To caveat what Cavguy and Schmed said, there is one more aspect of ZD that I personally saw during deployments that really shook me to my core about WHAT it is that some leaders care about, operationally. I have to give an example to explain this better.

Let's say a platoon is conducting a routine patrol. One vehicle is hit by an IED and there are no KIA, but some injuries that required evac.

Upon return to base, the PL briefs the BN leadership on what happened.

The BN CDR chooses to mention this incident to all officers in the battalion at a meeting. He is proud of the fact that the Soldiers in the aforementioned patrol were all:

-Wearing their seatbelt
-Had their doors combat locked
-Were wearing all the proper PPE
-Were able to remove the sensitive items prior to the vehicle burning

The tone of the speech was one of victory, because they "did everything right", which apparently validated our collective performance as a Battalion.

I take several issues with this. First, there was no mention of what the platoon's actions on contact were. Second, there was no mention of WHY or HOW the IED got there in the first place. It was our battlespace. The fact that the IED was even there should not be overlooked and should be treated as being "beaten" by the enemy on that day; as opposed to ONLY our preparedness for the IED being considered a victory.

It made me think that our BN CDR, who was a great man that I really like, didn't consider the attack as a defeat; instead he was "institutionalized" to react only to the myriad of things that could have gotten him in trouble with the BDE Commander, i.e., Soldiers not wearing seatbelts, eyepro, etc. If that was his first concern, then obviously our success (defined in terms of quelling violence in our geographically assigned area) wasn't top priority. It seemed that he was more concerned about Force Pro and not mission success. And from my observation, this is not unique. It seemed very common.

So, we had a clash of cultures. LTs and CPTs were concerned primarily with mission success. The leaders were concerned with Force Pro and not getting into any "trouble". I can only attribute this to the way people "grew up" in the Army and what they were taught about priorities. I don't think it's fair to stereotype all folks this way, but I can only speak from what I've seen.

From all of my friends that chose to leave the Army, their number one beef was with leadership. Specifically that they didn't believe their leadership really cared how the unit performed in combat, but only that we didn't make any egregious errors during the process.