Donald Vandergriff

Military Historian, author of four books and 60 articles on military affairs, leadership, maneuver warfare, and the generations of war. Currently a day time employee of L-3 Communications in support of Army TRADOC, and on the side I run Maverick leadership

Training of officers, a key step for the forging of an effective military force

By / Leave a Comment / 16 May 2017

Summary:  This is the fifth in a series of articles about Donald Vandergriff, explaining why changing the Army’s methods of recruiting, training, motivating, and retaining people are the key structural changes to make it better fitted for warfare in the 21st century.   Today we have an excerpt from Don Vandergriff’s book Manning the Future Legions of …

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Preface to Manning the Future Legions of the United States: Finding and Developing Tomorrow’s Centurions

By / Leave a Comment / 18 January 2015

Summary:  This is the fourth in a series of articles about Donald Vandergriff, explaining why changing the Army’s methods of recruiting, training, motivating, and retaining people are the key structural changes to make it better fitted for warfare in the 21st century. . Today’s we have a excerpt from the Preface to Don Vandergriff’s book Manning the …

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About military leaders in the 21st century: “Theirs Is to Reason Why”

By / Leave a Comment / 22 March 2018

Summary:  It’s Vandergriff week on the FM website.  Today we have the third article in this series, an excerpt from “Theirs Is to Reason Why“, Proceedings of the US Naval Institute, February 2010.  It’s about building an army for the 21st century, where the right training might prove more decisive than the right high-tech vehicles …

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More about charisma, by Don Vandergriff…(#2 in the “getting ready for Obama” series)

By / 3 Comments / 23 July 2010

Summary:  Since we are about to elect a President largely on the basis of his charisma, the FM blog is running a few articles on this topic.  Know it before you buy it! Here is a comment by Donald Vandergriff (Major, US Army, retired) about the opening salvo in the series, Does America need a charismatic President?:  We must …

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Recommended reading: transforming the Army, the hard way

By / Leave a Comment / 18 January 2015

ARMY magazine has posted part two of Donald Vandergriff’s (Major, US Army, retired) article about the Adaptive Leaders Course.  This describes one path to organizational transformation.  The difficult way, building from the foundation up — building something that outlasts all the hot intellectual fads, and can evolve over generations.  The senior Army leadership’s attention to Vandergriff is important good …

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