by Chris Johnson
“The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by cowards and its thinking done by fools.” – Lt. Gen. Sir William Francis Butler
The profession of arms demands a considerable investment of our attention to understand the nature and the character of war. As professionals, according to the US Army, we have a deep moral obligation to continuously develop knowledge and expertise.
We know that better education results in higher productivity and better workplace performance. In other words, better thinking supports better doing. But our attention is often spent elsewhere. We engage in military business and bureaucracy more than we do in the profession. We spend a lot of time doing and very little time thinking.
War is a physical phenomenon. So we could be forgiven for placing an emphasis on our physical preparation for it. One of the primary ways we prepare for war is by undertaking a physical fitness regime that means our bodies are ready to endure the rigours of the battlefield. Moreover, the idea of physical fitness in the military is deeply embedded into our culture. Physical training, or PT, is universally accepted in the military as common practice.
This article explores the idea that we ought to apply the logic for PT to professional military education (PME). PME is PT for the brain. It is important to clarify that by PME, I mean informal learning that occurs outside of classrooms and formal military courses. The Australian Army defines PME as the “intellectual, moral and social instruction in the profession of arms.” This informal type of learning includes reading journal articles, listening to podcasts, watching films, and discussing ideas with our peers on our own time. Readers from the US might consider my definition of PME closer to what they call “continuous professional development”, “self-directed learning”, or “informal learning”.
Regardless of which military we come from, in the beginning of our career we are subject to a highly structured, rigid, and demanding PT regime. Those early sessions are painful, but necessary. It is during this phase of our career that we are exposed to the form and structure of PT. We learn how to do it properly. It becomes routine.
Our introduction to PME starts in the same way. We are exposed to formal lessons that adhere to a rigid program. We are taught in a consistent manner that becomes part of our routine. And like PT, there is little time to pursue anything outside of what is programmed. In both the physical and intellectual domains, formal training provided by the military is enough for us to meet organisational standards and expectations.
As our careers progress, the formality of PT fades and fitness becomes more of a personal responsibility. Of course, there are occasional team-based or command-driven formal PT sessions, particularly in front-line units. But generally as we grow in seniority, we are left to manage ourselves. Formal PT alone is not enough to meet the organisational standards and expectations that are checked through regular testing.
In the intellectual domain, formal training and courses remain an important part of our learning structure. Like our physical fitness, so too are we left to pursue intellectual growth through informal PME. Formal training alone is enough to pass courses, but is it enough to ensure we meet organisational standards and expectations?
People who physically excel are celebrated by their peers, their units, and the military. Competitions, leaderboards, record-holders, and prizes are all commonplace for military sports and fitness events. This same culture simply does not exist in the intellectual domain. At best, some PME enthusiasts run essay competitions or other one-off events. But they are a far cry from our well-established military sporting and fitness competitions. There is little incentive to intellectually improve beyond the bare minimum.
Leaders must create an environment that champions and incentivises intellectual growth outside of formal training—the same as we do for people who excel physically. We need to acknowledge the intrinsic and extrinsic motivating factors behind why people work out mentally and physically. We must incentivise desired behaviour and deter undesired behaviour. We must pay attention to PME.
Other professions pay quite a lot of attention to their professional development. Some, like the medical profession, mandate that health care professionals record a certain amount of professional development hours in a calendar year. Others sit regular examinations prior to career progression, pay-raises, and promotion. However, if we make things mandatory, we deter people from wanting to pursue them naturally. “The best way to take the fun out of a perfectly good PT session,” a young corporal once told me, “is to get an instructor to run it.” How then can we strike a balance between prioritising PME in the same way we do PT, without over-formalising it?
The popularity of tracking and logging personal fitness through wearable devices has grown significantly over the past decade. People who set fitness goals and track their progress are more likely to achieve better results. There are similar opportunities to incentivise PME by using gamification to encourage participation and reward performance. To do this effectively, users would need to have their PME logged and recorded. But we walk a fine line before that data turns into a measurement, and that measurement turns into a target, and targets become specified tasks.
We provide gyms for our people to allow them to physically work out on their own time. We need to provide “mental gyms” for our people to intellectually work out on their own time by providing high-quality resources that are flexible, engaging, and accessible. We needn’t over-formalise or try to artificially emphasise PME any more than we do for PT. Perhaps most importantly, like PT, commanders need to show their people what “right” looks like. The best leaders are the ones who participate in PT and PME every day. They prioritise it as part of their already busy schedule and lead the way.
We also need to be mindful that, no matter how well-equipped our mental gyms are, there will always be people who choose to work-out in their own way. Some people prefer to pay for a gym membership in the same way that some prefer to get their PME from non-military sponsored resources. We shouldn’t care where they get their intellectual fitness from, so long as they’re getting fit.
Conclusion
Napoleon famously declared that “in battle, the moral is to the physical as three is to one.” So how is it that we do an hour of PT every day and not commit (at least) the same amount of attention towards PME? If we fail to prepare—physically or intellectually—for war, the consequences will be catastrophic. PME resources such as The Cove, From the Green Notebook, and Line of Sight are our mental gyms—and membership is free. Our minds, like our bodies, need regular exercise. And like physical exercise, we achieve incremental gains over time. To borrow a phrase from the former Sergeant Major of the US Army Daniel A. Dailey, “PT might not be the most important thing you do that day, but it is the most important thing you do every day.” We should employ this same philosophy toward PME and intellectual fitness.
Lieutenant Colonel Chris Johnson is an Australian infantry officer with operational experience in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. He currently leads the Australian Army’s Professional Military Education Cell. Follow him on X @ChesterfieldO5.
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