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Is this one thing the military does better? They have an open door policy, and plenty of people have used it when faced with a toxic leader. Doesn't always seem

by AaronM 7y ago

Is this one thing the military does better? They have an open door policy, and plenty of people have used it when faced with a toxic leader. Doesn't always seem like it works out based on my limited reading, but it does work out sometimes, especially if the person one level up the chain of command is a decent leader.

selectodude 7y ago
One of the benefits of the military treating people as property that they'd rather not have killed is that they take poor leadership seriously.
ben509 7y ago
I see a number of specific advantages the military has. One is civilian oversight. You literally can write your Congressman and complain, and there is an IG office to curb some of the worst abuses. But, that's really only helping you in the worst cases. Two, the military is a bit like an enormous union where job descriptions are so precise people are relatively interchangeable. And, unlike a union, it applies to management, too, and they will tell people to pack up and move across the world. So if your job description is large enough, your chain of command is constantly cycling as senior people come and go, often from another part of the nation entirely. It's breaking up those cozy connections that the OP was detailing, where all those people were buddies from a long way back. Three, when senior people have all lost friends to war, suicide, or even training accidents, it injects a healthy degree of candor into every day interactions. I noticed this when I had a mess of errands to run, simply walking from the troop to a commo shop to central in-processing to finance that there was a shift in attitude, an increasing degree of "unreality". (OTOH, we could spend all day standing around with our gear laid out for inspection because our leadership was entirely insulated from the wages paid to 120 men.) Four, there is some explicit filtering for competence. If you're in a combat arms unit in the Army, your senior leadership is almost certainly Ranger qualified, and they can fail out if their peers don't think they're a good leader. The downside is those guys are routed into the military bureaucracy, so again, it kinda sucks to not be combat arms. But, at least they're not going to bumbling around in a firefight.
- brokenmachine 7y ago
  Can you expand on what you mean by "unreality"?
  - ben509 7y ago
    Kind of not understanding the reality of the military's mission, and a disconnect from the consequences of their actions. It looked, to me, that they were just following a bunch of steps without thinking about whether any of it works.
    - brokenmachine 7y ago
      That's what you get when you demand people follow orders without questioning. So, system working as designed?
AlexCoventry 7y ago
I thought breaking the chain of command was a huge no-no in the military.

by AaronM 7y ago

selectodude 7y ago

One of the benefits of the military treating people as property that they'd rather not have killed is that they take poor leadership seriously.

ben509 7y ago

I see a number of specific advantages the military has. One is civilian oversight. You literally can write your Congressman and complain, and there is an IG office to curb some of the worst abuses. But, that's really only helping you in the worst cases. Two, the military is a bit like an enormous union where job descriptions are so precise people are relatively interchangeable. And, unlike a union, it applies to management, too, and they will tell people to pack up and move across the world. So if your job description is large enough, your chain of command is constantly cycling as senior people come and go, often from another part of the nation entirely. It's breaking up those cozy connections that the OP was detailing, where all those people were buddies from a long way back. Three, when senior people have all lost friends to war, suicide, or even training accidents, it injects a healthy degree of candor into every day interactions. I noticed this when I had a mess of errands to run, simply walking from the troop to a commo shop to central in-processing to finance that there was a shift in attitude, an increasing degree of "unreality". (OTOH, we could spend all day standing around with our gear laid out for inspection because our leadership was entirely insulated from the wages paid to 120 men.) Four, there is some explicit filtering for competence. If you're in a combat arms unit in the Army, your senior leadership is almost certainly Ranger qualified, and they can fail out if their peers don't think they're a good leader. The downside is those guys are routed into the military bureaucracy, so again, it kinda sucks to not be combat arms. But, at least they're not going to bumbling around in a firefight.

brokenmachine 7y ago
Can you expand on what you mean by "unreality"?
- ben509 7y ago
  Kind of not understanding the reality of the military's mission, and a disconnect from the consequences of their actions. It looked, to me, that they were just following a bunch of steps without thinking about whether any of it works.
  - brokenmachine 7y ago
    That's what you get when you demand people follow orders without questioning. So, system working as designed?

AlexCoventry 7y ago

I thought breaking the chain of command was a huge no-no in the military.