Evolve or die: the U.S. Army's Darwinian challenge.

In an effort to ensure future success and relevance, the Army, at the end of 2012, published its Army Capstone Concept (ACC). The ACC sets an azimuth into the future and lays a course for the Army as it moves towards the future operational environment (FOE). The ACC advocates for an institutional and operating force consisting of organizations, leaders, soldiers, and civilians trained and educated, exhibiting and imbued with the principle of "operational adaptability." Organizational and operational adaptability are dependent, first and foremost, on developing the individual soldier. With the American soldier as its first priority, the Army can overcome the Darwinian challenge of evolving from its capstone concept to meeting the challenges of the FOE. General Peter J. Schoomaker's tenure as Chief of Staff of the Army (CSA), and events leading up to it, provide a case study demonstrating success and failure in leading organizational adaptation. The case study covers the decade leading up to Schoomaker's tenure as CSA; how he ultimately decided and implemented the final form and structure of transformation; and how his decisions, made while the Army was at war, were all dynamics of his being the "change--agent" to the Army's culture and organization. It demonstrates desirable and undesirable traits in Army organizational practices, processes, and culture; as well as leadership traits that help and hinder innovation and adaptation. These lessons offer a road map and way ahead as the Army faces an uncertain, unpredictable, complex, non-linear, and chaotic FOE. Following the case study, a comparison is drawn between the strategic-political-economic environment in which the Army found itself in the 1990s and the present. Comparing similarities, as well as the problems and challenges posed by expectations in the FOE, provides Army senior leaders with a guidebook of lessons learned to avoid pitfalls of the past. It also provides recommendations for the future to navigate challenges the Army faces now, as well as in the years and decades ahead. Historically, the most successful organizational adaptation initiatives focus on organizational culture, professionalism and professional development of the individual soldier first, rather than investing in a priority of effort to improve organizational structure and technological advances. Amateurs focus on developing, designing and equipping organizational structures to cope with future challenges. Why? Because, it is not very complicated in the grand scheme of the adaptation process to change the outward appearance of an organization. Rather, great leaders, true professionals, leading the most successful efforts in organizational adaptation, understand that the most difficult challenges are internal. Changing the way an organization thinks, learns and acts takes the greatest skill and leadership. Knowing that it can only be done by guiding, developing, educating, and leading a team effort from the bottom up, is the only way to achieve lasting change.