
General Failure: How the American military rewards failure at the highest ranks - jseliger
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/general-failure/309148/?single_page=true
======
tomstokes
Very interesting perspective into the shortcomings of our military system. The
article is worth reading through, but in summary: The author suggests that our
drawn-out, meandering wars are the result of a perverse incentive system among
the higher ranks of the military. Leaders are not rewarded for successes or,
perhaps more importantly, punished for their shortcomings and failures.
Instead, they are given short, time-limited appointments in leadership roles,
which changes the goal from military success to simply ensuring that nothing
too bad happens on their watch. Likewise, these time-limited roles result in a
diffusion of success, where everyone can claim that progress was at least
partially due to some of their own actions.

Perhaps the most succinct explanation from the article:

    
    
        But the Army continues to do too little to sort the average performers from the
        outstanding ones. That has long-term consequences for the caliber of military
        leaders. A recent survey by students at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government
        found that good young officers have left the military in large part because of
        frustration with military bureaucracy and the sense that the armed forces do
        not have a performance-oriented system for managing personnel.
    

The author proposes that the military should more frequently relieve poor
performers from their positions until they find the person with the right
personality and intelligence for the position.

I've never been involved in the military, but I feel as though this perverse
incentive structure is common among many businesses as well. Most big
companies I've worked with have a few obviously incompetent employees in
leadership positions, but harbor an unwillingness to demote or fire them
because they've "earned" their position through hard work and loyalty to the
company. Taken to the extreme, this is the famous "Peter Principle," which
suggests that employees will continue to be promoted until they reach a
position beyond their abilities, at which point they languish in mediocrity. (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle> )

~~~
guylhem
Making sure that nothing bad happens under your watch may not be such a bad
thing in the military. Most of the critiques in this tread sound like this
comment by Davidson about the french change of leadership in Vietnam:

 _On arrival, Navarre was shocked by what he found. There had been no long-
range plan since de Lattre's departure. Everything was conducted on a day-to-
day, reactive basis. Combat operations were undertaken only in response to
enemy moves or threats. There was no comprehensive plan to develop the
organization and build up the equipment of the Expeditionary force. Finally,
Navarre, the intellectual, the cold and professional soldier, was shocked by
the "school's out" attitude of Salan and his senior commanders and staff
officers. They were going home, not as victors or heroes, but then, not as
clear losers either. To them the important thing was that they were getting
out of Indochina with their reputations frayed, but intact. They gave little
thought to, or concern for, the problems of their successors._

Just look at the ambition and creativity displayed by Navarre's "hedgehog"
strategy, and the (spoiler alert: dismal) result it got for France in the
Vietnam war:

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

Not losing may in fact be one of the requirements for winning :-)

In corporations, the consequences are not that bad - closing door is not a big
tragedy. Ten of thousands dead on the other hand, and a war lost _is_ a
tragedy.

So please don't dismiss the military just because they work differently. They
are on a different problem space. They need different solutions.

~~~
michael_fine
The hedgehog strategy there worked, brilliantly, but it is a __strategy __, a
strategy designed around not losing. In the case of the American military,
most of our missions now have specific aims that can't be accomplished by
simply avoiding disasters.

~~~
subsystem
The early decisions in the Iraq war like de-Ba'athification, dissolution of
the military and not protecting vital government sites, could be seen as
thinking to much about "winning the war" and not enough about not losing it.

On the other hand it was somewhat the tactic of the Iraqis, or even more so
the Taliban. To not lose by disrupting society enough that their enemy can't
"win".

------
stcredzero
_> Relief of generals has become so rare that a private who loses his rifle is
now punished more than a general who loses his part of the war._

This is a part of our society's disconnection from meritocracy and transition
to a state where a privileged caste rules and extracts from society on the
basis of arbitrary marks of differentiation.

~~~
pron
> This is a part of our society's disconnection from meritocracy

I would argue the opposite, but that depends on the elusive definition of
"meritocracy". When people use that term, they usually mean that people's
status or influence is bestowed on them based on their past performance, or
"merit" (whatever that means). That is, a person is given a position based on
his earned "merit", and "merit" is like some general currency that can be
accumulated.

The article argues that successful organizations behave differently. They
assign, or remove, roles and influence not based on accumulated "merit", but
based on performance at a very particular task. If you're not good at this
specific task, you will be immediately given another, regardless of your past
"merit". This is not meritocracy where those with much earned "merit" rise to
the top, but rather an organization where the goals are more important than
the current job holders. It is an organization that assigns importance to
collective results over the importance of individuals. I think that such an
organization is hard to maintain over time because, in the end, it, too, is
composed of people, each with their private interests, that may sometimes
clash with those of the collective. But it is a far cry from meritocracy, that
is, in practice, little more than simply bestowing privilege on horders of
"merit" rather than horders of money, noble blood, or other more quantifiable
currencies. This may actually make meritocracies worse than other privileged-
class structures, precisely because those at the top can easily change their
definition, and exchange-rate, of "merit".

At no point does the article suggest that General Franks was promoted, say,
because he was someone's relative, or a member of the right party; in fact,
nowhere is it suggested that he was promoted for anything but merit. And that
is why he wasn't relieved - precisely because he was a "holder of merit". This
is how meritocracy works. In WWII, someone would possible have told him "we
don't care what you did or can do. At this point, your particular actions are
not helping our collective war effort, so you must step aside for a while".

But people like meritocracy, because, for some, "merit" isn't hard to achieve.
You get the right credentials, put in some talent and a lot of effort, and
presto, you're part of the elite. People don't like being judged over and
over, be only as good as their last action. They want to rest without losing
their status. Only an organization where people truly put aside their egos for
the good of the public can function as the article claims the military used to
function in WWII.

~~~
rdtsc
Well "merit" just means something that justifies a reward. So it is a bit of a
circular definition and thus anyone can inject their own interpretation of it.

What I think think "meritocracy" means is that someone gets promoted because
they deserve it based on some objective performance metric. I don't think it
differentiates specifically whether this is a long streak of good performance
or an immediate recent, single, success. You seem to argue between these two.
While I think the most common interpretation is not immediate vs long term
merit but the type of performance and degree of objectivity. If performance is
just "being in the system for X numbers of years" then most would argue it is
not meritocracy, which is what General Franks had. You argue that he was a
holder of "merit", I say not. He was just one of the many similar available
candidates in the bureaucratic system and one had to be promoted. So he was
promoted. Often that also came as a function of number of years in the service
or number of years in "action". So that is not "meritocracy".

> But people like meritocracy, because, for some, "merit" isn't hard to
> achieve.

People like meritocracy because it is inherently has a fuzzy definition and
the term itself has a positive vibe as, by default, it stands against
bureaucracy, nepotism, mediocrity, and corruption.

For example my beef with "meritocracy" is that it is actually a negative term,
because metrics and "objectivity" criteria are defined by the current power
systems. So their judgement and metrics are implicitly now "objective" and
purely "performance based" just by being associated together in the phrase
that also has the word "meritocracy" in it. (Say, "college admissions are
purely merit based", stuff like that). Or, like the classic issue with IQ
tests that used to test heavily culture-dependent things such that any
non-(Western, white, middle class) would be disadvantaged. But this particular
arguments is perhaps better saved for another discussion thread.

------
vondur
I've always assumed that the Military tended to function as a giant
bureaucracy, which tends to discourage many from staying in. That seems to be
the norm for Government institutions. I would blame politicians for the drawn
out wars we are engaged in. I'm sure if we gave the military carte blanche
command of the wars, they could end them. (We may not like the tactics, but
that's another discussion)

------
afterburner
Peacetime armies (ie. not WWII) end up with careerists on top, not warriors.
So you get the same as any mediocre corporation. The immediate stakes to
national security aren't high enough to demand results "or else".

~~~
hindsightbias
We've been at war for over a decade. That's 3X the length of WWII.

~~~
afterburner
It's a matter of how much the civilian population is focused on the effort.
WWII was a total war, everyone back home was involved in some way, usually
through rationing, working a war-effort job, buying a war bond, paying
increased taxes, and/or worrying about loved ones serving in the military
(often though the draft).

Things like Iraq and Afghanistan are basically peacetime military actions.
It's a war over there... but back home, not so much. That affects what kind of
talent, attention, priority, etc. goes into it.

------
confluence
Looks like a "General Failure" in statistics/randomness (oh no he didn't) and
merely an example of the fundamental attribution error (the Generals - that's
it! I mean what does the effectiveness of large hardware on underground
entrenchments have to do with it! We just need better leadership - not more
guns, grunts, bombs and money).

Battlefields are highly path dependent (lose 50 men on one hill - combined
with unreplaced troops on the previous one - you've just lost 10km^2), chaotic
(that shell just randomly took out your battleship during a beach rush - no
more covering fire - you get slaughtered), subject to the influence of
volatile human psychology (sounds and sights can decimate morale, focus and
the ability to shoot people in the face at random times), resources (platoon 3
runs out of ammo, bogged down on critical hill - backup platoon can't get to
them - out of range of covering shelling - lose the hill and the valley),
weather (it's raining - they have tanks and relieved troops), positions (your
hill just turned to mud and blood), communications (platoon 1 - decimated -
incoherent babble and screaming, platoon 2 - nothing, platoon 3 -
incomprehensible, platoon 4 faulty intel) and hell - wind direction (dust
blows into your platoons' eyes - but not into the enemies).

None of that has much to do with the general on the ground - it's just shit
that happens in highly chaotic, unpredictable, uncertain and resource
constrained environments.

I see the same kind of criticism leveled at CEOs.

Granted, many of them are complete morons and can drive companies into the
ground. However most are simply doing what appears reasonable at the time, and
are just unlucky not to have the corporate/economic/technology winds (or dust)
at their backs.

People overrate what people can honestly achieve in highly chaotic
environments. 15% of corporate CEOs are replaced every year - notice how
companies don't change much from year to year though - I have. However,
changing often definitely let's us lionize the lucky ones (see hedge funds,
startups, novels, movies, tv shows and any other at scale, highly path
dependent, chaotic and random systems).

We failed in Iraq and Afghanistan because we needed 10x more troops on landing
and about 15x more resources and a great deal more international support.

This is by far the most predictive of success on any battlefield (and
business) - irrelevant as to who is actually running it.

------
protomyth
"These corrosive tendencies were reinforced by a new policy of officer
rotation after six months in command, which encouraged many leaders to simply
keep their heads down until they could move on—and likewise encouraged
superior officers to wait out the tours of bad officers serving beneath them.
Instead of weeding out bad officers, senior leaders tended to closely
supervise them, encouraging habits of micromanagement that plague the Army to
this day."

Some companies have this policy and it seems to be at the root of their
management trouble. It causes short-term thinking and what make me look good
as opposed to what makes this place better.

~~~
Evbn
I don't get how this article an on the one hand condemn rotations and on the
other hand condemn keeping people in he or positions too long.

~~~
protomyth
It does seem odd, but my explanation is the "I know I'm moving" problem. If
you have mandatory rotations[1], then optimizing for a better next jump is
just smart behavior. You know you're leaving so optimize for "flashy"
improvements and curry favor with superiors. Its the known deadline that's the
problem.

That being said, people should move on at some point. The US Navy before and
after WWII rotated out its officers to Washington DC. It made sure operational
experience was put into policy. Bringing someone home to teach is a smart
move.

[1] a typical IT strategy for managers doing the rotation to "learn new areas"
is to cut Q&A people. The effects of the cuts will be a lower budget in the
near term with looks good. The next person will get to deal with the slipping
quality since the down effects take a while as "professionals" work harder to
keep the trains running. Burnout occurs during the next dudes shift.

------
AYBABTME
I think there are two major factors leading to the promotion of incompetent
personnel to leadership positions. The first one is the bureaucratic nature of
personnel evaluation, the second being the lack of actual 'real' wars to train
the leaders (as sadistic as it appears).

_Disclaimer_ : I only have an observer experience of the US Army (I went on
tour in Afghanistan in a mixed US/Canada brigade), but my actual employment
was in the Canadian Forces. I was on tour when Gen McChrystal was relieved and
replaced by Gen Petraeus, and also when (CA) Gen Menard was relieved and
replaced by Gen Vance.

1\. In the early ranks of officers, promotions are very strongly linked to
evaluation reports. Evaluation reports came to be very sanitize and
politically corrected documents where you need a load of supporting
documentation if you want to negatively score someone. If someone received an
hypothetical score of 3 last year, you need very strong arguments if you want
to reduce that score the year after. The system is somehow 'humanitarian' in
that it believes that no one can become worse over time, and no one is
incompetent. Also, there is a lot of 'political' pressure coming from
relationships inside the military. I saw first hand some obviously incompetent
Captain be promoted to the rank of Major, simply for political reasons.
Somebody back in the country had plans back home for this officer, and this
promotion was planned ahead of time (the officer had time in rank and was put
in the position they were to give them some 'action' cred).

Put together with the fact that promotions are expected after certain specific
check-in-the-boxes, this leads to the promotion of incompetent leaders on
purely bureaucratic grounds. Eventually leading to a wider range of
incompetent officers in the pool of Colonel in which Generals are chosen.

2\. Recent wars are not related in 'danger factor' to what WWII has been.
Nobody's in actual danger of having their family killed/their country harmed
if they don't succeed in their missions oversea. Those missions are political
disturbance of far away countries. They are, sadistically, good for the troops
as they give them first hand experience with real combat - it's essential for
an army to always have veterans in their ranks to train other members. If a
generation of the army would go without seeing combat actions, the technical
abilities of this army would quickly evaporate. In that regard, while recent
conflicts provided combat experience to field personnel, they have not been of
a large enough scale to train generals. Generals thus can't really become
battle-hardened and provide hands-on experience while on tour.

Finally, the idea of doing a 'tour' when you're a general, like noted by the
article. They come in theater with a vision (but often no general field
experience, and sometimes even no field experience at all) and have only a few
weeks/months to try out their vision and see what happens, and that's when
they're actually on site and not back home dealing with politicians. Then
regardless of the outcome, they are relieved and replaced by another general.

~~~
WalterBright
There is a big problem with generals with battlefield experience - they fail
in the next war because they cannot break free of what worked in the previous
war.

Technological progress is so rapid that doctrine has to be rewritten from the
ground up for each conflict.

For example, we went into WW2 with heavy reliance on battleships. They were
quickly discovered to be worse than useless, the aircraft carrier was far more
effective.

The examples are endless, such as the disastrous misuse of cavalry in WW1, and
Hitler using obsolete WW1 tactics.

~~~
001sky
_There is a big problem with generals with battlefield experience_

An interesting datapoint, historically is Churchill. If your read his history
of the world wars, he was the 'sea lord' or somesuch and head of the royal
navy. in advance of wwi, he actualy revolutionized the fate of the world in
the 20th century, by preparing GB for the _next_ war (WWI). In particular, the
switch to the use of diesel vs coal, to increase the range of the Naval fleet.
This is the source of the WWII battleships example. And also the origin of the
politicization of the Middle east. This supports your notion (becaue he wasn't
a general), but undermines the idea that you cannot act with foresight. He
also had battlefield experience. [1]

[1] Also, your last sentence is curious, as I think you missed the example of
Hitler conquering europe from russia to the english channel, inventing the
Blitzcrieg, and the various dry-run live-fire experiments, eg Spanish Civil
war.

~~~
WalterBright
Hitler made numerous serious errors from applying WW1 tactics, such as over-
reliance on fixed fortifications.

~~~
paganel
> such as over-reliance on fixed fortifications.

Which "fixed fortifications" would those be? If you're talking about the
Allies' final attack on Germany of late 1944-early 1945, then I'd say by that
time Hitler had already lost the war. The two most crucial moments I can think
about are the battle of Stalingrad which did not allow the German Army to lay
its hands on the Caucasus and its oil resources, and then the battle of Kursk,
which had nothing to do with WW1 tactics.

And to copy-paste Clausewitz's name in here (the article makes a passing
reference to him when it talks about "Franks fundamentally misunderstood
generalship, which at its topmost levels must link military action to
political results"), I'd say Hitler's final chances were political in nature,
more exactly I'm talking about his tries to intervene between Churchill and
the US on the one hand and the USSR on the other, trying to convince the first
bunch about the perils of letting the Soviets be on the victorious side. The
Tehran Conference put an end to that.
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehran_Conference>)

~~~
WalterBright
Hitler did fall into the battleship trap, grossly underestimated the value of
long range aircraft and fighter aircraft, relied heavily on fixed
fortifications like the Atlantic Wall and the Siegfried Line, both of which
were easily bypassed, etc.

He squandered his men by not allowing them to retreat and regroup, again
thinking like it was WW1.

Of course he would have lost anyway, but he could have made it much harder.

~~~
antman
Against fixed targets battleships gave higher firepower. Aircraft cqrriers
were the new technology for naval operations away from large land masses. The
heavy fortification of the atlantic wall was only for first landing, the
defence line was deep but it was annihilated with heavy bombardment from
allied battleships. The Siegfried line was pretty much abandoned during the
war and was hastily manned during the last defence. German efficiendy wasn't
very good at this point since t was against the original planing and they had
even lost their fortifications and underground plans in some places.

The doctrine after WW1 was not keeping an advanced position but moving forward
with tanks and keeping the enemy of balance. That was an extarpolation of
Rommels "Infantry attacks" book, who was succesful in the WW1 and was already
famous and a teacher in the german military academy in the interwar period.

~~~
WalterBright
The problem with battleships is they were incredibly vulnerable to air attack.

Ambrose's book "Citizen Soldiers" details the failure of Hitler's fixed
fortifications, and Galland's book "The First and the Last" details Hitler's
failure to understand air power.

~~~
001sky
The texbook counter-example on circumvention of fixed fortifications was done
by Hitler's army, at the _start_ of the war. Viz:

 _The Manstein Plan is often seen as either the result of, or the cause of a
mid-twentieth century Revolution in military affairs. In the former
hypothesis, expounded by Fuller and Basil Liddell Hart immediately after the
events, the Manstein Plan is presented as a natural outcome of deliberate
changes in the German military doctrine during the twenties and thirties by
men as Guderian or Hans von Seeckt implementing Fuller's or Liddell Hart's
ideas._ [1]

Diesel-electric Submarines were ultimately also vulnerable to air power. But
not before their use in warfare was pioneered by the Germans, to devastating
effect. And france was germany's "aircraft carrier", don't forget its less
than 100 miles from the UK, couldn't be sunk, and didn't need a fleet-escort.
(etc).

Further innovations:

\- Jet fighters

\- Cruise Missles

\- Ballistic Missles

\- Submarine Warfare

\- Armored Calvary

It was a war, and 'improvisation' would be expected as losses mount and access
to resources were curtailed. The general thesis that the Nazis were fighting
"ww1" style is not really a teneble notion. At all.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manstein_Plan>

~~~
WalterBright
1\. Hitler basically stalled and wrecked the jet fighter development,
diverting its resources to developing a fairly ineffective jet bomber. 2\. The
cruise missiles and ballistic missiles contributed essentially nothing to the
war effort, while consuming vast resources. They simply weren't accurate
enough, and were misused as well (London was a political target, not a
military one). 3\. You're right about that, but U-Boots were big in WW1, too.
4\. Hitler still put his faith in fixed fortifications, despite the success of
his generals with mobile warfare.

There's no doubt that the German army had many forward thinking ideas. But I'm
talking about Hitler overriding them and refighting WW1.

------
adaml_623
_In World War II, the firing of a general was seen as a sign that the system
was working as planned. Yet now, in the rare instances when it does occur,
relief tends to be seen, especially inside the Army, as a sign that the system
has somehow failed._

Oh how I wish that governments would realise this. Making mistakes and then
correcting the mistakes is the important thing. The whole phenomena of start-
ups dominating over established companies is a guide to how you should be
running the established businesses. Government departments hold onto their bad
decisions, trying to justify them and hide the damning evidence when really
they should be praised for acknowledging mistakes and changing their minds.

~~~
antman
I totally agree. And there is also the fact that in a competitive environment,
competiton is human. You can not folllow a strict procedure on paper, when the
competition adapts, copies and even improves. Unfortunately the procedure is
also the justification for any action, and it is easier to create metrics on
how good the procedure was followed than creating metrics for the results of
their actions.

------
RockyMcNuts
The soldier who loses his rifle faces harsher punishment than the general who
loses the war.

------
bediger4000
So, considering individuals as "human resources" instead of people (personnel)
has consequences in the US Military as well as in corporate life. Who would
have thought that change in how people are considered would have such an
impact?

------
cafard
Before we go too far down this road, what about Douglas MacArthur? He pushed
the government to defend the Philippines, he lost most of his air in the first
24 hours--after the news from Pearl Harbor was known--and he returned home as
a hero. And yes, he did have his moments, in WW II, and Korea, but some of his
decisions in the latter war lead to a barely-contained fiasco.

------
EliRivers
This was ever the way. The needs (and goals) of a peacetime armed forces
(which is what the US still has, despite meandering wars in the Middle East
still running) are different to those of a wartime armed forces. The only
question is how quickly, given the shift to wartime footing, one can replace
the peacetime command with that needed to win wars.

------
anigbrowl
I don't think this is an exclusively American problem. There's an eye-opening
book called 'On the psychology of military incompetence' which ought to be
required reading for anyone in a leadership position.

------
taligent
Sorry but what does this have to do with IT or HN in general ?

~~~
coderdude
"[...] anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" is equal to
"anything" given enough users.

I think we got some good discussion out of this one, though.

~~~
taligent
That's Fox News quality quoting there. How about not taking it out of context.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Pretty sure the US military
counts as political.

~~~
robryan
I don't think so. This isn't a right/left piece where everyone is going to
come and comment based on their views and their opposition to the opposing
viewpoint and be unswayed at all based on the discussion.

