School of War has been around since 2018. Loyal readers will think of it as a blog with a focus on wargaming. This was never my intention. In the beginning, I had a feeling where I wanted to take School of War, but I couldn’t verbalize it. The easiest way for me to express this feeling was by writing about wargaming, as it felt somehow right to do that. However, School of War was supposed to be more.
2019 gave me the chance to try a few new things on and off this blog. I had the chance to reflect on School of War over the Christmas holidays. This Corona virus craziness gave me some more time to reflect and think in what direction I wanted to take School of War.
Finally, I have found the words to express what this blog was always about.
School of War: A Blog on Readiness & Training
When you think about it, it is obvious. The direction that this blog should take was in the name from the very beginning: School of War! School of War is and always was a blog on readiness and training, I just didn’t know it yet. But now that it has crystalized in my mind’s eye it will be easier for me to share it with you.
Readiness is the key to success in any venture, not just war. And the road to readiness is paved by training. Via training we prepare ourselves to be ready to conduct war when the need arises. On School of War, we will take a thorough look at how readiness can be attained and kept. My goal is to get into the nitty-gritty and the details, not on obsessing on obscure themes. Too often blogs with a similar theme drift into the vague and esoteric, philosophizing about marginal themes or obscure ideas without delivering concrete information.
I don’t want to do that. I want to deliver actionable content that can be used immediately by you. This will be hard for me to do. It will also be an experiment. Some blog posts will only be detailing ideas or proposals on how I would like to tackle certain problems. I will try to underpin these ideas with current research and theory, however some of it will just be a gut feeling.
What Will Be New
The general way I have managed School of War will stay the same. I will not write content just to write something. I will only post when I have something to say. I will keep my emails to you short and concise. You might have noticed that the website has gotten a facelift. I tried to make it a little cleaner and readable and move away from the early 2000s blog look.
From now on, we will be talking a little more about:
Self-Development – Not the new agey feel good motivational speaker way. We will talk about specific ways how military leaders can develop themselves as leaders and their skills, by themselves in their free time.
Theory and practice of skill and knowledge acquisition – Another topic will be the theory of how skills and knowledge is acquired and used, and the ramifications this entails for practitioners. We will look at how the theory can be applied to improve the learning experience in our own organizations.
Unconventional skills – Last but not least, we will take a look at unconventional skills that seem far away from our profession but will help us and our team improve in some mission essential skills.
I invite you to discuss these ideas in the comments section or on social media. I’d also love to hear your ideas if you feel inclined to share them with me.
Thank you for honoring me with your readership.