Managers organize, Leaders motivate. Military competence requires both skills.
Both at all times but frequently one must be temporarily subjugated to the other... :wry:
I for one do not either second or object to the premise. It has merit and much truth but it is merely one way to describe the problem. Others will say that one who cannot manage time or comms is inefficient, ineffective, poorly trained or not a good leader -- all those comments are also true. :cool:
Sadly, regardless of the attitude of the United States Army Human Resources Command, not everyone of equal educational attainment and broadly similar professional background can do both those things adequately -- much less well...
In our quest for personal excellence, we often forget the fact that the US Army and our friends in other services are not optimum combat forces. They are by design, adequate (barely, some say...) forces for employment on nationally directed missions one of which may be combat. Democracies do not want their armed forces to be too competent. Won't tolerate that, in fact. Our armed forces are products of 200 plus years of evolution and ever increasing bureaucratic sclerosis subject to the whims and vagaries of Congress. They have antiquated personnel systems and compensation processes that are absolutely inimical to flexibility and good order (be that led or managed... :wry:).
We skimp on training funds and overspend on equipment to compensate for that shortcoming to a degree. As a result of all that, the services are on balance and in fact mostly marginally trained, not too well disciplined and the Army at least has elevated people of relative inexperience and mediocre competence to positions as leaders, commanders or staff persons with which a number cannot cope effectively.. A mentality that says SFCs or CPTs must be in SFC or CPT positions, regardless of knowledges, skills and ability promotes people to check boxes and fill holes (a dogma that drives many good SSG and LTs out). Personnel management failure on high -- and that is purely a management problem -- leads to all sorts of management problems down the chain. Toleration of that poor management -- at all levels -- is a leadership problem and that absence of leadership is noted and also trickles down the chain. :rolleyes:
The position expressed by Michael C. is his take and is certainly correct in many aspects; he's a smart guy -- but I personally think that his two art forms, management and leading are, individually, mild complications and collectively they become IMO excessive complications. Leadership is nothing more than three things -- know your job, do your job and be fair. I submit that management can well be similarly described. So can the old fashioned Army term that encompasses both those and other skills as well -- be tactically and technically competent.
That used to be the goal of all systems, processes, training and PME. That seems to have been discarded. It shows...
Greetings from mud island...
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Originally Posted by
Ken White
Managers organize, Leaders motivate. Military competence requires both skills.
This is a perennial issue that comes up in the military from time to time.
Lets listen to what a great soldier once said on the matter:
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Leadership and Management
We do not in the Army talk of “management”, but of “leadership”. This is significant. There is a difference between leadership and management. The leader and the men who follow him represent one of the oldest, most natural and most effective of all human relationships. The manager and those he manages are a later product, with neither so romantic nor so inspiring a history. Leadership is of the spirit, compounded of personality and vision: its practice is an art. Management is of the mind, more a matter of accurate calculation, of statistics, of methods, timetables and routine; its practice is a science. Managers are necessary; leaders are essential.
- Address to the Australian Institute of Management 4 April 1957 by Field Marshal Sir William Slim Governor General of Australia.
...and another one which is short and sweet:
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In A Nutshell
Fixed (things) - management
Variables (people) - leadership
- Major General Julian Thompson, Commanding 3 Command Brigade in the
Falklands Conflict 1982.
Back to the point... IMHO select officers for their leadership ability and train them to manage (where necessary)... you can't turn managers into leaders.
Hard question. Even harder answer...
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Originally Posted by
JMA
Well what to do about it?
Is it current (US) thinking that an attack by a battalion/company/platoon/section can be managed or is officer and NCO leadership required?
In reverse order, no, we know better; leadership is required. We also know a bit of management is required to get that unit in shape and position for that attack. We used to combine those traits fairly well for about 80% of the leaders and commanders -- nobody ever gets to 100%. Nobody. Ever...
The answer to your question is to not re-elect a single incumbent to the US Congress until they get the message that they have been so wrong for so long and they still haven't got it right. I see no real chance for improvement until that happens -- or we get in a major, existential war, we tend to throw away the stupids when those occur; performance rules...
We weren't perfect but we were better with people 40 years ago -- then the US Congress decreed that all selection criteria must be 'fair' and 'objective.' This caused managerial (or even lesser) types who would not have been selected for senior officer or NCO positions prior to the mid-60s to be considered; the move to 'objective' criteria required the use of 'metrics' in selection so it could be proven that all pegs were round (one way or another...). Add the fact that democracies do not like their Armies to be too competent; makes the legislators and the social set nervous. All that results in a very egalitarian Army. :rolleyes:
Regrettably, warfare is not egalitarian. :eek::(
Depends on whether an Army ascribes its priority to management or to leadership.
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Originally Posted by
JMA
I guess when NCOs reach a certain level the leadership positions reduce and there is more of a demand for paper pushing management types.
Officers and NCO come with either a managerial bent -- and job -- or one that espouses leadership. Key is to put the right shaped peg in the proper hole -- that's where we fail. Started that foolishness in the 1960s, literally took the personal out of Personnel -- and that was NOT the improvement it was supposed to be...
Miserably, we seem to think that all of like schooling and experience are absolutely interchangeable. They are not, of course...
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So what to do with the older NCOs of an age where they are too old to lead men in battle?
Do what the Bundeswehr did upon formation in 1955, put old one-eyed, one-armed Afrika Korps veteran Feldwebels in position as Company operations directors to whom young Hauptmann HAD to listen [Eek -- un-American, that...] -- they fought (in the combat expertise and directive sense) the Company, the Officers led it.
Also do what the Brits do, commission 'em as Captains and let serve out a few years as Trainers and technical masters of the job at hand [Also un-American because any generalist can do everything well -- even if he is 24 with only three years experience...] -- that way the Generalists can head for Generalship.
This is not rocket science... :rolleyes:
University degree before or after commissioning?
In an off board series of discussions it appears that the value of a university degree before or as part of the commissioning process is being questioned more and more.
My question was and remains that is it not better to take them in young and train them as soldiers and officers and test them at platoon level (hopefully in battle) before investing in their tertiary education?
One aspect seemingly not taken into account when lamenting low officer retention rates is that maybe for a greater number than acknowledged the military was used as a means to obtain a degree and a reasonable CV (resume) entry of having served as an officer. How many are in it for the education? Half?
A possibly superior approach being flighted is that instead of the military training being fitted in the breaks in the academic year is for the military selection and training taking full precedent until you have the service the right officers in which you would be prepared to invest in (in terms of education). Not going to happen in the US one accepts.