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December 03, 2004

Building a Better Army: Leaders

Matt at Blackfive asks the question, does prior enlisted service make you a better officer? Matt comes down on the no side of the argument, and since he was a Sergeant prior to making the jump to lightspeed, he's certainly well-qualified to say so. But I'm going to take a minute to disagree nonetheless.

I should begin by noting that the Army's system for creating officers is broken. That is not to say that we don't have some of the finest leaders (officer and NCO) in the world serving in the Army, because we do. I've known officers capable of inspiring their soldiers to do whatever it takes to accomplish the mission, regardless of the risks. But I've seen no evidence that those officers were great because of anything the Army did. I suspect they would have been equally accomplished had they gone into another industry.

The Army gets officers through three primary pipelines: the United States Military Academy, ROTC, and OCS. USMA, or West Point as it is colloquially known, is probably the best-known route to a commission. It involves a four year program mixing traditional academics with military drill and a number of military-related extracurricular activities. Cadets normally spend each of their summers performing various military tasks, including actually getting out into real units and working as the understudy to active duty lieutenants. Officers commissioned through West Point have reasonably extensive experience with the military, although the life of a cadet differs from that of a soldier in a number of ways. OCS produces the smallest fraction of the Army's officers, taking qualified enlisted soldiers and running them through several months of intensive training intended to turn them into officers. ROTC, the Army's primary source for officers, takes ordinary college students, adds a few military science classes and occasional drills and summer camp-style training to produce its officers.

None of the three systems produce consistently superior products in my experience. I've known great and lousy officers from all three sources. That shouldn't surprise anyone, as none of the three systems really addresses the question of how to produce consistently good officers, largely because I don't think the Army has really sat down to ask what it wants out of officers. This is not to say that there isn't a reasonably good understanding of what a good officer should be, but that I'm not aware of any place that such an understanding is documented, nor any attempts by the Army to build a leader development program that finds and develops such leaders.

Much of this is due to the institutional belief in the Army that leaders are made, not born. A friend of mine talked about leadership last month, and I mentioned my own belief that the Army is absolutely incorrect in its belief that leadership is simply another skill to be taught. As Matt points out, being a good leader comes down to one fairly simple thing: being willing to put others' needs before your own. That's an ability that simply cannot be taught. Either you're willing to work long hours and put up with any number of problems in order to make things better for the men under your command, or you're not. You can teach a leader how to more effectively manage his time, and even how to be more effective in dealing with people, but if that basic quality is missing, you still don't have a real leader.

It's hard to find that kind of people. Once upon a time, the Army could do a reasonably good job of that in the enlisted ranks because enlisted people were not immediately thrust into leadership roles. Indeed, many enlisted soldiers never were placed in leadership roles, even in 20-year careers. NCOs would observe their soldiers carefully for signs of leadership ability, and take the most promising ones and place them in positions of increased responsibility to see how they would handle it. If the soldiers demonstrated a willingness to take responsibility and place the needs of their mission and their soldiers above themselves, the soldiers would be groomed for the NCO track. Especially promising Specialists would be laterally transferred to the rank of Corporal, and upon promotion would earn the title 'Sergeant.' Those soldiers who were not willing or able to become real leaders stayed on the Specialist track, which ran from Specialist/4 all the way to Specialist/8, corresponding with the NCO rank of Master Sergeant.

All that changed in the early 1980s. The Army decided that a two-track system for enlisted soldiers wasn't a good idea, and eliminated all of the Specialist ranks but Specialist/4. From that point forward, soldiers wanting to be promoted would have to prove their worth as NCOs. If you couldn't make it as an NCO, the Army didn't want you. Since a sizable fraction of enlisted soldiers decide to make the Army a career, this meant that many soldiers who would have been perfectly happy as Specialists now had to prove they could be NCOs in order to stick around. This was the first blow dealt to the NCO corps, as nobody should be in a leadership position unless that's where they want to be.

The second blow came somewhere in the late 1990s, when the Army began having trouble filling all of its NCO billets. Until that time, a soldier looking for promotion to Sergeant had to prove himself to his leadership; if they didn't think he would make a good NCO, they could refrain from sending him to the Board. But with a shortfall of Sergeants, senior Army commanders decided to remove that discretion from leaders. I first saw this shortly after I took command of my company. The word came down from Division that all soldiers who met the time in grade and time in service requirements would have to be sent to the Sergeant's board, regardless of their leadership's opinion of their potential as leaders. It no longer mattered how bad a soldier was, if he had been in long enough, he could become a Sergeant.

Officers, meanwhile, never had to demonstrate any real ability prior to commissioning. All you had to do was stick out four years of ROTC, do what you were told, and earn your degree. This is a bad way to select people to run things in any industry, but in a business where junior leaders are given platoons of soldiers and expected to lead them into battle, finding out after they've gone into battle that they possess no ability to put their men ahead of themselves is a rather brutal selection mechanism. And because, even in today's wartime Army, many officers will never be placed in a position where they have to take troops into battle, that allows bad leaders to not only be commissioned, but to be promoted. This is no way to run something as important as an Army.

Which brings me back to Matt's question. Enlisted service can't give you the character necessary to place others' needs before your own. But enlisted service can give the Army the opportunity to determine whether or not you have that trait, if the Army is willing to change.

The Army needs to make several changes in how it develops leaders. First and foremost, it needs to acknowledge the fact that some people are never going to be good leaders, for a variety of reasons. The enlisted promotion system should return to a two-track system, allowing good soldiers to earn better pay for their service without placing them in leadership positions they are ill-suited for.

Second, only soldiers who demonstrate true leadership potential should be placed on the NCO track. Soldiers who become NCOs should both want to be NCOs and show that they're willing to act as true leaders before they are trusted with the title of noncommissioned officer. The track system should allow lateral movement through a sizable fraction to the soldier's career; some soldiers may discover an ability for leadership later in their careers, while senior soldiers may decide that being an NCO is no longer for them. In both cases, moving from one track to the other should be an option.

Finally, the Army should eliminate USMA and ROTC and commission officers strictly through an expanded OCS program. Selection for OCS should not be permitted until a soldier has earned the rank of Sergeant, demonstrating leadership ability. And the OCS program should be rigorous and grueling, both mentally and physically. The officers it produces should be models for their soldiers, demonstrating both an extremely high level of physical fitness and an extensive knowledge of the military.

This system would allow the Army to significantly improve its leadership to the benefit of the Army, its soldiers, and the nation. It wouldn't come without cost, however; the Army's senior leaders don't run things the way they currently do because they don't care about getting the best possible leaders promoted; far from it. They run things the best they can to accomplish their missions, and one of the things they have to have is sufficient leaders to run units. That means that quantity has to take pride of place of quality in some cases. And given that the Army's culture still manages to turn out a good number of very good leaders, it's hardly a devastating risk.

But it's still a risk we could avoid, if we were willing to do what it takes to overcome that. I'll address what that will take this weekend.