[October 31, 2016] Today is Halloween; a secular holiday with popular “scary” themes. But here is something scarier that keeps leaders up at night. There are two regrettable but headline making, leading issues that put senior military leaders in a very bad light. First, over the past several decades we’ve known that the U.S. military system is not producing strategic leaders. Second, the ethical behavior of senior officers has declined.
Both of these are embarrassing yet more importantly, especially taken together, they are a serious threat to national security. Some say that this is a sign of times with our society rebelling against religious teachings and the tendency toward greater bureaucracy within a government that discourages leadership over management.
Two articles help us understand how these leading issues came about and offer possible solutions. We should pay close attention to these authors and consider we have a serious problem on our hands.
The first article by retired U.S. Army Major General Robert H. Scales tells us that the U.S. military promotion system rewards officers for their tactical knowledge over strategic leadership skills. The problem is that at the point officers are considered for Flag Officer ranks, “their potential strategic genius has yet to be observed or tested.”1 Fortunately, this “broken” promotion system can be fixed but it also involves specific training for strategic level thinking; something not currently done well.
The second article by Jörg Muth, Ph.D., addresses the unacceptable behavior of General officers and the failure of anyone wanting to make the long-term hard choices to correct the problem. He writes that 90% of all problems “comes down to leadership, education, and selection.”2 Sometimes the command culture and ethical systems of an officer corps needs to be changed but it requires an investment in the military academies, their schools, and support of senior commanders who understand the issue.
Historically, the United States has produced exceptional officers with a variety of skills but the pendulum has swung back in the direction where high-level leadership and ethics no longer are the basis for those officers. Any bureaucratic system tends to gravitate toward mediocrity and complacency. The U.S. military can only change if those at its head take these issues seriously and are willing to do something about it that produces a change in the current military culture.
Part of the solution means reducing the number of Flag officers so that each officer can receive a better formal education, a variety of command experiences, an ethical foundation, and plenty of “troop time.” It can be done but will we see it in our lifetimes? I hope so.
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- https://www.ausa.org/articles/are-you-strategic-genius-not-likely-given-army%E2%80%99s-system-selecting-educating-leaders
- https://medium.com/the-bridge/a-crisis-in-command-and-the-roots-of-the-problem-80dfcfd7fd49#.lnl9owkbg