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When I got out of the Navy, it took a decade to adjust to two things: incompetence and intentionally bad decisions by managers. Incompetence was rare. Everyone
by indymike 5y ago
When I got out of the Navy, it took a decade to adjust to two things: incompetence and intentionally bad decisions by managers. Incompetence was rare. Everyone was very well trained and well organized. You literally had to prove you knew how to do a job before you were allowed to do it. Decisions were always taken seriously, and mistakes were pretty rare and when they happened, there were consequences for the people that made the bad decision, and that included senior officers. A willfully bad decision would land you out of the Navy at best, and in prison at worst, so most people cared about their work, especially the management level, to a level I do not see in the civilian world. The result: we trusted our managers, and they trusted the workers.
- skywal_l 5y agoReading Generation Kill by Evan Write does not give this impression of the US military...
- staticautomatic 5y agoHell, reading most things about the military doesn’t give this impression.
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoBit older but Catch-22 also paints a different picture.
- QuarterReptile 5y agoThis is much less applicable yet, given that the all-volunteer military, which has a higher degree of professionalism than its previous iteration as a result, didn't exist at the time.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoGeneration Kill apparently covered a marine battalion (according to Wikipedia), not the navy. To my understanding the branches of the military function as independently cooperating entities rather than one large organization and therefore when criticizing systemic/institutional failures and cultures of the military, the specific branch in question is an important detail. Criticizing the navy using the marine corps in this instance is similar to criticizing the us coast guard for marine corps behavior.
- boomboomsubban 5y agoThe Marines are part of the Department of the Navy, unlike the Coast Guard which is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoIn the United States, the marines appear to be a separate force to the navy. They are listed as a branch of the United States Armed Forces, of which the coast guard is also under. (Edit: someone downthread had explained to me that the marines are a sister organization to the us navy, and are both under a department. It makes more sense to criticize the branch based on what a sister branch did.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces
- scarmig 5y agoTechnically, they're under the Department of the Navy and a sister organization to the US Navy (also under the Department of the Navy).
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoAh, I understand, thanks for explaining. I would still argue that something specifically focused on flaws in the marines is probably left-field of someone who was in the US navy if they’re sister orgs. (This is not to say the flaws are inaccurate or that the navy doesn’t have issues, only that they should be leveled accurately to the organization of the military.)
- ethbr0 5y agoAfaik, the easiest way to explain it is that the Marines get their funding as a branch of the Navy, but their orders and command as their own branch.
- pvaldes 5y agoIf incompetence in the army is rare, this means that when 90% of the "smart i-drone" attacks killed innocent people instead their "real target" it was on purpose? Hum, or maybe their bosses were just lying to them all of this time to support a theater of competence?...
- s1artibartfast 5y agoI don't think civilian deaths says much about competence. It speaks more where we have drawn the line on on acceptable confidence and collateral damage.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoPlease note the person said the navy, not the army. The branches of military function more like independently cooperating organizations than one large organization is my understanding. When discussing military errors and processes, specifics like which branch matter quite a bit.
- pvaldes 5y agoFair point.
- bilbo0s 5y agoThe idea would still apply. The 7th is staggering around the Pacific like a drunken Irishman right now. These incidents are obviously not intentional and many are textbook cases of incompetence.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoI fully agree that there can very well be incompetency in the navy. I’m only pointing out that talking about incompetence in the army to a naval veteran is asking an orange to answer for an apple’s flaws due to the fact the two organizations have independent structures, cultures, and systems of how responsibility is managed. An accurate criticism would be pointing out existing incompetency in the navy or in naval sub-divisions.
- asn2 5y agoThe Military primarily selects for Obedience. And there is a big upside and downside to that trait depending on the problem a team is given. As Afghanistan and Iraq show blind obedience can result in a multi decade fiasco.
- Seanambers 5y agoBit easy to blame the military when the politicians actually decide and wage the wars. The taxpayer pays for them. The military just fights them as they should.
- drunkpotato 5y agoThere's no reason we can't blame both.
- darkmarmot 5y agoI think obedience will end up being a huge negative in future wars if rapid tactical iteration driven by autonomous planes, robots and drones becomes common. The age of obsequious human meat shields is approaching its literal terminus.
- indymike 5y ago> The Military primarily selects for Obedience. The people pick the wars (well, their elected leaders do), the soldiers and sailors fight them. And believe me, you don't want blind obedience at any level in the military. Blind obedience is a very, very bad thing and it will lose wars. You want loyalty, which sometimes requires disobedience (e.g. tell the captain no when he wants to turn into an undersea mountain) to work.
- moron4hire 5y agoI never served myself, but I've had a lot of family and friends who did serve and this is literally the first time I've seen anyone say anything like this. My own experiences working with military leadership has also not corroborated any sense that they were competent or caring. Indeed, the impression I got was that they were universally just trying to wind out the clock to early retirement and use their relationships to get a cushy job while pulling down their pension at a major defense connector.
- jacquesm 5y agoI've seen a couple of companies run by ex military personnel. As a rule they are run competently, but there are some risks as well: in the military if the chain of command falters there is a fall back plan. But in civilian life a company run by a military trained person is not in charge of soldiers but of civilians so if the leadership becomes incapacitated for whatever reason (or is simply unavailable) the whole thing will grind to a halt. But in case of any other kind of crisis those companies tend to do quite well.
- etempleton 5y agoAlso very much depends on the field/discipline. There is a reason militaries are organized topdown and a reason many businesses are increasingly more flat in their hierarchy. With that said, accountability is important in any organization and it is important that an individual owns their work. Where you run into problems is when it is unclear whose work is whose. That fuzziness of accountability is much more likely to occur in a flat org.
- jacquesm 5y agoYes, 'flat' and 'large' are to some degree mutually exclusive, though I have seen one instance where it worked remarkably well.
- frankfrankfrank 5y agoI would not generalize things like that because that competence is very much limited to very specific competencies and widely varies between the departments/Services. In some ways it's not that different to how it varies in the civilian world, even though it is also very much different. Like I tell people, in many ways, especially the US military is essentially a whole different dimension/universe from the civilian sector, a whole different world and civilization in many different ways.
- jacquesm 5y agoI'm not generalizing, I'm specifically speaking about those companies that I have experience with that have a person at the helm that hails from one of the military branches.