Category Archives: Guest Post

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Proactive Luck

by Nathan Finney

Recently, Drew Steadman posted a thought-provoking piece on the large role luck plays in a military career. His four points are all worth pondering, but I find the last one, “Create an environment for luck,” the most compelling…or at least the item that came to my mind during our internal discussions on this topic.

Build for your team a feeling of oneness, of dependence on one another
and of strength to be derived by unity. – Vince Lombardi

luck

Carnage like this followed the Battle of 73 Easting in 1991, where luck coupled with the lethality of E Troop, 2d ACR, commanded by then Captain HR McMaster. McMaster’s tactical success garnered strategic visibility that would follow him his entire career.
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McChrystal and a Grain of Salt

by Thomas Meyer (Hay in the Barn Leader)

Stanley McChrystal (retired General and Managing Partner at McChrystal Group) recently posted a LinkedIn article, How I Keep Up with an Unrelenting Work Pace. The article was published February 1, 2016 and is receiving excessive praise from many. It is also receiving criticism from those who note the inherent risks of applying strategic level leadership experiences without thought or reflection. Here are some things you should pay attention to when reading McChrystal’s article.

McChrystal

Photo from FastCompany.
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Professional Etiquette in the Digital Age

by James Welch

Perhaps more than any other professional culture, the military demands that Soldiers perform their duties with a particularly high level of decorum and professionalism.  This is manifested in our hierarchical rank structure and our daily interactions with superiors, peers, and subordinates.  While the rise of digital technology has the potential to make these relationships stronger and improve the overall performance of individuals and organizations, it also has the potential to significantly damage one’s image.

etiquette

Photo Credit: Army Sergeant Christopher M. Gaylord, 5th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment
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Advice for the Starving Staff Artist

by John McRae

I once had a senior rater observe that life for staff officers like the ones assembled before him consisted of 80 percent making the railroad run – that is, doing the standard and recurring activities common to military staffs around the world. The other 20 percent, he mused, was for pushing things forward:  innovating, dreaming, adding one’s personal mark in new ways.

I think that for most staff officers this maxim is true. For some of the most fortunate among us, however, the ratio is reversed:  20 percent boilerplate activities, and 80 percent new and different. Whereas their 80/20 peers are more like “Conductors”, the 20/80 folks get to be “Artists.” Approached correctly, it is an exciting opportunity that can result in a highlight of one’s career.

staff

Photo from NATO Rapid Reaction Corps – Italy Exercise Eagle Action, May 2005.
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7 Ways to Fail as a Staff Officer

by Nate Stratton

“I want to claw my way up to brigade staff!” No little kid ever grew up wanting to be the best at briefing slides, brewing coffee, or writing operations orders. There’s a reason war movies don’t portray the struggles of warriors whose meritorious planning performance led to the creation of the perfect brief. Slideology 101 isn’t a required course at West Point.

Time spent on staff, where officers spend the majority of their career, is thankless, laborious work that is too often viewed as a block check between command positions. Much of the Army’s educational emphasis is on success as the man in front of the formation, but the officer’s plight is that he will spend much more time rowing the ship than steering it.

staff officer

U.S. Soldiers of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division provide information to the ground units from the tactical operation center while a Latvian soldier, right, observes during exercise Combined Resolve IV at the U.S. Army’s Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany, May 17, 2015. U.S. Army photo by Private First Class Courtney Hubbard.
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4 Keys to a Successful Military Transition

by Robert Gowin

It’s not easy to plan your post-military life in the waning days of your active duty time. Deployments, field training, family time, and the normal everyday challenges stand in your way as obstacles. The time you have is usually filled with friends, loved ones, or just focused on you. For me, it was easy to get caught up in the “bubble” I lived in – if it didn’t have an impact on my world, I didn’t give it much attention.

I separated from the Army twice – the first time after four years and the second after twenty. There was a huge difference in how I approached each of those transitions. There were no transition assistance programs available during my initial transition, but I’m not sure it would have helped me much due to a terrible economy. The lessons I learned and the struggle I experienced following my first transition made me aware of the challenges ahead and how I needed to overcome them before I planned my second transition.

transition

U.S. Air Force illustration by Airman 1st Class Jensen Stidham
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When the Military Profession Isn’t

by Tony Ingesson

Ever since Huntington published his seminal The Soldier and the State in 1957, the concept of a military profession has been embraced by military educational institutions worldwide, and particularly in the West. I argue that the focus on professionalism in general, and Huntington in particular, obscures the timeless complexity of military decision-making and leadership by reducing it to the status of a profession.

Military leadership actually demands considerably more than what most professionals have to cope with, due to the fluidity of political policy and the need to prevail over an adversary.

profession

The Fort Sill Marine Corps Artillery Detachment’s youngest Marine, Pfc. Todd Nichols, 18,
salutes the U.S. flag as colors are posted during the USMC birthday celebration Nov. 7, 2013. Link to photo.
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Stop Calling Your Soldiers Your Children

And stop telling your subordinates to treat them that way

And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;

Shakespeare’s St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V is one of the most iconic speeches ever given. It, perhaps better so than any work save the Illiad, captures what it is like to be a fighting man (or woman).

It’s refrain about a “band of brothers” has been repeated and echoed countless times: Eisenhower’s “in company with brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts” on D-Day, HBO’s mini-series of the same name, and in countless addresses by senior leaders to their formations prior to crossing the berm in Iraq.

The idea of soldiers as brothers-in-arms – of the fraternity of arms – goes back well before Shakespeare to the feudal era and possibly even earlier. The concept of shared struggle, and thus equality, is essential to the concept of American soldiering and always has been.

And yet, under multiple well-meaning commanders in both active and reserve component, I have been instructed to treat my soldiers as my children. Not as my brothers or my sisters, but my children. As a troop commander, I once argued the point with my squadron commander that my soldiers were not my sons and was told “you know what I mean” – and I did.

And what he meant was wrong.

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An Army Special Forces member fires a Mark 19 belt-fed grenade launcher at a training target on Eglin Range, Fla., Oct. 30, 2013.
U.S. Air Force Photo/Staff Sgt. John Bainter.