Day 3 of NTE18 provided lots of opportunity for participants to pull together the results of their thinking on what had been presented over the previous two days.
The day began with the first panel of the day on the Lessons Learned Challenges, moderated by Mrs Jackie Eaton, the Science and Technology Advisor to the NATO Science and Technology Office of the NATO Scientist. Brigadier General Athanasios Tsouganatos, the Assistant Chief of Staff Joint Force Development HQ SACT; Brigadier Franz Pfrengle, Assistant Chief of Staff J7 SHAPE; Captain Jack Taylor, Lessons Learned Branch Chief, MILMED Centre of Excellence; Mr John Redmayne, the JALLC’s Principal Operational Research Analyst; and Mr Al Musgrove, a strategy, policy, and engagement analyst, Joint Lessons Learned Division, US Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined Mrs Eaton as panel members.
Mrs Eaton introduced the panel by pointing out that the generic learning process was about how individuals learned whereas the Lessons Learned process was about the way that organizations learn. She then asked the audience to consider whether they thought their own organizations had all six characteristics of a learning organization: an open culture; feedback loops; the promotion of personal mastery; planning for intelligent fast failure; stealing best practice; and cultivating a common vision.
She then posed the first question to the panel, asking the members what they thought was the biggest challenge for NATO in relation to Lessons Learned, which each panel member had an opportunity to answer. In this context Lessons Learned were referred to as the stepchild of NATO at every level, in the sense that they are often conducted as an afterthought in between getting to the next task. Sometimes they are postponed, or not done at all. All were agreed that what seemed to be needed was a change of mindset, leadership, and culture—areas where the human factor was at least as important as assistance from new technologies.
During the panel, good examples were given of how NATO does learn lessons, quickly, efficiently and effectively when there is a real sense of urgency. It will now be important to ensure that this sense of urgency is felt across the Lessons Learned Community and beyond to ensure that we can drive change and really begin to take action to improve the NATO Lessons Learned Capability.
Mr Liviu Lazar, the NATO Industry Relations Coordinator, then gave a presentation on Bridging the Problem and Solution Space. He spoke about the importance of ensuring that the problem was clearly articulated, of asking the right questions, especially “why”—something that was often difficult in a military organization—and of acknowledging that the most appropriate solution might well be a surprising one.
The second panel of the day covered the topic of New Technology Features, moderated by Dr Michael Street, the Head of Innovation and Data Science at NATO Communications and Information (NCI) Agency.
Dr Gabriele Rizzo, the Lead Scientist, Strategic Innovation, in the CTO and Strategy of Leonardo and Professor at Sapienza University of Rome; Roy Hasson, Global Development Manager, Analytics and Data Lakes, at Amazon Web Services; Mark Hoffman, Senior Manager at Lockheed Martin ATL; Pascal Mougin, Director Business Capture at Thales Raytheon Systems; and Dr Leid Zejnilovic, Professor at Nova School of Business and Economics of Lisbon all joined Dr Street on stage as panel members.
An interesting discussion followed, starting with how technology could be used help to increase the outflow from a Lessons Learned database and could act as the critic sitting on the analyst’s shoulder.
The discussion then ranged over the value of the contextual knowledge that the user of the data had, and how that could help to specify or even provide the service required. What was sometimes lacking was the audacity to experiment and fail.
The panel noted that more important than identifying the right technology to solve a problem was first really understanding the problem and the problem owner. If the purpose was understood, along with what action needed to be taken to serve that purpose, then the technological solutions would follow.
The last day of the event wound up with two parallel workshops taking place, one dedicated to the subject matter experts and the other to key leaders. Both saw lively discussions and positive feedback on the NTE18.
BGEN Antonio Nascimento closed the event with some final thoughts, noting that the event has exceeded expectations and had been both productive and informative. He said that there was a desire to continue the work started at the NTE18, to maintain the community of interest, and to explore ways to now work more closely together.