LW: One is let's acknowledge that this is here, we have to acknowledge it; we just can't ignore it anymore. The next one is at the highest level and at every level you need to exercise restraint. And so if a topic comes up in our society that we say, you know, we have a lot of young people in this army, we need to be concerned about for example, bath salts or vaping or anything, that let's create a mandatory class. Everyone has to take it, no maybe we'll institute that class when we take something out. We can't just keep piling on requirements to the force and expecting them to accomplish all of them because they can't. And the last thing was we need to lead truthfully. So that's at the highest levels, that is if a constituency comes to army and says look, I want you to work on this topic or you need to have extra training on this topic, leading truthfully means that the people at the top have to say that's good, I'll take it, but I got to get rid of something before I can put something else there. In the middle of the organization it means we just don't blame this problem on bad leaders or weak units. Know it's something that humans have to deal with, it's all of us. And at the lowest level, leading truthfully means if you didn't come in at a hundred percent then say you came in at eighty-five percent and deal with it then, but we don't - we can't have everyone being afraid to be the only person who tells the truth.
Rob: Now you - in your report, you cite a major who described quote "It's getting to the point where we are almost rewarded for being somebody you're not, that's a dangerous situation especially now as we downsize; we're creating an environment where everything is too rosy because everyone is afraid to paint the true picture. You just wonder where it will break when it will fall apart."
LW: Yes, and that was one of my concerns is that we're teaching young officers when they come in, how to be hypocrites, how to brief well but knowing that things are not as well as they're briefed, and we don't need that in the army; we need to be honest. The army has a foundation of trust and we can't erode that trust just because we think that's what people want to hear because the people who are listening know that things can't be that rosy because they used to be there, so why do we create this facade in the first place?
Rob: So, you say that the army must take some rather drastic measures in order to correct the current deleterious culture, which later you describe as the culture of dishonesty plaguing the army. Are these three solutions drastic enough?
LW: Yes, I mean when you think about acknowledging the problem, it's really hard in the army for a senior leader to say, I came up through the system and I want to tell you the times that I had to compromise my integrity. It's really hard for a senior leader to tell a stakeholder, to tell a civilian overseer, no we don't have anymore leeway to add in that training or that requirement that you are asking me to do. It's very hard at the lowest level for someone to say, okay I'm going to be the one person to stand up and say this is the truth, I don't have a hundred percent on that and I'm willing to take the consequences. Those are all drastic because no person wants to do that.
Rob: You're still keeping things in this top down system where you don't trust people below to do anything it sounds like. You're still creating a situation where one level reports to the next level reports to the next level, and life doesn't work that way, I mean biology doesn't work that way. There are discrete systems that take care of themselves and -
LW: Oh, but see the army is both an organism and an organization. It's got to be an organism because you can't wait in this day and age for someone to tell you what to do. But it's an organization because you need the structure, you need the authority because in this business people have to do things that could cost them their lives. And so you can't expect the organism to go sacrifice its lives just because it wants to, no it takes that organization. And so what happens is you need trust. Trust from the lowest levels to the top levels that they're making the right decisions, they trust me and then things will roll on from there. There's a big push in the army to focus on something called mission command, and that's where you give someone your intent, you give them discretion, you allow them to take prudent risk and disciplined initiative and so you don't have to tell them. That's what the army's driving towards, but before we get there we've got to take care of this.
Rob: Take care of what?
LW: This bureaucratic culture of creating so many requirements on our leaders that they can't comply with everything, and yet we don't give them an out. Senior leaders should be in the process of removing those minefields of where they have to compromise their integrity, not adding to it.
Rob: So, let's get back to - you refer to this idea of mission command, it's a big push in the army to allow for mission command. Talk a little bit more about what that is because that sounds like maybe where I'm going.
LW: I think you, personally, would love mission command. Mission command is based on a commander's intent and so what you do is the commander has to express what he's trying to do; the outcome. And then through disciplined initiative, through prudent risk, through sharing of information, through trust, they allow and they empower the subordinates to take off with it. And the reason they're pushing mission command is that's the way they see the future. In the past we needed an army that was going to fight the Soviet hordes. We knew what the Soviet's where going to do, we knew how they were going to attack and so we needed our leaders to be where we thought they should be and doing what they were trained to do. Those days are gone. Now we need a leader to be able to think on their own, to anticipate, and to operate without direct supervision. That's the shift towards mission command. So, mission command; in other words, the mission is commanding not the person is commanding anymore.
Rob: Okay, that sounds yeah, that sounds a lot more bottom up. Would you characterize that as more bottom up?
LW: Oh, definitely, but it still retains the hierarchy needed in a lethal organization because when you might have to commit someone where someone's life might be lost, you still need a hierarchy in there.
Rob: So, I guess this is where you get into the delicate balance in interplay of power really.
LW: Exactly right, that's exactly it. And what the study that you're talking about - that we're talking about right here, is we need to pull the culture back to line up with this notion of mission command, that we're never going to have the trust if the organization keeps piling on things and the people at the bottom have to lie their way out of it. And so - and it's very routine things, it's not like giant things, it starts with the routine and that starts down the slippery slope we have. Again, here's an example: when soldiers want to go on leave or pass or vacation, what do you want to call it, there's this report they have to fill out online that says okay, how far are you going to be traveling? How many breaks you going to take? Do we have a person riding with you? What's the name of the hotel you're going to stop at? And what soldiers learned very quickly is that if you I'm going to travel eight hours and take no breaks it won't let you past. And so you say okay, I'll travel two hours, I'll take a break and I'll have another person - when none of it's true, but then the system will accept it. That's - we've created a system, a well-meaning system saying, you know what, we can't have people killing themselves by driving by themselves all night, but what we do is we create a system that they lie to it and that's the way to maneuver through the bureaucracy that we've created.
Rob: So, how - there's this very specific example, how would your set of solutions respond to that specific anecdote?
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