike Jeffery explains, while we learn and adapt well at the tactical level, we are not as proficient at the strategic level.


In the early 1990s, with a force deployed on operations in the Balkans, we were grappling with the challenge of ensuring that our troops had adequate protection. During that period, I had a discussion with a senior officer on the protective requirements of our APCs. His opinion was that our 1960s vintage M113s were “good enough for the Cold War and therefore good enough for now.”

I marveled then how this strategic leader had so missed the essential changes that had transpired in land warfare and weapons technology and had failed to understand how Canada had not kept pace. It is a small but useful object lesson in the failure of learning at the strategic level.

Learning is often considered a personal dynamic. We each experience events from which we draw lessons, which in turn affect how we see the world and how we act. However, learning at the strategic level must be institutional learning – recognition by the organization as a whole of a real or potential failure, or sub-optimal performance, resulting in a change to the institutional ends, ways or means.

This is not to imply that individuals are not important in the learning dynamic. Indeed, leaders are a critical factor in institutional learning. However, an individual, even a senior leader, may learn a lesson but still be unable to achieve institutional change. Without such change no real learning has occurred.

At the strategic level, the capacity of leaders to understand problems or learn lessons is much less than at the tactical or operational level, and implementing changes much more difficult. The organization is larger and by design fragmented, and the situation for learning is more complex.

Strategic leaders must deal with three main responsibilities, all of which require a learning response: development of military strategies to support the government’s defence and security objectives, including the conduct of military operations, in which learning must ensure the military adapts to the changing nature of conflict; management of the business of defence in which learning must guide improvements in the effectiveness and efficiency of the military force; and finally, development of military capabilities as part of a military vision and strategy for an uncertain future.

At the strategic level, learning must truly transcend these core military functions. While we may be focused on stability operations today, the strategic leader must ensure that institutional learning occurs in all of these functions over the short, medium and long term. A lesson is not learned until it is part of the organizational culture.


Do we learn at the strategic level? My pre-disposition is that militaries, especially western militaries, do not learn strategically. Or if they do, they do so at a relatively slow pace and only after failure. Four main factors create this situation:

1. The Environment
I do not believe the strategic environment is conducive to learning. A learning environment is one that demands a high degree of openness and a willingness to tackle tough issues, in particular the spectre of institutional failure. Government organizations tend to be large and diverse, each with its own interests and protective culture. Even common tasks or missions do not engender open dialogue. And despite the very strategic nature of the organization, political leaders and bureaucrats too often tend to think in tactical terms. Consequently, the level of tolerance for long-term strategic approaches can be very low. And this is exacerbated by the lack of continuity in the political environment.

Governments also tend to focus on hot button issues, and strategic leaders often fall victim to this environment and end up being consumed by the crises of the day. While such an environment is unlikely to change, it is critical that strategic leaders understand how to operate within it.

2. The Culture
Military organizations by their nature tend to have action oriented cultures which promote doing, not reflective cultures that promote learning. This is not to imply that such organizations do not adapt, but they adapt on relatively short timelines based primarily on failure. In short, only when their effectiveness or strategy has been shown to be wrong, often after many attempts to prove otherwise, does change occur.

Military organizations rarely get it right in terms of being prepared for the next conflict. This is not surprising as few find it easy to recognize new threats and even less so the emergence of new kinds of warfare. And even if some level of insight into the emerging world is possible, it is doubly difficult to make the crucial steps to do away with tried and tested doctrines. As the old saying goes, the only thing more difficult than getting a new idea into a military mind is getting an old one out.

The problem with culture, in particular at the strategic level, is that it becomes a kind of “group think” where there is unwillingness, on the part of all players, to challenge the prevailing wisdom. To counter this there is a need to create, within the military, a culture that continually reflects on what has worked, what has not and seeks new solutions to problems. At the strategic level this means being alert to the need for changes in the operational requirement (what we do), the conceptual approach to achieving it (how we do it), but also the organizational approaches and administrative processes which will ensure continued effectiveness

3. The Leaders
Leaders are not well prepared for strategic employment. We have done a poor job of developing strategic leaders who not only have recent relevant operational experience but also possess the perspective and corporate experience required to be effective at the strategic level. We produce excellent self-reliant tactical leaders focused primarily on getting the job done. But the higher up the organization, the less impact a leader’s personal influence has on institutional learning. We need strategic leaders who think in systemic terms and, as they deal with issues, constantly lay a new institutional foundation for better dealing with problems; leaders with broad historic perspectives who have intimate knowledge of government and how it works; leaders with the skills and discipline to accept things beyond their own experience, to stand back from today’s mission and issues, to think longer term and to impose a disciplined change process on the institution.

This lack of development of strategic leaders is exacerbated by a lack of continuity, not only among strategic leaders but also their staffs. We have a revolving door syndrome of postings at the strategic level and we tend to rely far too much on the oral tradition for passing on experiences and lessons learned. Consequently, as a key individual moves, all of those lessons move with him. The result is an almost regular cycle, not of learning, but of repeating the approaches and mistakes of the past.

4. The Process
Finally, there is no effective process to determine and embed strategic lessons. It stretches credibility to suggest to anyone familiar with strategic level headquarters that more process is required. We have a great deal of process: a force development process, a force generation process, a performance measurement process, a lessons learned process, all supposedly addressing the needs of the organization to learn and adapt. However, these processes tend not to be connected; they are not truly owned by the strategic leaders and are, in general, not used by the strategic leaders as part of the routine “management” of the organization.

Institutional learning requires a methodology that transcends the role of individuals. Such a process must recognize that senior leaders are often far removed from the realities of today’s operations and are too busy to understand and assess the many potential strategic changes required. Such a process must analyze and present deductions in a manner which permits leaders to “learn” and to make reasoned judgments on changes required.

Now some will say I am not giving enough credit to the institution for recent changes. That may be true – to a point. Certainly, I see a greater openness within the military and a move to a learning culture, particularly at the tactical level. But I believe we still have a long way to go strategically.

In the final analysis, strategic learning is about creating a learning organization. While recognizing that the environment within which strategic leaders must work often cannot be changed, leaders can establish the foundation for such an organization. This requires the development of leaders with the right skills, aptitudes and discipline to shape an adaptive institution, the establishment of a coherent doctrine which institutionalizes the learning process and, perhaps most importantly, the development of a true learning culture, where all have an openness to new ideas and a thirst for constant improvement. If that can be achieved we can then say that we do learn.


A fellow with the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, Lieutenant-General (Retired) Michael K. Jeffery served as Chief of the Land Staff from 2000-2003.