LW: It's not my area. I'm more concerned about the organization, the profession, the institution.
Rob: Can you speculate at all? Would this -
LW: No, it'd be foolish of me to speculate.
Rob: Okay, fair enough. I asked you before we were on the air about how - what kind of a response you've had to this. When did you release it to the army and when did it go published?
LW: It got posted online on Tuesday and then it was picked up by the Washington Post and it was picked up by CNN and that gave it a huge spike because the headline was Army Officers Lie, but then that attention died off quickly, but the military, the army people, picked it up because they said, what's this about? And then what happened was they started seeing it being - the report being sent from captain to captain, major to major, it was virally being spread through Facebook and Twitter and then there was a shift towards of the end of last week where the institution, senior leaders were recommending to junior leaders that they read it, and have a discussion on it.
Rob: That sounds really good. And are they getting back to you?
LW: Yes, I mean I'm getting plenty of emails saying, you know I've had one colonel say he had the report sent to him by three captains and one major and so there's no shortage of finding the study now. And he said, and we will be having discussions next week on it. That's exactly what needs to be happened and I didn't plan the reaction at all, I could only hope.
Rob: You planning any follow up to it?
LW: No, I'm not. It's hard for me to think of what next, right now.
Rob: Well, it's a very courageous thing you've done. And it's not the first time really that you've stepped into some touchy territory. I mean you've looked at some other interesting things too. You did a study fifteen years ago, looking at Gen X-ers and Boomers, do you remember that at all?
LW: Sure, there was a - we had Generation X relieving in droves, and baby boomers, my peers, couldn't understand why we just kept looking at them saying where's your loyalty? Why are all these people bailing out on the army? And we couldn't understand that this is a different generation and they're not into sacrificing their lives and their families for the army; that they want to institute work, family, balance. That they're interested in other things and that when they looked outside the army they saw their peers getting treated way differently. And we needed a wakeup call. The biggest mistake we could make in the army was -- "When I was a captain," well, guess what, things were different when we were captains. They were different for Generation X and now we're seeing the same thing for the Millennial generation as Generation X tries to lead and develop Millennial Generation into leaders.
Rob: What are you seeing with the Millennial Generation?
LW: The Millennial Generation is a wonderful breath of fresh air after Generation X, who are very cynical, who are very skeptical, the Millennials are wonderful, but the Millennials are being raised by society, by people like us who do everything for them; who give them trophies even if they zero and twenty-two in soccer, who have a graduation party when they finish third grade, and so they grow up with a rosy outlook on life, but their parents have done everything for them; which is why, for example, the percentage of sixteen year olds who have a drivers license has dropped about nineteen percent because their parents are driving for them. And when you take cohorts of young people like that and bring them into the army, we have to make them drive. That doesn't mean handing them the keys, it means someone has to sit in the passenger seat and dodge mailboxes, have to hit an imaginary brake pedal, have to undergo all of the corrections, but someone needs to help them learn how to drive. That's the generation that we're growing up in the United States right now.
Rob: And that's a metaphor for driving in all kinds of ways -
LW: Exactly.
Rob: - and taking charge of their life.
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