A good illustration of the horizontal military
In my May 2003 essay, "Technology beyond belief," I wrote,

The American military has a huge battlefield advantage simply because it is characteristically American. Compared to almost all the rest of the world’s militaries, ours is remarkably informal. Rank is important, make no mistake, but there is a much higher level of collegiality among officers and NCOs than civilians imagine. Moreover, the US military is near-ruthlessly results oriented and so is much quicker to jettison unworkable procedures or methods than others. Commanders are generally thirsty for their subordinates to discern better ways of getting things done, and reward initiative. ...

The American military is the best educated in the world, and this reinforces the ability of differing ranks to work together as co-professionals rather than superior-inferior. It’s not so easy for a colonel to feel terribly snooty over a platoon sergeant when both certainly have BA degrees and the odds are not bad that both will have MA degrees as well. ...

All this serves to “flatten” how America’s military communicates, plans, resources and conducts all it programs and operations. The military is much more horizontally than vertically integrated.

As if to prove my point, here are the recent, verbal orders of Gen. James E. Cartwright, USMC, Commanding General, United States Strategic Command, as relayed by a staff member who heard them from the general's mouth:

"The metric is what the person has to contribute, not the person’s rank, age, or level of experience. If they have the answer, I want the answer. When I post a question on my blog, I expect the person with the answer to post back. I do not expect the person with the answer to run it through you, your OIC, the branch chief, the exec, the Division Chief and then get the garbled answer back before he or she posts it for me. The Napoleonic Code and Netcentric Collaboration cannot exist in the same space and time. It’s YOUR job to make sure I get my answers and then if they get it wrong or they could have got it righter, then you guide them toward a better way…but do not get in their way."

Well, like I said.... BTW, did you notice that a four-star general is blogging? True, it is a very specialized blog, but I do wonder how blogging technology is changing the way professional-class organizations communicate internally.

by Donald Sensing, 3/23/2005 09:53:00 PM. Permalink |