Mr. Greco (main points):
- Inform the Army of Human Dimension to 2025 and Beyond
- Output: What should the Army be like in the future?
LTG Mangum (main points):
- Grow an Army that is dynamic and diverse- maximize human potential with individuals and teams to include performance and capacity potential.
- Chief of Staff of the Army- 3 Focus areas: Readiness, Future of the Army, Taking care of Soldiers.
- Innovation- ideas that we can translate into a valued outcome. Bend the institution to be more agile.
- Inspire and Ignite, Practice… practice.
- Become master coaches
Dr. Kira Hutchinson: Be agents of change, let’s begin with divergence.
Dr. Amy Kruse:
- Neuroscience to Optimize Human Performance
- History of Neuroscience
- How does the brain work
- The future is now and life altering: Ways to Optimize Brain Health
- Neuroplasticity- how and in which ways the brain changes over a lifetime.
- Learn how to harness neuroplasticity to maximize human potential/ performance
- Design systems for the Army that with change outcomes
- Nobs- areas where there is plenty of science though currently not tapped into.
- Mindfulness and Meditation. Reference Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace) by Chade-Meng Tan
- Game based learning for increasing cognitive functions
- Improve cognitive fitness level via overt cognition and prosocial skills that can be measured over a career/ lifetime.
- Recover lost plasticity using cognitive therapies. Currently TBI is being researched to recover plasticity and return lost mental functions conducted by the Learning Research and Development Center, Dr. Walt Schneider.
- Gadgets exist and are under research that modulate brain activity, Neuromodulators
- DARPA is researching restoring brain activity with electrodes that decode and encode memory and deliver stimulation for improvements.
- Smart Drugs/ Supplements are functional food supplements for optimal human performance
- Structured Mind Wondering research being done at the University of Iowa, Carver College of Medicine, studying creating instances/ white spaces for creativity
Mrs. Patricia Locke:
- Let’s work on building a better pipeline to develop STEM competent youth.
- West Point Center for Leadership, Ethics, Diversity, in STEM program inspires students to take an interest in STEM and the military.
- TRIAD Performance Initiative (Sleep, Activity, Nutrition)
Mr. Jean Castonguay:
- Measure and Improve Human Performance by evolving automation
- Issues: increasing warrior isolation, information processing, decision making, and risk of human error due to overload. Less people + more responsibilities.
- Redefine human advantage by:
- Training to peak performance
- Monitoring biometrics
- Identifying performance threats
- Optimizing inputs to sustain performance
- Cue recognition and perception training with dual tasking for tactical scene recognition while maintaining situational awareness.
- Neuro-tracker with a real time EEQ for dynamic measures of neural activity
- Training that develops attention flexibility
Mr. Bryce Hoffman:
- Change or Die, Building an Adaptive Culture
- How can you build an organizational culture that will adapt to the “best” new ideas?
- “Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast”
- 4 Point Plan:
- Right people
- New products
- One team
- Finance the plan
- When you have the edge, how do you keep it without allowing complacency to set in?
- “Red Teaming is the cure for the greatest anxieties facing American CEOs,” Alan Mulally, Ford.
Mr. Michael Jackson:
- Let’s think about the future systematically
- Macrodriver: a computational world
- Internet of Things (IoT)
- Digestible computerized gadgets
- Creative destruction: Movement away from CEO having all the answers to individuals having power via in house creation, self-service, virtual tools, meetings, cloud based info.
- Focus on artificial intelligence
- High performing organization culture, culled from the team for lack of performance
- Math and science skills in high demand
- Impact of Watson
Mr. Andrew Herr:
- Human Performance Enhancement as a Critical Army Enabler
- The future is already here, just not evenly distributed.
- We have 20 yrs. of science behind human enhancement technologies.
- People will change behavior to improve performance, not necessarily improve health.
- Does bad/toxic leadership influence a lack of Soldier resilience leading to the evolution of Soldier PTSD?
- Propositions: The Army will not lead technology by default. The Army/ DOD’s role will matter in the foundational development of technology. Convincing data is needed to gain senior leader involvement.
- What is the Army’s Uber?
Working Groups: UFMCS facilitators utilized a variety of liberating structure techniques to ensure all working group participants had a voice while diverging on the many future conceptual possibilities and then converging to develop recommendations for the Army Human Dimension 2025 and Beyond for presentation to LTG Brown, LTG Mangum and Mr. Tom Greco.
Out-brief of Working Groups (main points):
Institutional Capability:
- Cognitive Fitness- defining what it is today is a necessity for moving forward
- Brain Gym- create a set of capabilities, brain functional fitness
- Accession and talent management focus on assessments to identify the right leaders and talent for the job
Optimize Individuals:
- Change the Army mindset- cognitive, affective, and social are ‘hard’ skill sets.
- Develop comprehensive measurement, holistic baselines, and metrics for these skill sets.
- Broaden career plans and personalize training based upon continuous monitoring. Include culture, logic, metacognition skills, id/grow individual genius.
Cohesive Teams:
- Develop cognitive assessments and metrics for recruitment and career growth along with cognitive wellness education centers for further growth.
- Develop unit cohesion competencies and pilot them in ecologically appropriate environments.
- Design training that is highly adaptable to the need of the team and its level of development.
Questions from the Audience
- Is the ASVAB the right assessment for entry into the Army?
- What current options exist to start moving the brain gym forward?
- How are the ideas generated at this conferenced leveraged and moved forward?
GEN Brown (main points):
- The Army culture is hard, naming conventions matter.
- In the 21st century we must optimize people’s performance needs.
- IAWA may be an avenue for funding.
- People are our advantage!