

Just Do It - maudlinmau5
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/01/just-do-it.html

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rdl
It would be interesting if there were more 1-3 year "rotation" positions.

The Silicon Valley (and more so outside) default seems to be "we're hiring you
for life", even though the compensation structure (vesting) is set up to
encourage no more than 4 years, and in reality more like 1-2 years.

There are a lot of jobs I'd love to take if there were an explicit "accomplish
this in 18 months -- if that is successful, you've been successful" -- but
where psychologically the idea of "work here forever" would be horrible (even
if I intended to quit). VC (EIR focused on security, or some associate type
role, ...), politics or activism, turnaround/tech strategy for an existing
business in distress, etc.

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ims
You pretty much described the way jobs are structured in the U.S. military
officer corps. You typically have fewer than 2-3 years in any given
assignment. There are some interesting pros and cons.

On the one hand, it really forces people to _learn to learn_ and adapt quickly
-- even in very different spheres (especially because people are usually
rotated between operational jobs and policy/admin/planning staff jobs). That
is paired with the "up or out" selection mechanism to try to weed out people
who are bad at that. Through the arc of your career of many different jobs,
the organization's goal is to give you a broad understanding of its whole
portfolio of missions and business processes while making them an expert in
one or two areas. (Similar to the industry term of being a "T-shaped"
employee.) It is also an attempt to shake things up periodically so that
people and processes don't get too entrenched. Performance reports lean
heavily on what you have accomplished in a short period of time.

On the other hand, you lose quite a bit of corporate knowledge when 25%-30% of
any given group leaves every year. As soon as you start to feel like an
expert, you are reassigned and have to start all over again. As for the
attempt not to get too entrenched... this works well for smaller units, but is
markedly less effective at large, staff-based ones (i.e. the Pentagon).

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rdl
Yeah -- it's pretty common inside management consultancies, too (which is the
model Meg Whitman tried to impose at eBay. I don't think it helped them.)

The military at least has less rotation in the Warrant Officer system (you can
be a pilot for ~almost your whole career, or a comms expert, etc.), and has
decent programs for technical expertise development for enlisted (until you
get past E-8, but E-8 is a great terminal rank). There's a difference being a
Blackhawk pilot with a combat units vs. medevac vs. 160th, but it's not _that_
big a difference vs. running an infantry company to a staff officer position
in an occupation force to running an acquisitions program in DC.

The officer corps really does seem to sacrifice a lot in order to create O-6
and in particular general officers. If the goal were just to produce the best
possible company and field grades, you'd probably do something more similar to
how warrants are handled.

One of the biggest problem the military has (in jobs like occupying a country)
is gratuitous individual rotation. I spent more time in Iraq than ~any
military officer I ever met, because I actually lived there. There were KBR
cafeteria workers who spent _the entire conflict_ , and truck drivers who knew
more about the situation (by virtue of driving on the roads for 5 years pretty
much straight) than the military responsible for them.

The solution to that, IMO, would be to assign higher level units to tasks, and
then rotate their subordinate units through on a repeating basis. e.g. 1CAV
should "own" Southern Iraq for the duration, and HQ elements should remain in
place the whole time. Individual BDE could rotate through. This was
essentially the British Empire model. For other capabilities, at least rotate
a unit back and forth to the same area -- 6mo rotations would be fine if it
were half on, half off, to exactly the same thing; sort of similar to how the
navy blue/gold crews worked.

It is way too easy to win on OERs by checking boxes vs. actually doing
anything. You end up with people making meaningless changes when something is
already fine (sometimes, cycles every other commander!) just to make their
mark and get something on the OER.

I personally have respect for JSOC and for combat arms during wartime as a
good model for leadership (all the way from E-4 through O-6; never talked to
people much beyond that), but I don't think the military model in the US works
during peacetime or in roles outside combat arms, medical, aviation, or SOF.

Another interesting model for all of this is how the Soviet officer structure
worked -- they'd put their best available candidate into a role, but wouldn't
promote him to the official rank right away. You could end up with a Colonel
commanding a Corps if he was the best guy available. There were maximum ranks
for various positions, but not minimum ranks.

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DanielRibeiro
Similar to Mark Suster's[1]: _What Makes an Entrepreneur? Four Letters: JFDI_

[http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/11/19/what-makes-
an-...](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/11/19/what-makes-an-
entrepreneur-four-lettersjfdi/)

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minikomi
Haha.. Effin' would have been a better 2nd word for the anagram.

~~~
mdda
Or, for a 'U' rating : Enthusiastically, or Efficiently, or EXTREME!

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PanMan
I really like the @pmarca quote: "Marc Andreessen says you either will be the
person who tells the computer what to do or the person that the computer tells
what to do."

