"Standards of Excellence"

[JMA]

... that garrison mentality...

Remembering back to 1979 I read a book War on the Mind

It had a chapter/section on Garrison Leaders which struck a cord with me to the extent I wrote a piece on it for the Rhodesian Army Quarterly Magazine.

Google Books provides the following snippets:

"Good garrison leaders, for example, were found to be aggressive, as were combat leaders, but were also found to do better if they were sticklers for the rule book, athletic, possessed a passion for detail, had a good physical bearing and personal tact. None of these were found to be relevant for an officer to be effective as a leader in wartime."

Quick in and out six month tours also suit these garrison types as they can get the campaign medals with the least effort (and probably in a post with the least risk).

[jkm_101_fso]

I'm a two-time "go" at the Fires Center of Excellence...based on my performance on both occasions, it should be renamed the Fires Center of Mediocrity.

[bumperplate]

The question is, do we want to change this? Should we be purging the 'warrior' mindset after a war? Should we go back to a garrison mentality, then transition again when war starts again? What are the consequences of having a lot of combat-hardened veterans in your formation that are good at fighting but not so much at parade field antics?

My opinion is that our military would be better off keeping those fighters in the ranks, and learning how to best deal with that, nurture it, and put things in place to ensure a good transition to civilian life once they leave the military. To me that's better than the alternative which means we will surely fill more body bags than necessary each time we go to war.

[Fuchs]

It's really a relatively simple issue of forcing a bureaucracy to stay away from pursuing its natural path and interest and forcing it to focus on its mission.

The mechanics and psychology of bureaucracy are quite well-understood, all it takes to force it on a better course than its default autopilot is leadership.

Then again, in war and bureaucracy all simple things are difficult.

[bumperplate]

Interesting how that leadership thing keeps coming up, or do we not do leadership any longer? Do we just do mission command? Or command & control?

We've dissected this so much I don't know the party line any longer.

[Fuchs]

It's not mutually exclusive at all, in fact it's reinforcing each other.

Someone (I think he was registered here) once helped me to understand how unusual the famous 1930's Truppenführung (TF) field manual actually was when he pointed out that it's unusual for a field manual to spend 28 pages on a "leadership" chapter (as 2nd chapter, directly behind a quick overview of the macro organisation of the army).

That chapter wasn't about the kind of leadership that I meant, though. It was rather about the tasks and principles of a leader and about techniques of leadership.

I meant that leaders are responsible for steering the ship into the right direction, and must not allow that drifting becomes the primary method of movement.


A bureaucracy builds a self-licking ice cone in which the majority of personnel becomes "excellent" or "outstanding"? That is what I meant with "drifting".

[Pete]

Inserted by Moderator taken from author's request:If I could modify my previous post in this thread I would (so please refer to Post 28 where I clarify what I meant to say.


At the ripe old age of 58 I'm coming to the conclusion that there is a fact I have to acknowledge if I'm ever going to be a mature grown-up. There are two kinds of people in the world, the self-promoting phonies with the big facades who by and large run the major institutions of our world and take most of the credit; and there are those who actually do the work. This "prancers and dancers" versus combat soldier thing has gone on from time immemorial and it always will. U.S. Grant was a notable exception to this rule.

There is only a stray and random chance that most of us will ever be put into a situation where we know exactly what to do and we earn the Medal of Honor or Victoria Cross. Chances are it won't happen. Thus this office politics stuff is what we have to live with.

Many of us are somewhere in-between those two poles of integrity and hard work. You might realize that a colleague is speaking the God's Own Truth about how a superior is a five-star horse's *ss but most of us decide to stay out of the line of fire for the purpose of self-preservation. Thus is comes down to staying in your own lane -- do your job well, keep your honor clean, but be careful about the things for which you would fall on your sword.

[JMA]

It's not mutually exclusive at all, in fact it's reinforcing each other.

Someone (I think he was registered here) once helped me to understand how unusual the famous 1930's Truppenführung (TF) field manual actually was when he pointed out that it's unusual for a field manual to spend 28 pages on a "leadership" chapter (as 2nd chapter, directly behind a quick overview of the macro organisation of the army).

That chapter wasn't about the kind of leadership that I meant, though. It was rather about the tasks and principles of a leader and about techniques of leadership.

I meant that leaders are responsible for steering the ship into the right direction, and must not allow that drifting becomes the primary method of movement.

A bureaucracy builds a self-licking ice cone in which the majority of personnel becomes "excellent" or "outstanding"? That is what I meant with "drifting".

I have the translation of that book. That section you talk of is translated as 'Command' and does cover command aspects.

Indeed command is not leadership just as neither are 'management'.

Just look up leadership definitions and see how the academics can screw things up.

Leadership is not a function of one's position but rather the intangible ability to induce others to voluntarily submit to leadership.

Watch kids in a playground - applies to all ages - there you will see at play the natural leaders doing what comes naturally.

'All Leadership is influence' - John C. Maxwell

‘Sound leadership - like true love, to which I suspect it is closely related - is all powerful. It can overcome the seemingly impossible and its effect on both leader and led is profound and lasting’. - Sydney Jary MC 18 Platoon.

Any bureaucracy (including the military) needs to be purged periodically... preferably in the style of Stalin.