SIG MMG 338 Program Series

Don’t Promote Mediocrity

For those of you who haven’t been through this drill before, troop reductions are coming. Competent people are going to leave. Quality performers are going to be run off. Why? It’s because that’s the way the system works. Check out BG Mark C Arnold’s (USAR) piece in Armed Forces Journal entitled ‘Don’t Promote Mediocrity‘ for some ideas on how personnel policies could change for the better.

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9 Responses to “Don’t Promote Mediocrity”

  1. steve says:

    Love this article. The army is extremely good at running off competent combat experienced soldiers.
    I watched them all leave in droves before I left as well.

  2. I am sure this will happen up north again soon. Whenever a war happens we recruit like mad and as soon as its over we give retirement packages that all the older guys and most of the new guys take. Leaving senior leadership at an all time low and not enough people to fill in later down the line with the lack of new people. It’s an unfortunate system.

  3. awset7 says:

    Here’s the problem in the regular Army:

    Your best, and hardest working soldiers get crapped on and run down because they’re doing exactly that. WORKING. And they are gaining valuable experience, skill and leadership. They use this experience and skill to teach and mentor younger soldiers and help to develop a small little portion of the Army.

    Then you have the other, what seems like 90-95%. The slack ass wannabe’s. The guys with the super high speed double pressed uniform with all the badges and been to all the schools but can’t lead or mentor soldiers to save his life. These guys go their whole military careers being pawned off to schools and duties that earn them awards because they suck at their normal job. For whatever reason someone thought that they were giving these guys the shaft but in reality they were doing these guys tremendous favors while crapping on their worker bees.

    Then we get to where we are now. At a point where we have to draw down numbers. The guys who have been bending over backwards to keep this machine running are being run out of the Army because they haven’t been to the right schools or made promotion fast enough. Now the A-holes that have been shamming are forced to do their job again. But they are less competent than the guy that just came out of AIT. So instead of learning and then leading these guys lead from the rear and with an authoritarian mentality, Their lack of skill, knowledge and leading ability causes their solders to lose trust in their leadership and thus cause the problems we face today.

    Piss poor soldiers with a lack of discipline and self-respect. And there are only a few of us half-way decent leaders out there who have to try and clean this mess up, organize it and try to make it run the way it’s supposed to.

    Promote excellence. Promote skill. Promote perfection. Promote professionalism.

  4. Paul Weaver says:

    Great article.

    The Army in the 90s was a perfect example of what happens when the mediocre are in charge – the best and brightest had mostly left after a couple enlistments, leaving the mediocre in charge. They delighted in the for-show military – stupid busy-work details, pretty uniforms, lack-luster training exercises. The best thing about the wars of the 2000s was the way we allowed our bright folks to innovate, and focused on what is important – warfighting – instead on false measures of “discipline” such as spit-shined boots and starched “utility” duty uniforms.

    When I retired 6 months ago, I could already see that many of the older “leaders” in the Army couldn’t wait to get back to the old ways that they remembered from their youth – back to the spit-and-polish, back to the strict doctrine rather than the versatile TTP, back to the Army where promotion mattered not on what you could do as a combat leader taking care of troops while accomplishing a mission, but instead on taking credit for the hard work of subordinates while failing to give them due credit because it might cause your own star to shine less brightly.

    • Al V says:

      So true.

      I have till June 11 and my 20 years are done, I had planned to stay a little longer but things are going back to the 90’s and I do not want to go thru that crap again.

    • Chuck says:

      Indeed. And if you look closely, you can see all the field grades and senior NCOs who managed to dodge deployments over the last decade crawling out from whatever rocks they hid under to take command and CSM positions in the very combat arms units they ran from as fast as possible when it looked like they might get shot at.

      Meanwhile, the high speed E-5s and E-6s and O-2s and O-3s are racing for the exits because they see the chicken-shit storm-clouds brewing.

  5. Andrea B says:

    At last, a leader who recognizes the value of human capital and does not treat talent management as just the latest trendy HR buzz word. Soldiers are not mere bullet catchers who only need to know how to drop and knock out 50 on command or barf up the Soldiers Creed on demand. We, the Army, say we only want the best and brightest, we lure them in and dumb them down with sub-par leadership and irrelevant policies. We say, “get in where you fit in”, and mediocre is the fit that comes with the least amount of ass pain. The up and coming generation of free-thinkers is not attracted to the today’s Army. If for no other reason, many of their parents suffered through the military of the 90s and will advise future generations against it. Let leaders lead!

    • Andrea B says:

      Andrea B says:
      Your comment is awaiting moderation.

      May 31, 2012 at 1:56 PM
      At last, a leader who recognizes the value of human capital and does not treat talent management as just the latest trendy HR buzz word. Soldiers are not mere bullet catchers who only need to know how to drop and knock out 50 on command or barf up the Soldiers Creed on demand. We, the Army, say we only want the best and brightest, we lure them in and dumb them down with sub-par leadership and irrelevant policies. We say, “get in where you fit in”, and mediocre is the fit that comes with the least amount of ass pain. The up and coming generation of free-thinkers is not attracted to today’s Army. If for no other reason, many of their parents suffered through the military of the 90s and will advise future generations against it. Let leaders lead!

  6. Andrea B says:

    31, 2012 at 1:56 PM
    At last, a leader who recognizes the value of human capital and does not treat talent management as just the latest trendy HR buzz word. Soldiers are not mere bullet catchers who only need to know how to drop and knock out 50 on command or barf up the Soldiers Creed on demand. We, the Army, say we only want the best and brightest, we lure them in and dumb them down with sub-par leadership and irrelevant policies. We say, “get in where you fit in”, and mediocre is the fit that comes with the least amount of pain. The up and coming generation of free-thinkers is not attracted to the today’s Army. If for no other reason, many of their parents suffered through the military of the 90s and will advise future generations against it. Let leaders lead!