I’ve been working in and around the military for coming up on 40 years now. Of course I’ve seen plenty of changes over time. A lot of them have been good. Some, though, maybe not.
One of the most noticeable trends for me is in how people are motivated. I’m seeing a lot of bottom-up thinking, and that’s for the most part good. A lot of great ideas come out of those who work in the trenches. Plus, I’ve been in intel for all this time, so I’m used to working with brilliant people who have brilliant ideas.
But some of what I’m seeing also seems like an appeasement of youth. Now, I’m not gonna sit here and pine for the old days. I’m talking about an understanding of appeasement in the face of the root purpose and mission of the military. I’ve been seeing clues that maybe they’ve lost their way a little bit.
A recent post on a unit’s page by someone brought on some of these thoughts. He put up a motivational message bracketed by the words “Relentless Reflection” that read “Every failure is a step to success,” and I think that is, quite literally, dangerous thinking.
I understand the desire to motivate people – to encourage them by saying, “Hey, it’s not the end of the world here. Learn from your mistakes and let’s move on.” But the thing is, we’re talking about the US military. These people are in a business where failure can sometimes mean disaster. I don’t want to say that the military is in the business of death – we’d all much rather say it’s in the business of peace. But are they so disassociated from the reality that they may indeed be called upon to make life or death decisions that they can take the attitude that their actions are “close enough?” “Every failure is a step to success.” But what if your failure meant the death of a platoon. Are you going to be so flippant as to say, “well, at least we learned something here”?
It brings to mind one of my favorite demotivational posters:
But hey, maybe I don’t get kids these days. Isn’t that the mantra of the older generations? And maybe now more than ever — we have more than a full generation now who have grown up with computers in the home. The iPhone came out in 2007, so add to that a generation who doesn’t know what it’s like not to have a computer in their pocket. There’s just no way the older generations are going to be able to relate to that. The chasm is just too wide.
But we can’t surrender to thoughtless platitudes in this case either. There’s far too much evidence telling us that the world is not a safe place. No amount of relentless reflection is going to save us from people that aren’t going to play by rules that settle for “every failure is a step to success.” But we can be certain of this: they’re plenty happy if we do.