Photo courtesy of James Dubik

Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik in Iraq.

August 17, 2009 | At first glance, it would seem hard to imagine two organizations more different from each other than the Catholic Church and the U.S. Army.

But then again. . . .

They’re both vast, sprawling entities with people and resources deployed around the globe. They’re doggedly hierarchical, with layers of staff, each subordinate to the one above, all reporting ultimately to one supreme commander-in-chief. And, like all complex organizations, they both resist change mightily.

Fortunately for the Army and the Catholic Church, few people know, understand and love both as well as retired Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik. A one-time seminarian who wrestled as a young man with a call to the priesthood, Dubik is a soldier-scholar who last year brought to a close an extraordinary 40-year career in the military.

His final assignment, right out of today’s headlines: overseeing the training of Iraqi security forces. Before that, he was the Army’s official change agent, helping to lead it through one of the most sweeping transitions in U.S. military history.

Now, less than a year after retirement, Dubik, 59, is sharing some of what he learned in the Army -- specifically his considerable organizational knowledge and skills -- to help improve the functioning of the Catholic Church in the United States.

“When I left the Army, I did not want to work full time in corporate America,” Dubik said. “I’d led large organizations, I’d had high-pressure jobs. But I knew I wanted to work in areas that I am passionate about.”

One of those is the Catholic Church, which he wants to help “adapt to some very difficult conditions.”

That is an understatement. As an article earlier this year in Commonweal noted, the church has been rocked not only by clergy sexual abuse scandals, but also by widespread mismanagement of financial and human resources. A study at Villanova University, for example, estimates that half of dioceses in the U.S. have experienced significant embezzlement.

Leadership Roundtable

Dubik is channeling his new work through the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management, which he serves as a board member. Launched in 2004, the Roundtable is a lay-led nonprofit aimed at addressing the church’s structural problems by bringing better administrative practices to dioceses and parishes. Each June, the Roundtable holds a national meeting at the Wharton School of Business, bringing together bishops, priests, CEOs and nonprofit leaders to explore ways to improve church operations, increase financial accountability and help restore credibility.

Though the Roundtable is focused solely on the Catholic Church, its work is being watched with interest by leaders in other denominations. Protestants, too, need better management.

But what exactly does a retired general know that could help the church, Catholic or otherwise?

As an infantryman and paratrooper, Dubik knows how to march with a full pack and jump out of planes. He has led troops into battle. He commanded peacekeeping forces in Haiti and in Bosnia. With a master’s degree in philosophy, he has taught and studied at the U.S Military Academy and other prestigious universities including Harvard, Johns Hopkins and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

But Dubik is not proposing a corps of parachuting priests. What Dubik knows that can help the church is this: He knows how to transform organizations. Earlier this decade, he played a leading role in planning and bringing about one of the most extensive transformations in the Army’s history, helping it adapt to a new world following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Wanting to break the Cold War mold, then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki set out to reshape the Army into a more nimble, flexible force that could adapt to and address a variety of threats.

To help accomplish that task, Shinseki created a new Army position, “deputy commanding general for transformation,” and appointed Dubik. As the Wall Street Journal described it in a 2000 article, Dubik was “essentially, the first Army officer assigned to the 21st century.”

The stimulant of outside ideas

Affable and approachable, Dubik defies any Patton-like preconceptions one might have about a battle-seasoned officer who has worked at the highest levels of the Pentagon. He readily concedes that not everything can or should be imported into the church from the secular world.

Local congregations are inherently and pervasively religious and should remain so. They are also not bottom-line operations focused on reaching goals for the next quarter or satisfying shareholders, but are communities of believers and a witness of sacrifice for others. Yet, leaders of any organization -- church, business or military -- can learn much by looking to other fields for new ideas, Dubik said.

“We know that outside ideas from corporate America don’t completely apply to the military just as outside ideas from corporate America don't apply perfectly to the church,” Dubik said. “But it is an embedded part of a senior leader's responsibility to bring in ideas out of other professions as stimulants.”

The first step, he said, is to “understand the essence of the idea as distinct from how that idea is manifested in one professional milieu or another.”

Dubik’s point is vividly illustrated by a program he is pitching to the Roundtable: a Web-based, peer-to-peer leadership development program that priests could use to quicken the pace of institutional change by learning and sharing with each other what actually works. Basically, Dubik wants to create online “communities of practice” that could cut through the bureaucracy and help priests and others in the church do their jobs better.

The proposal is inspired by “CompanyCommand,” a very real program that Dubik protected and promoted during his tenure as the Army’s official change agent. Still in use, CompanyCommand and a similar Web forum, PlatoonLeader.com, were designed to short-circuit the military’s “silo” mentality and spread new knowledge as rapidly as possible rather than let it linger and die somewhere up the chain of command.

The websites are highly praised by the young officers who use them. When rumors circulated earlier this year that the Web forums might be shut down as part of Pentagon budget cuts, soldiers rallied to their defense.

“(CompanyCommand) offers young officers and company grade leaders a forum to speak candidly with each other, conduct informal (reviews) on personal performance and share the lessons learned so that the mistakes of today do not repeat themselves,” one officer posted in an online discussion board.

“It’s a place where ideas are contested, haggled over, defended and advanced,” another wrote.

Cavemen and communities of practice

Lt. Col. Nate Allen, who created CompanyCommand in 1995 with another then-new captain at a base in Hawaii, told this summer’s Roundtable gathering that such communities of practice are not new but have been around forever.

“Cavemen were probably gathering around the fire asking each other, ‘Now how did you kill that sabre-toothed tiger?’” he said during a panel discussion with Dubik.