Military Review English Edition July-August 2014 | Page 75

YOU ARE FIRED

You are not the first commander that I have relieved
during this deployment. I fire officers when they are an
impediment to successful operations, to the command,
and to my career. We all know how often our boss has
removed officers, and that recently he has been very
unhappy about our lack of operational progress. If I
don’t fire you, he probably will fire me.
When you assumed command, you probably made
a list of your objectives, imperatives, and priorities—
including those imposed by me, and maybe a second
list of the things that could get you fired, but I doubt
you anticipated this. Maybe you couldn’t manage your
own time or priorities well because your bosses always
imposed their own priorities. Nowadays, the public’s
perception is as damning as hard evidence against a senior officer. Since a commander is held responsible for
everything, it is easy to blame him for things outside his
control, but you were not blameless even if there was
plenty of blame to go around.
Did you think that a Secretary of the Army would
take the blame because some unsupervised soldiers
were living in an untidy room in a motel about to be
abandoned? Did you imagine that a brigadier general
would be fired because a staff sergeant was running
a cell of sadists? You should have seen the ax coming
or at least prayed for enough luck to get through your
assignment.
We all know how critical luck is for success and
survival in the military. Napoleon wanted all of his
generals to be lucky, above all other traits. Anyone
who rises to lieutenant colonel in the Army has been
lucky and has had a successful career. The officers who
rise further in rank often forget how lucky they have
already been, and they come to believe that they are
entitled to even more, like many people who inherit
wealth. Some who are stupid survive by good luck, but
your good luck ran out when that video went viral.
As the senior commander, I set the culture of my
command. My boss is a no-nonsense reliever of officers, and he expects me to be ruthless, too. Am I a toxic
leader if I enable a threat-based command climate in
which my subordinates expect instant and arbitrary
punishment for less than outstanding performance?
Like executing Admiral Byng on his own quarterdeck—as Voltaire said in his novel, Candide—the others
are encouraged to do better, or else!1 Of course, if my
officers are always looking over their shoulders, their
MILITARY REVIEW  July-August 2014

fear and anxiety probably choke their imagination and
initiative. So, what! We are engaged in combat, and
unforgiving leadership is most appropriate for accomplishing combat’s short-term objectives. The operational force is like a big business that has only quarterly
objectives—the burned out hulks of over-stressed employees attest to the leader’s anxiety for getting a good
bottom line instead of building a cohesive management
team. He has a budget instead of a strategy. The hierarchical nature of our military powerfully draws us into
such bureaucratic behaviors and values. Scott Adams’
comic strip “Dilbert” represents the sociology of military-leader behavior better than most of our leadership courses wi