That’s a great point of view @brock.j.young: balancing loyalty and integrity. It also makes me think of Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean in regards to virtues; how virtue is often mean state between the extremes of excess and absence.

I like the hierarchy of loyalty as well. That’s probably one of the top points I’d want to highlight in future…[Read more]

Deleted Henry’s original submission per his request.

I have a CD with 3 separate sound clips that I can throw into a small boombox or larger sounds system and hit repeat for multiple hours of ambient noise that automatically increases training difficulty to any scenario.

The first is the crowd noise from a World Cup. A crazy loud thrum of hundreds of thousands of people screaming at the tops of…[Read more]

Like Patrick, I’ve seen the dark side of loyalty first hand. Officers who should be drummed out of the service, instead being promoted because they have the right friends (above 1 star…). The transgressions of a squad of SGMs overlooked simply because the CG didn’t want the organization as a whole to look bad. The SPC who falsified a report when…[Read more]

@logisticus Thanks for sharing. You raise a lot of great points.

To help current and upcoming leaders, I’d like to follow-up by asking:

1. How did you facilitate this discussion as a commander?

More specifically…

2.What was the venue and who were you communicating with?

3. Was this an all hands-on-deck type event or more targeted to leaders…[Read more]

Looking at the options again, it strikes me that the issues “Overload of Training Requirements,” “Resourcing Difficulties,” and “Technical and Tactical Mastery” are all related to prioritization – a key task as a leader, and in life in general. We never have as many resources (time, money, etc.) as we’d like, so we must develop sound priorities.…[Read more]

If I were to take a stab at why this discussion may not occur right away, I’d guess that it has to do with the negative perception of coming into an organization and immediately changing things. I think there is some value in coming into an organization and observing it to understand it better before making changes. There may be some things that…[Read more]

Ray: I am not in a position to get this program started now, but I am anticipating the possibility in the future. I’ll reach out to you when I am in such a position. In the mean time, I wanted to ask here, because I’m sure others might have the same question. This looks like a great resource!

@CALDOL: I just checked out this part of the site for the first time and think this is a great tool to facilitate discussions of readings. Are you willing to set up a discussion similar to 1-5 CAV’s existing thread on “This Kind of War” for any unit? Or do we already have the ability as regular members to set one of these up?

“Duty” by Robert Gates. It’s easy to think of our units and the Army’s mission of fighting our nation’s wars in isolation. In this context, it’s easy to get frustrated by orders that don’t seem to make sense because of a narrow scope. This book is an entertaining, fast read from an outstanding statesman that provides some insight into the…[Read more]

Leaders coming into a new organization are counting on their leaders (including Junior Officers) to prepare them for their new job. It is our responsibility to prepare some sort of welcome brief for our new boss. New leaders in a new unit should be briefed on your roles and responsibilities, your capabilities, unit strength, what your mission is,…[Read more]