Internal Change Impossible?

[Journeyman]

An interesting foil to the article daftbunny posted;

Oh, I didn't think you knew him too.  :nod:

 

[Navy_Pete]

Oh, I didn't think you knew him too.  :nod:

Oops!  My apologies.  'Daftandbarmy' got gesthaldted to 'daftbunny'.  Pretty funny visual though, wasn't that in the quest for the holy grail?

 

[Sailorwest]

An interesting foil to the article daftbunny posted;

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/why-our-best-officers-are-leaving/308346/


State of the Union January/February 2011
Why Our Best Officers Are Leaving
Why are so many of the most talented officers now abandoning military life for the private sector? An exclusive survey of West Point graduates shows that it’s not just money. Increasingly, the military is creating a command structure that rewards conformism and ignores merit. As a result, it’s losing its vaunted ability to cultivate entrepreneurs in uniform.

Remember talking to someone about this years ago, and when someone in the personnel studied this, they found a lot of the top performers got out, and bottom performers washed out or quit when they hit a wall, so think this generally applies to us as well, although we seem to be getting better at identifying streamers and planning their posting progressions in a way that more or less makes some sense.  Probably easier on our scale though.

I can think of a number of really excellent senior officers, but I can also think of another group of politically orientated types that will do all kinds of things to delay making a real, actual decision.  Anyway, interesting read.

It is interesting to contrast this with the commonly held view that we currently have too much bloat at the senior officer level. The ones who leave today, probably make this decision in part based on the potential to have a meaningful role at the senior ranks in competition with everyone else. Even if it was a purely meritocracy, there would not likely be enough positions available to retain all of the best and brightest and some will no doubt choose to leave. for me, there are very few senior officers at the Capt(N) rank or above that have not had some significant achievement in their careers that justified the rank. Maybe more in the reserve but still, merit has significant impact on career development.

If we were to cut back on the number of flag rank positions out there, wouldn't this situation described in the article get significantly worse?

 

[daftandbarmy]

Oops!  My apologies.  'Daftandbarmy' got gesthaldted to 'daftbunny'.  Pretty funny visual though, wasn't that in the quest for the holy grail?

So I looked up 'Daft Bunny' on You Tube and found a pretty accurate description of my life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQRuZZKVuR0

How did you know?  ;D

 

[McG]

Do you feel that real, significant, positive change from within an organization is impossible?

Internally driven change can be difficult for an organization.

Even before considering conscious efforts of resistance, an organization has a lot of inertia to overcome if it is to implement a radical change.  The people have been selected, trained, educated, socialized and moulded into the right fit for a particular field and/or job.  In the face of a significant change, many people will not be as good a fit; commanders and staff may find their background not broad enough to fully prepare for the new reality.  On these boards we have (in years passed) discussed the idea of a manoeuvre branch with a common officer occupation; (putting aside discussion of the idea's merit) a change to such a model would see officers up to the LCol level whiteout the optimal breadth of background experience to tackle the potential jobs.  Despite that, they would be able.  After a few years of exposure and experience in the new system, the deficiency would be made-up.

Another inertia to overcome is "group inertia" and academic texts will talk about the collective behaviour of unions here.  While DND has unions, the biggest group inertia in a CAF change would involve the big three of Navy, Army and Air Force to be followed by regiments and branches.  The soldiers are inculcated to be loyal first to the regiment or branch, then to the Army and then to the CAF as an afterthought; the Air Force learned loyalties seem to be air community (Fighter, Tpt, Tac Hel, MH) first, then the Air Force and last (again) the CAF; while sailors are indoctrinated to be loyal first to the Navy, then to a coast and lastly (yet again) to the CAF.  Service pride ensured unification failed with senior officers of the old services who resisted, subverted, disobeyed, fought and socialized similar from their subordinates until the process was undone.  Environmental pride again ensured the failure of Hillier's transformations with (again) outright disobedience and refusal to support from at least one ECS.  Tribal pride is not limited to the level of the environments, and the tribes at all levels will fight to preserve their standing. And, organizational resistance is not constrained to various tribes.

Often, change is seen as a threat to established resource allocations, existing power relationships, and specialized groups' expertise.  Threats are feared, mistrusted and resisted.  You can see such fear being generated in the military if any radical changes were undertaken.  We often tell ourselves than one's potential competences are linked to uniform colour, hat type/colour and various badges.  To decentralize medical or MP stovepipes back into supported commands ... Suddenly, the affected stovepipes will be warning that very senior infantry and MARS officers lack the knowledge to oversee specialist service provider units within their formations; only the career specialist can manage that field of specialist work.  The national (and maybe regional) level staffs of the stovepipes will see their jobs threatened through decentralization of their command responsibilities, and they will fret over different staffs gaining control over their human and materiel resources.

At the individual level, cynicism is a strong barrier to change and The CAF has built a lot of cynicism toward change.  As an organization, we have often been poor at communicating the logic behind changes, how the end-state is intended to look & function, and the path that will be taken to get to that end-state.  This vision may be understood at the strategic levels, but the message does not make it down to the troops living with the changes.  Aggravating the situation is the creation of a very obvious reward incentive for leaders to cause change (the Leading Change bullet on a PER), but there is not apparent counter incentive for preservation of strengths nor is there an obvious penalty for frivolous/damaging changes.  The CAF has created a perception amongst junior members that will arrive to reorganize the unit to pad his PER, and then rush off to the next posting so that the new house of cards can collapse under the next guy's watch ... And while I do not suspect actual malice on the part of any leader, this perception may be the smoke to indicate that something is indeed burning.

The cynic will note that one should not try to fix something that is not broken.  On its own, this is good advice.  However, large organizations have been compared to the frog who would immediately jump out if dropped into boiling water but who will casually swim until he dies if placed in cool water that is then slowly brought to a boil.  Like the frog, large organizations don’t perceive the aggregate impact of small, gradual changes, and so they don’t react to the changes until disaster hits them in the face.  The frog analogy could explain the persistence of many militaries to insist upon the “superiority of the attack” through the First World War and reluctance of some militaries to replace horse cavalry between wars (including many Canadian cavalrymen who took umbrage with H.L. Mencken’s arguments against horse cavalry in the Canadian Defence Quarterly).

The challenges to change can all be overcome.  One can get “buy-in” for a change if the workforce has been included in development of that change.  This is not always an option in a very large organization like a nation’s military.  As an alternate, leadership needs to communicate the vision very clearly, describing why the change is occurring, the plan for implementation,

For an organization, just as for a species in the wild, change is necessary for survival … either evolution or revolution.  If an organization waits for change to be forced upon it, then change is most likely to be hurried and outside the organizations control.  So, I think we need to improve the CAF culture toward evolution, growth, learning and improvement (all of which equal change by other names).

 

[pbi]

At the individual level, cynicism is a strong barrier to change and The CAF has built a lot of cynicism toward change.  As an organization, we have often been poor at communicating the logic behind changes, how the end-state is intended to look & function, and the path that will be taken to get to that end-state.  This vision may be understood at the strategic levels, but the message does not make it down to the troops living with the changes.  Aggravating the situation is the creation of a very obvious reward incentive for leaders to cause change (the Leading Change bullet on a PER), but there is not apparent counter incentive for preservation of strengths nor is there an obvious penalty for frivolous/damaging changes.  The CAF has created a perception amongst junior members that will arrive to reorganize the unit to pad his PER, and then rush off to the next posting so that the new house of cards can collapse under the next guy's watch ... And while I do not suspect actual malice on the part of any leader, this perception may be the smoke to indicate that something is indeed burning.

IMHO you have framed it very well. Both in and now out of uniform (but still working alongside the CAF), I find the obsessive desire for ill-considered change, or for changes to be able say "Look what I did! Look what I did! ", a terible consumer of effort, time, resources and ultimately of good will (the result of the latter being the growth of cynicism).

Sometimes it seems to me that while the CAF can talk all about what happened at Vimy Ridge or the Battle of The Atlantic,  nobody really remembers what happened 10, or 15 or 20 years ago, or why. And thus, wheel re-invention continues.

 

[dapaterson]

We give PER points for "Leading change", not for "Leading effective change"...

 

[McG]

We give PER points for "Leading change", not for "Leading effective change"...

I note that the executive PERs do not have "leading change" but do score "visioning."
It sounds poofy but maybe an initial step to improving our culture toward change would be shifting the standard PER to something like "leading vision."  The word pictures could talk about improving the organization toward defined goals and preserving strengths that support the mission.

Or, is the problem too great for something so subtle to gently correct?

 

[dapaterson]

[cryptic coment that makes you want to kick someone somewhere tender]

A few small pebbles can start an avalanche

[/cryptic coment that makes you want to kick someone somewhere tender]

 

[The Bread Guy]

[cryptic coment that makes you want to kick someone somewhere tender]

A few small pebbles can start an avalanche

[/cryptic coment that makes you want to kick someone somewhere tender]

Only once the pile o' pebbles reaches critical mass, though.

 

[Griffon]

Things change in the CAF all the time. But often those changes don't pass the sniff test, and one gets the sense that change was made for the sake of an individual's PER, and not for the betterment of the institution.  That is a problem.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Is change required? For sure, we live in an ever changing world.  But those changes need to make sense.  If less senseless changes happened in the CAF, it's members would probably be more open to those that occur out of necessity. My  :2c: anyways.

 

[Chelomo]

There's a few examples of what I see as unique military transformations in the Canadian Forces. For example the creation of the French units, which was pretty much necessary (especially in the context they were created, when French-canadians mostly didn't speak English). I think it's a good example of an adaptation that follows our national specificities. Also, the expansion of the Canadian military during WW2 was very impressive and a miracle of organization (around 40-45% of Canadian males served in the army, which is extremely high). There's definitely potential for growth, reform and change when the circumstances are right, the right person comes along or there's a strong pressure from within for such changes (More often than not, it's a combination of the three.)

 

[daftandbarmy]

Great leaders can always inspire action:

http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?embed=true

 

[Shrek1985]

http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/07/14/politics/military-problems-will-not-get-better/

Well, I need as not have created this thread at all. This article crystalizes the situation in my mind.

Your thoughts?

 

[McG]

... over the past couple of days a general consensus has emerged from all parties that not only the Reserves, but also the Army itself, needs to change.  The problem with this is that we cannot come to a consensus on what the organization should actually look like.  The same can be said of the senior leadership of the Canadian Forces, they themselves cannot come to a consensus and as a result, we have arrived where we have arrived.

It will take someone with some big cojones to change all of this.  General Hillier was such an individual but I don't see anyone like him coming out of the woodwork any time soon.

But even Hillier was not able to bring about the changes he envisioned.  He had plans to cut the L1 FG HQs at the same time as he built the FE HQs.  The tribal elders, Hillier's military subordinates, told him No!  The compromise was the ineffectual HQ bloat that ensued (and continues) with the dotCOM empires and giant environmental staffs.

 

[UnwiseCritic]

http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/07/14/politics/military-problems-will-not-get-better/

Well, I need as not have created this thread at all. This article crystalizes the situation in my mind.

Your thoughts?

I believe that article to be bang on. We can't even retain 2/3rds of the people who could instill change. But I think the problem lies in our leadership type or lack thereof. I've noticed the army thinks that putting someone in a position of power somehow makes them a "leader". I think we've placed the wrong word there, they are more of a supervisor. (Should be called Primary Supervisor Course). There's corporals out there who I would consider to be leaders more than some platoon commanders in my company. They just don't have the training to supervise an entire platoon.

Here's something I wrote awhile back as I'm trying to identify what's wrong. "I would argue that a lot of the discontent among people in the army is because they have become apathetic. They are not being engaged, challenged or brought in to the bigger picture. Which has become problematic with the transactional leadership style adopted by our military. While this may have been effective in the past when there was less critical thinkers and less educated people, it has now become a feeling of resentment towards highers. Yet with the paradigm shift in 21st century warfare these are precisely the people we need to recruit and more importantly retain. And we will not be able to do this when we are trying to fit them in an outdated model."

And for anyone out there wondering, "Train to excite" failed. If it was even implemented in the first place. Trench warfare is not exciting or IMO currently pertinent. But I know it makes HQs big ol map and range card look pretty :

 

[Colin Parkinson]

From the outside I see the military like the an "abused spouse" It can't think beyond it's current way of doing things because it involves risk and change. The bureaucratic processes are a noose around it's neck. Also this "waiting for a clear role" thing, it's not going to happen so develop your own. Right now we have Service Battalions that can't service the units they support, armoured reserve units with no armour, artillery units with few or no guns. A recruiting process that makes snails look fast.
I suspect you are going to need leaders who are willing to throw the book out the window to reach their goals. A brigade commander should set a goal such as; "I want my brigade to be able to fight as a team" Somebody in recruiting needs to say: "75% of the recruits will be signed on within 3 months and sent orders"
We don't know if our next fight is going to be COIN or a near peer fight, you need groups that take on one of those and become the knowledge base for the military for that type of fight, same with ASW and CAS.

 

[MilEME09]

From the outside I see the military like the an "abused spouse" It can't think beyond it's current way of doing things because it involves risk and change. The bureaucratic processes are a noose around it's neck. Also this "waiting for a clear role" thing, it's not going to happen so develop your own. Right now we have Service Battalions that can't service the units they support, armoured reserve units with no armour, artillery units with few or no guns. A recruiting process that makes snails look fast.
I suspect you are going to need leaders who are willing to throw the book out the window to reach their goals. A brigade commander should set a goal such as; "I want my brigade to be able to fight as a team" Somebody in recruiting needs to say: "75% of the recruits will be signed on within 3 months and sent orders"
We don't know if our next fight is going to be COIN or a near peer fight, you need groups that take on one of those and become the knowledge base for the military for that type of fight, same with ASW and CAS.

I agree, we were told in a briefing just before summer the average is 10 months to join the reserves where I am, it personally took me 8 months to get in, how many people do you know would wait 10 months to get a part time job? and while having a reserve brigade (though i know you mean in general) fight as a team, when a reserve unit is more a admin unit not a deployable combat unit I don't see much point other then teaching officers how to work together.