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The US military does a lot of things right. But not every concept matches over to the world of business. A tremendous amount of time / money is spent on devel

by budman1 1mo ago

The US military does a lot of things right. But not every concept matches over to the world of business. A tremendous amount of time / money is spent on developing talent. There are way too many officers just for supervision; they are there so that leadership can be practiced, and just as important, so the next levels leaders can be selected. 'up or out' is what makes this work. You can't do this in a business. (in peacetime) there is no cost of failure. The military can afford to learn. You can't do that in a business. The book has value. I have read it. But there are several mis alignments across the problem domains.

perrygeo 1mo ago
> The military can afford to learn. You can't do that in a business. are you literally saying that businesses cannot afford to learn? Businesses must afford to learn. Under capitalism, that's the job description. Those that fail to learn... just fail. The entire reason for the existence of a market is to provide information. Buyers and consumers exchange information, coming to an agreed market price, if you're out of the loop, sorry. This was capitalism in 1790. This is still capitalism in 2026. Not much has changed in that regard.
- budman1 1mo ago
  I was rather loose with my terms. The military can piss away millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of hours, and it is not an existential situation. Oh, we bought an airplane that is broken 1/2 of the time vs. the 10% of the time we budgeted for. No big deal. A business where an investment failed like that would be in trouble. In the military, they just take that as a lesson and move on (we shouldn't buy that again, or we should not use that process the next time). Likewise with people. Hire someone, train them for 6 months, find out they cannot do the work. The military will retrain that person. Most businesses can deal with situations like that without going broke. If you ever have a spare hour, research how the Navy selects commanding officers for aircraft carriers. The select 5 for each future opening. All highly qualified pilots with demonstrated leadership potential. Then they send them to Nuclear school. 1 Year. Then another school for a year. One or two might get a carrier XO slot, one of those will get a command. The others, they just retire them. Crazy investment. No business would do that.
  - alexpotato 1mo ago
    > The military can piss away millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of hours, and it is not an existential situation. Meta and it's pursuit of VR would like to have a word. > Crazy investment. No business would do that. My dad was in a management training program in the 1980s that sound very much like you are describing. e.g. 100s of people start the program for maybe 20-30 slots. Everyone went through the same process for fairness and to identify who should move on.

by budman1 1mo ago

perrygeo 1mo ago

> The military can afford to learn. You can't do that in a business. are you literally saying that businesses cannot afford to learn? Businesses must afford to learn. Under capitalism, that's the job description. Those that fail to learn... just fail. The entire reason for the existence of a market is to provide information. Buyers and consumers exchange information, coming to an agreed market price, if you're out of the loop, sorry. This was capitalism in 1790. This is still capitalism in 2026. Not much has changed in that regard.

budman1 1mo ago
I was rather loose with my terms. The military can piss away millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of hours, and it is not an existential situation. Oh, we bought an airplane that is broken 1/2 of the time vs. the 10% of the time we budgeted for. No big deal. A business where an investment failed like that would be in trouble. In the military, they just take that as a lesson and move on (we shouldn't buy that again, or we should not use that process the next time). Likewise with people. Hire someone, train them for 6 months, find out they cannot do the work. The military will retrain that person. Most businesses can deal with situations like that without going broke. If you ever have a spare hour, research how the Navy selects commanding officers for aircraft carriers. The select 5 for each future opening. All highly qualified pilots with demonstrated leadership potential. Then they send them to Nuclear school. 1 Year. Then another school for a year. One or two might get a carrier XO slot, one of those will get a command. The others, they just retire them. Crazy investment. No business would do that.
- alexpotato 1mo ago
  > The military can piss away millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of hours, and it is not an existential situation. Meta and it's pursuit of VR would like to have a word. > Crazy investment. No business would do that. My dad was in a management training program in the 1980s that sound very much like you are describing. e.g. 100s of people start the program for maybe 20-30 slots. Everyone went through the same process for fairness and to identify who should move on.