The War Hawk Case Study

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As a promotable lieutenant colonel, I will in charge of commanding the 4th Armored Brigade Combat Team in 30 days. The current Colonel Michael Lanks has decided to retire due to the health factor. I am so excited because the 4th ABCT is my old unit. However, I knew that there are some significant changes within this brigade, especially the notable battalion “The War Hawks” through the outgoing deputy commander LTC (P) Tagol and documents “Center for Army Lessons Learned” (CALL). Originally, this brigade is a unit with cohesion and rapport in four years ago. Now, all you can observe are the low morale, loss of mutual trust and the friction between the staffs of battalion and brigade. What happened within this unit? The following are …show more content…
Third, the dual- hatted mission reduced the staff’s effectiveness, and sanctioned hazing affected the interior cohesion. Final, the rumor, pessimism, and infidelity issues filled up this brigade. The critical leadership problems within the 4th ABCT include the following: 1. Before the deployment, brigade staffs didn’t coordinate with subordinate staffs about the impending tasks, therefore, which resulted in the battalion staffs were not sufficient to allow 24- hour operations over a sustained period, and caused the increased friction between the brigade and battalion staffs. The key point is this unit has a lack of interaction and coordination. 2. The outgoing brigade commander COL lanks didn’t empower subordinates to conduct various missions. COL Lanks assigned his deputy LTC to supervise the SFATs, to synchronize the operations of the brigade support battalion, to be the “voice” of the ABCT to the media, to act as liaison officer to coalition forces, and to assume a chief of staff. The critical problem is that the commander COL lanks didn’t employ organizational structure to assign missions. He scared that the deployment mission would fail, so Lanks asked for his deputy to in charge of multiple missions. He didn’t build mutual trust within the chain of command. Now I list facts and assumptions to analyze the situations and consequences. 1.