

Last Wishes of a Dying "General" - bkohlmann
http://www.jqpublic-blog.com/?p=133

======
chrissnell
Army officer here, currently a Captain in the Army Reserve. Most of what this
guy says is spot-on but there's one big thing that he missed. Perhaps this
does not apply in the Air Force but I suspect that it does:

Senior leaders in big organizations like our military have an unfortunate
unwritten mandate to /create/ things: policies, organizations, rules,
procedures, etc. This mandate is enforced by the officer evaluation system
which demands quantitive measures of performance, eg. "Implemented XYZ policy
and achieved 98% compliance rate across Battalion's 510 Soldiers".

It _sounds_ like a good idea to that leader and to the rater and senior rater
who evaluate him but in actuality, it creates a shitstorm of busywork for his
subordinates and over time, it becomes impossible to get anything meaningful
done because of the never-ending load of mandatory upper-leadership-directed
tasks and training requirements.

It's a huge fucking mess. Every time I go into somewhere like an Army hospital
and I see something posted about the Commander's new policy on electricity
usage or whatever, I immediately think "bullet point on this guy's OER".
Seriously, people are making careers out of this bullshit. The Army is a
never-ending stream of computer-based training requirements. Our Soldiers
spend weeks of every year in front of web browsers, trying to complete some
horribly broken Flash-based interactive training that "teaches" them safe
driving, STD prevention, social engineering awareness, etc. It's all crap and
you know that some Colonel got a star for spending $2MM to implement them.

If you want to improve military efficiency and increase troop morale, start
rewarding people for _eliminating programs_.

I would love to have a bullet point on my OER:

* Successfully eliminated five outdated computer security training programs, saving the Army $15MM/year in program costs and 750,000 hours of Soldier training time.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
A couple of questions if you don't mind

1\. Private security firms are apparently taking over huge swathes of the not-
actually-being-shot-at roles. Are those "soldiers" required to do the same
policy busy work?

2\. US Armed forces (incl reserve) is nearly 3m. Is that simply too big?

3\. I thought the patten quote earlier solved this one - no policy or training
DVD tells you what to do, it's telling you how.

~~~
Tloewald
It seems to me that the root of the US militaey's problems is that it's a
giant peacetime military. Until WWII the US military was small in peacetime so
that when there was a war promotions based on real performance eventually
overwhelmed the peacetime leadership. It's impractical for the US to have a
tiny military, but reducing it by 2/3 should be doable if anyone has the
political means.

~~~
stan_rogers
Sorry, but that's just not the case anymore. There's a lot more to weapons
systems now than simply figuring out which end to point at the thing you want
to hurt. Even getting a straight-leg infanteer up to speed takes more than a
couple of weeks these days, and that doesn't begin to account for any of the
more sophisticated tools that need trained operators and maintainers. There
are some trades (MOCs) you can populate relatively quickly, but there are a
whole big bunch of them that take years in peacetime (though you could break
some of them down into smaller specialties and fast-track it to months at the
expense of having people who know the whole system in wartime). It stopped
being about getting a horde of young men to walk slowly and bravely into
machine gun fire a long time ago.

~~~
Tloewald
This may be true, but we don't need to outspend the rest of the world on
defense in "peace" time. I'd also argue that we're very good at building
insanely difficult to use systems. Perhaps if getting users up to speed with
weapon systems were a design priority this wouldn't be true. After all,
everywhere else but the military tech gets more powerful and simpler to use.

~~~
stan_rogers
> After all, everywhere else but the military tech gets more powerful and
> simpler to use.

And more disposable. If your modern whiz-bang gizmo dies in the field on civvy
street, that may mean a trip to the store. Even those things that _can_ be
repaired or worked around are beyond the knowledge and capabilities of most
owners/users these days. If it happens on the battlefield, you're dead if
you're relying on things you don't understand and can't at least jury-rig to
work when they go bing. And no, you can't reschedule. And along with the
training you need to make it work, you'd damned well better have the
conditioning that allows you to use the training when your own personal ass is
on the line. If you are to have a military at all these days, it pretty much
has to be a standing military (regular plus reserves). _Ad hoc_ forces are
cannon fodder and little more.

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bkohlmann
Glad to see a bunch of military folks commenting here. Inculcating a culture
of innovation within the service is something I am passionate about, to
counter the reality of what this prescient author writes about.

I am part of an organization launching what we call the Defense Entrepreneurs
Forum, co-sponsored by the Booth School of Business at UofChicago. Its a
TEDx/Startup weekend type event featuring junior warfighters from across the
services coming together with civilian entrepreneurs to create new national
security and defense solutions. National security in the 21st century will be
defined by we in the Innovation generation create through collaborative
efforts, breaking the antiquated models of the industrial era.

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gpcz
Patton once said "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and
they will surprise you with their ingenuity." If the author's third point is
an accurate representation of reality in the Air Force, I wonder how the armed
forces went so far to the other extreme since WW2.

~~~
tanzam75
Because the United States won World War II, and because it outclassed every
opponent it fought after World War II.

Winning has a very bad effect on innovation. In contrast, it's when you _lose_
that the old doctrines get discredited and innovation has a chance to take
hold.

Patton was essentially describing the famous German system of _Auftragstaktik_
(mission tactics), in which junior officers are given an _objective_ and
permitted the freedom to decide how to accomplish that objective.

The Prussians developed mission tactics and the modern general staff because
they were so _shocked_ by their defeat at the hands of Napoleon. It took
Napoleon just three weeks to march into Berlin, winning every battle along the
way. Three weeks? Frederick the Great had held out for five years! Clearly,
something was _very_ wrong with the Prussian army -- so they figured it out
and fixed it.

In the late twentieth century, the Israelis have been the foremost
practitioners of German-style mission tactics. And it's because they faced the
same situation than the Germans faced, but worse -- surrounded by enemies, and
outnumbered. They cannot win on numerical superiority, so they must win on the
superiority of their military leadership.

~~~
eru
> Clearly, something was very wrong with the Prussian army -- so they figured
> it out and fixed it.

For more than a century the secret weapon of the Prussian (and then German)
military was the General Staff. Whereas other powers started planning once war
was declared, the Germans had plans for _everything_ in their drawers: Want to
attack Austria tomorrow? Just tell me whether we can assume France and Russia
are neutral or not, and the time of the year you want the campaign, and I tell
you which drawer to get the plans from.

The birth of the modern university system happened around the same time after
Prussia's defeat at Napoleon's hands.

~~~
derleth
> the Germans had plans for _everything_ in their drawers

We (the US) learned to do the same thing, even to the extreme of War Plan Red,
the plan to fight the UK and its colonies, beginning 1927 and updated through
1939. It broke down into sub-plans, one for the UK itself and one for each
major colony, including War Plan Crimson, the plan to invade Canada.

Did we imagine we'd have to actually fight the Brits? No, not really; we were
just being prepared.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red>

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rayiner
Poking around on his blog, I really liked this post: <http://www.jqpublic-
blog.com/?p=106> (describing the military budget, without some of the shrill
hysterics that often accompanies the subject).

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Spooky23
I work at a large, non-military government entity. We're in the middle of
making some big changes that when complete will save taxpayers a significant
chunk of change, and improve the efficiency of a number of things.

I feel like I should be proud of being involved in such a thing -- I'm
confident that we will succeed. But I have this lingering doubt as well.
Streamlining administration will save money, but it will also introduce the
situation that the writer's unit faced -- centralized administration.

Its been my experience that more often than not senior leadership is uniquely
unqualified to make effective decisions at a tactical level. Executives are
supposed to drive vision, not fiddle with minutiae, right? Compounding this is
the idea of taking authority away from the folks down the line -- where is the
new generation of leaders going to come from?

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Shivetya
His first comment applies to about any organization. I remember working at
companies which used various different scales and never saw anyone get below a
"B" equivalent grade.

When everyone is great who do you get to fix the problems that are obviously
there?

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bicknergseng
>>Being an expert operator is job enough for anyone all by itself. Having the
additional duty of being self-financier, administrative support specialist,
training manager, and supply coordinator is enough to stretch most individuals
beyond capability limits.

Sounds like working at a startup... except you're making decisions that take
or save lives.

~~~
jcurbo
Well, what he is likely referring to is the fact that the Air Force has
majorly cut and consolidated support fields in the past decade. There used to
be finance personnel at every base to help you if you had any problems with
your regular pay or travel costs; now that function has been centralized to
one center, which is not a horrible idea in itself except that it takes
forever to get any paperwork through. Not to mention that if there are any
errors, you have to wade back into the mire to try and get it fixed. (I once
went on a TDY [temporary duty assignment] for six months and spent the entire
time fighting the AF finance machinery over errors in their reimbursement for
my travel costs that were not my fault) I would compare it to starting your
own company (not that I have done that, bear in mind) and trying to be your
own lawyer and advisor for paperwork, taxes, local regulations, whatever. In
the military these days, you have to know the intricacies of every rule and
regulation inside and out to make sure you don't get screwed.

~~~
culturestate
I wonder if there's a business opportunity there in helping members of the
armed services navigate the bureaucracy - for example, bringing in many of the
folks who have been made redundant and hiring them out for $x per hour.

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temp453463343
I feel like, the whole idea of the military structure is to discourage
critical thinking (this is of-course a generalization). It is supposed to make
people further down the chain of command pseudo-robots to the people above
them. As the people below become more robotic the chain of _responsibility_
shifts UPWARD. So by following orders you push off responsibility to the
people above. It's a system in which the more punctual and accurate you are
the better. The less thinking you do, the more you will be rewarded. In fact,
thinking is dangerous because if you screw up you're on your own.

~~~
olympus
I kind of disagree with you here, but you are close. The US military
encourages critical thinking in all its ranks (something many other nations do
not do), but it has to do so while discouraging risky behavior. This is what
is so difficult, because unnecessary risks can literally get you and your
friends killed. Because of this the US military teaches their officers and
soldiers to follow orders but to give it some thought about how it's done. The
only career field (that I can think of) where orders are supposed to be
followed 'robotically' is the maintenance career field in the Air Force where
the Technical Orders (instructions for fixing jets) are the word of God. Most
of the time there will be quite a bit of flexibility in an order to encourage
critical thinking but discourage risk.

Source: I'm an officer in the US Air Force.

~~~
hef19898
Technical orders are the always the word of God in civil aviatio, too, at
least that's my experience.

I can't judge what a military is like, but some big organisations tend to
crack down on critical thinking pretty successfully. At least in a military
environment I can understand it somehow....

But I suppose without ANY flexibility you would actually drum out the last bit
of motivation, right?

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spoiledtechie
Anyone that works a Google, might be able to answer this. With Eric S.
removal, does the management aspect of the company work this way?

Reason, I just want to know if their way is doing something better?

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jpdoctor
> _These ideas are my own_

Funny, they sound like management in every big company I've ever known.

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lifeisstillgood
I took quite a lot from this - hackers working in large organisations suffer
from all of those situations - poor delegation, lack of time for reflection
and micromanagement.

Yet given the space we can do amazing things. It seems to me that start-ups
are a place where the bad management habits have not yet crept in - and if it
is possible to keep them out - as the author hopes, there is a possibility of
large and effective organisations

Personally I think dunbars number is a hard limit of human organisations and
we shall just have to learn to do with smaller companies - but the lessons
still apply

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CamperBob2
"Wheeee, I found a Jeep!"

Source: <http://forum.i3d.net/huiskamer-dutch/14785-if-ww2-rpg.html>

