Last Wishes of a Dying General

[Richard]

An interesting OpEd by 22 year career USAF LTC Tony Carr who recently left the service to attend Harvard Law School.

Richard

Last Wishes of a Dying General
JQP, 4 Mar 2013

Recently, the career of an Air Force officer ended abruptly. This officer, by all accounts, was destined for upper management. He was decorated, educated, and combat proven. He’d had the right assignments, been promoted ahead of schedule, and met the challenge of command successfully. He received glowing reviews to the very end and was almost certain to be promoted early again. But, in a development that stunned and puzzled many of his colleagues and mentors, he voluntarily declined to continue his career, and in doing so killed his lifelong dream of one day running the Air Force. I know all of this because I’m describing my own decision. I was that officer.

Now, with the memory of this “general who never was” fading quickly into history, I’d like to relay three pieces of unsolicited advice from his deathbed:

#1. Fix evaluation systems. This may seem like a narrow wish, but its implications are more broad and fundamental than is commonly recognized. With 83% of enlisted members receiving a “Truly Among the Best” rating and 90% of officer reports largely indistinguishable, supervisors and hiring authorities are not able to determine who is truly the best (and truly not the best). As a result, we’re promoting some of the wrong people and putting some of the wrong people into competitively selected positions where they have the lives of fellow airmen in their hands. This not only hurts organizational performance, it creates morale-crushing inequities when the wrong people advance at the expense of the right ones. It also provides a disincentive to going the extra mile, since an individual evidently need not perform at the highest level to receive the highest rating. Beyond a certain point, senior officers and enlisted leaders are certain to place declining stock in what has been written about their subordinates, leading to diminished trust in their capabilities, which leads to a host of crippling countertactics, micromanagement perhaps chief among them. Above all, continuing to certify performance appraisals that we know can’t all be true is structurally dishonest. This injures the integrity of all involved.

#2. Reduce competition for cognitive activity. As a commander, I had a front-row seat for the declining expertise of a community of practitioners being asked to juggle too many no-fail priorities. Being an expert operator is job enough for anyone all by itself. Having the additional duty of being self-financier, administrative support specialist, training manager, and supply coordinator is enough to stretch most individuals beyond capability limits. Now consider the institutionally imposed mandates for advanced degree work and online developmental education for officers (with no time budgeted to get them done), and it’s clear the demands being placed on individual headspace are unreasonable (to say nothing of the stress this creates in families and key relationships). This dynamic leaves people continually re-shuffling mental priorities, unable to deepen knowledge, experiment with concepts, or contribute new ideas to a craft that must change to keep pace with the changing character of war. In other words, unable to engage in critical thinking. Over time, the absence of widespread critical thinking will slowly strangle the tactical excellence we depend upon for operational and strategic success.

#3. Keep senior leaders out of the weeds. The natural impulse of general officers to submerge in the details of execution is a timeless temptation, but one whose destructiveness is equally well established. During my time in a leadership role, I had the privilege of commanding a deployment during which my team performed at a very high level, ably supporting our joint partners fighting on the Afghan frontier. When the “big boss” came to visit during the latter stages of the deployment, the squadron was excited, not unreasonably expecting him to arrive with a suitcase full of accolades. What they got instead was a quick pat on the back followed by a soliloquy on the merits of centralized execution. They were regaled with stories of awesome technologies capable of placing senior generals into the tactical decision loop. His message was breathtakingly deflationary. Airmen do not relish futures as forward-deployed autobots, retransmitters, or glorified antennae. They are people who operate machines, not machine-people. They long to be given resources together with left and right limits and entrusted to apply their wit and will to defeat an adversary. They want the proper authority to match their responsibility; the proper degree of autonomy to adapt to the fluidity of the tactical fight; and for their leaders to trust in their judgment and hold them accountable for results, good or bad. Our professional studies inform us on the complexity of war. We must embrace the lessons of history in this regard and build into our front-line airmen not just the expertise, but the human judgment that can no more be removed from war than humans themselves. Today’s junior airmen know they cannot be effective as tomorrow’s senior leaders unless they learn how to make decisions, and thus they yearn for the latitude to do so. Generals would be acting in their own interest to heed this broadly-felt desire.

These ideas are my own, and therefore limited in their usefulness to the reach and pertinence of my opinion. But I submit that the organizational components represented by these three wishes — inspired people, clear thinking, and mutual trust — are foundational to the vitality of any organization, and certainly to the US Air Force. Jimmy Doolittle admonished us to fight “from the neck up.” Ron Fogelman told us to be honest with ourselves and trust one another. Decentralized execution has been a fundamental tenet of airpower since before our birth as a service. These things are important to our culture, and therefore must be transformed only with great care and calibration. That’s really the larger message lurking within these departing thoughts, if there is one — the importance of shepherding culture change carefully. I ended my career because I felt the culture of the institution had shifted beyond the point at which I could stay in step, and therefore I had no business at higher levels of command. Given the pace of change of the past several years, I’m left to wonder — with some trepidation — how many others are struggling with how to adapt … and perhaps more importantly, whether to adapt. Because an organization’s most committed members are most deeply wedded to its fundamental values, it stands to reason that they are more likely to be alienated or dislodged by large-scale or rapid cultural change. We can’t blame any institution for changing, which all must do in order to survive and thrive. We also can’t blame individuals for failing to change, which beyond a certain point is like asking a rhino to become a unicorn. But we can acknowledge that in a value-driven enterprise, the moral chaos of rapid change can place strong, committed performers on the horns of a dilemma resolvable only by leaving the institution.

The nation expects and deserves an Air Force committed to expanding and exploiting its potential, which is the only way to stay ahead of enemies who are doing the same. This means holding on to people who perform well and want desperately to be part of flying, fighting, and winning. When it comes to culture change, throttle setting and velocity must therefore be kept carefully in the cross-check. With such an approach, the Air Force has its best chance of delivering another century of superiority in air, space, and cyberspace … and fulfilling the dying wishes of its generals, both real and imagined.

http://www.jqpublic-blog.com/?p=133

[UWOA (RIP)]

He makes very valid points ... at one point reminding me of the C&C aircraft 'layered' over the battlefield in Vietnam ... but it also begs the question. Can you better be an instrument of change from the outside or the inside?

Based on his purported 'credentials' we may not be able to answer that question, because he quit. JMHO.

[Richard]

Originally Posted by UWOA

He makes very valid points ... at one point reminding me of the C&C aircraft 'layered' over the battlefield in Vietnam ... but it also begs the question. Can you better be an instrument of change from the outside or the inside?

Based on his purported 'credentials' we may not be able to answer that question, because he quit. JMHO.

His answer to that very question:

"...you ask a fair question and I’ll do my best to answer it. Fact is, I can’t ever truly satisfy the impetus of the question because I made my decision to leave and going back in time to “prove it’s not too hard” is not possible … without a specially modified DeLorean. Accordingly, you’ll have to trust me when I tell you that it wasn’t a lack of courage or toughness that drove me to retire. I spent 3.5 cumulative years deployed and worked in my share of salt mines on both the enlisted and officer sides of the house. They never managed to invent a hard time I couldn’t handle.

The reason I ran a 9-yard route is pretty simple. I took a look at what my boss was doing and realized I had zero desire to do it. Then I looked at what his boss was doing and realized I had even less than zero. The problems outlined in this post (and many more not in this post) were so intractable, and the authority to address them at my level and 1-2 echelons above so limited, that I could see very little prospect for “difference making” in the next 5-10 years. My career was always driven by making a difference, which most successful careers are. Thus, it was simple to me … if I can’t make a difference for the next decade in this system, it’s too broken to ask my family to endure what that decade would mean. Most people willing to stay under such conditions are the type who don’t think they can do anything else with their lives … hence the dynamic you describe.

The notion of unfinished business will always haunt me. But I concluded I could probably make a bigger difference from the outside than from within. Many others have felt the same and acted accordingly. I’ll tell you what might make me different … had I been free to write an article this vocal (or speak these words in a boardroom this clearly) without being either professionally ostracized or cast aside as a malcontent … I would have been much more likely to stay. Behind all of this dysfunction is a drive for mental conformity that prevents us from talking openly about, let alone solving, our problems."

[Dozer523]

So this "walks-on-water-stuff-don't-stink-here-he-comes-to-save-the-day" ain't comin' to save the day?
Well . . . Along with everyone else who has been monitoring this biding his time four star general in making since he got his appointment to the AFA let me express my shock and disappointment.
YAWN.

next

[miclo18d]

The three points he addresses are timeless arguments that even my dad told me about in Vietnam with commanders flying over the battlefields in UH-1s telling people on the ground how to maneuver and that I experienced in Afghanistan in 02 and 06 with generals flying UAVs....telling people on the ground how to maneuver.

People were complaining about NCOERs and OERs the whole time I was in.

Being able to promote ideas and think independently is a unit attribute that was encouraged in SF, maybe not in the AF.




I'm sure Henry Knox complained that General Washington was not letting him do his job and didn't deserve that "Promote with peers" on his Colonial Officers Evaluation Report.

[UWOA (RIP)]

I always said what I thought ... and it sometimes got me in trouble ... like when I took on an O6 while a CPT in the Guard (it was 1975 and he was messin' with my people). I got a comment on my OER that said while I could function in a combat environment I didn't fit in the Guard scheme of things. I took that as a compliment ... and, as it turned out, I think it worked in my favor as I was one of the few to pass muster at the ARCOM with LTG Trefery, TIG, to be detailed (and later extended) as an Inspector General. I always gave it straight to my two star, and his units didn't always pass my inspections, but I always slept well at night.

I think if you speak your mind you don't have to wait years 'to make a difference.'

[The Reaper]

As the Air Force moves further and further toward being drone operators, oh, excuse me, "unmanned aircraft pilots", they will move further and further from a warrior-led culture, increasingly toward a management-type organization.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, that is probably what the drones in our elected offices prefer to deal with.

TR

[Trapper John]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

As the Air Force moves further and further toward being drone operators, oh, excuse me, "unmanned aircraft pilots", they will move further and further from a warrior led culture, increasingly toward a management type organization.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, that is probably what the drones in our elected offices prefer to deal with.

TR

Bingo! And we have a winner

[UWOA (RIP)]

Originally Posted by Trapper John

Bingo! And we have a winner

Damn, you're good!

[pcfixer]

Originally Posted by UWOA

I always said what I thought ... and it sometimes got me in trouble ... like when I took on an O6 while a CPT in the Guard (it was 1975 and he was messin' with my people). I got a comment on my OER that said while I could function in a combat environment I didn't fit in the Guard scheme of things. I took that as a compliment ... and, as it turned out, I think it worked in my favor as I was one of the few to pass muster at the ARCOM with LTG Trefery, TIG, to be detailed (and later extended) as an Inspector General. I always gave it straight to my two star, and his units didn't always pass my inspections, but I always slept well at night.

I think if you speak your mind you don't have to wait years 'to make a difference.'

UWOA. "Salute". The way I think and acted also.

[UWOA (RIP)]

I don't deserve the salute. I learned it's 'the men and the mission' in OCS, but it was my team sergeant on A-11 who taught me how to apply it. If anyone deserves the salute, he does.