Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
This one cuts both ways I think. Certainly there is some personal and institutional resistance to change. There's also some creative dilletantism that goes around, coming from self-styled creative or disruptive thinkers who in many cases do not have real mastery of what they want to disrupt, and who often have a very superficial approach. We can't expect to run an idea up a flagpole and have the surrounding masses reflexively genuflect and put our idea (and us) on a pedestal simply because we think our idea is new or creative. A certain amount of skepticism is natural and necessary, especially if an idea would require significant investment, and not all new ideas are necessarily good. It is up to the purveyor of an idea to sell it and to overcome skepticism; can't just go into a snit and accuse people of rejecting creativity because they don't jump straight onto a given bandwagon.
First off thank you for expanding my vocabulary, I had to look up dilletantism, and it is a very appropriate word choice.

While I feel for the many young officers who claim their initiative and creativity is stiffled, which sometimes is true, yet more often the case is that their ideas shouldn't be adaptive due flaws in those ideas. There was a time when junior officers would propose an idea and a senior would explain why it wasn't a good idea, or if it had potential how to package it and sell it. I suspect that still happens, if it doesn't then it needs to. That is how a young officer develops over time. They shouldn't be offended if they're told their idea won't work, yet the younger generation seems overly sensitive to any criticism.

I do agree young officers and junior officers should be given more reign to improvise at the tactical level. We have excessive micromanagement, but that isn't the same thing as stiffling creativity. Some of the ideas I see or hear put forth demonstrate a lack of understanding on how things work which sometimes is only gained after years of experience. This doesn't state or imply that systems can't be, or shouldn't be, changed, but it takes more than a "good" idea, it takes considerable amount of effort to do the homework, then develop and implement the plan to change a system and manage the second the third order effects of doing so.

For example, I think most agree our personnel management system is far from ideal, so it is hardly creatively or innovative to state the obvious. On the other hand, coming up with a workable change to the system that can actually be implemented would be a God send.