Quote Originally Posted by AmericanPride View Post
wm,

And that's one of the major problems as a result of the divergence thesis in military culture and the public. If the military is self-selecting (which it is) and the fastest growing demographics in the country are not a part of that self-selection (which they aren't), then several things can happen: the military can become socially (and eventually politically) isolated or its values can change. The military has proved to be a resilient institution of the years and it has adapted, if slowly, to many of society's evolving expectations - from integration, to women in the services, to the all-volunteer force. Are the values and norms of the military today the same as it was in 1776? Will it be the same in 20 years? The military is going to change and the leadership it needs to be proactive in directing that process rather than having it imposed on them.

EDIT: Also, I take issue with the "excel" et. al quote, only because sound decisions can only be deliberately made through a thorough understanding and rigorous examination of the facts to solve problems. Excel is great for this - obviously, excel or any other program is not a replacement for leadership, which is different. Too many times have I seen leaders make decisions on whim and bias rather than factual evidence or use the military equivalent of "It's true because I said so". Part of that is fueled by the nature of command (especially in a combat environment) but part of that is also cultural; there are many norms embedded in military culture that produce resistance to study, intellect, and examination (of the self and surroundings).
My critique has nothing to do with social divergence or distance (I think the latter is the term Charlie Moskos used back in the 70s when he wrote on the impacts of the all volunteer Army--probably worth a literature review by others on this thread). Instead it has to do with how Americans today raise their sons and daughters. I suspect that the kinds of things the LT suggested that parents make their kids do are not being accomplished. I will not elaborate further because my information is only anecdotal.

To AP's edit point, I am reminded of the quotation attributed to Mark Twain:"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Statistical analysis has value as long as the assumptions underlying the statistics are made clear. And, as we should all be aware from the nice scatter plots AP shared earlier, in what are the most interesting cases for decision makers (my assumption/bias), outliers are usually present. As another representation of my bias, I tend to plan for the worst case outlier, not the best case or the average case, unless I have reasons to do otherwise. BTW, calling them reasons is actually somewhat of a misnomer because reason usually plays little part in it. It is instead more often the qualitative/emotional kind of gut feeling that Hollywood can portray so well.

Some knowledge management folks today now describe two categories of knowledge: explicit and tacit. Knowing when to go with your gut is part of tacit knowledge--something that comes with experience and mentoring or working with other expert practitioners. Explicit knowledge is the kind of stuff we get from textbooks and classrooms. Creating a useful spreadsheet includes both explicit knowledge (how to use Excel for example) and tacit knowledge (what data to select and how to display it).

Given this distinction between explicit and tacit knowledge, I think the Curmudgeon is on to something with slowing down promotions. I would, however, not wait until the field grades to start identifying and utilizing officer specialists--explicit knowledge acquisition should start as part of the early officer development classes as well--including BOLC and MCCC. Of course to do this will mean the bean counters will have to accept end strength trade offs because of the number of officers in the school account. Such is life when resources are scarce and the competition for them is fierce.