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Document created: 20 August 02
Air
& Space Power Journal - Winter
2002
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Vortices |
| We should be as careful of the books we read as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living. |
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––Tryon Edwards |
Dr. Mike Thirtle*
*Dr. Thirtle is a staff member at the RAND Corporation.
Private-sector companies envy the Air Force- in some ways, one might even call it a “quiet desire.” From an outsider’s perspective, the Air Force almost seems to have an endless supply of good leaders. In fact, some companies exist for the sole purpose of funneling young officers and enlisted service members from the Air Force into the private sector early in their professional lives. The same process occurs at senior levels as well. Although technical skills are likely an important consideration for such recruiting, the usual marketing language indicates that businesses aggressively seek these people because of their leadership aptitude.1 Similarly, Air Force members typically believe that they bring a significant commodity- their ability to lead- to the for-profit sector (post–Air Force experience). Why? The answer is that the private sector yearns for leadership and that the Air Force is a proverbial breeding ground for it. This rather amazing “supply meets demand” concept isn’t very well quantified but is implicitly understood by both seller and buyer.
The for-profit sector uses this funneling because it realizes the benefits of having former military members employed in its organizations.2 Military experience translates into results such as discipline, steadiness, character, performance, integrity, and caring.3 I know this to be the truth. Having spent some time in both the private sector (outside the defense industry) and the Air Force as an officer, I have to say that some of the best leaders whom I have met are affiliated with the military- specifically, the Air Force. My discussions with colleagues in the for-profit sector have validated this impression.
Amazingly, however, observers outside the Air Force don’t realize that for all of the great leaders we produce, we haven’t documented- at least yet- the secret recipe of what contemporary Air Force leadership is in a comprehensible, universally articulated way. We “do” leadership; we sometimes talk about and debate it; and outsiders admire the “product”- even certain parts of the “production process.” However, it is a challenge for anyone to point to a specific Air Force organization, document, doctrine, or comprehensive definition of what Air Force leadership is and how it is purposefully developed and articulated to that service’s people. Simply stated, I don’t think it exists.4
For the past two years, I have had more opportunity to study the Air Force- more specifically, Air Force leadership- as part of my work in the Force Development Division of the Air Force Senior Leader Management Office, a task that I have relished. I left my for-profit, private-sector job to do this because of my desire to discover the secret recipe. In part, I have focused on assisting with the development of a new leadership core curriculum for training squadron commanders across the major commands; other activities have focused upon Air Force education and training. Every situation that I have encountered has justified my watching, listening, and assessing. I have seen various corners of the institution that I didn’t know even existed; furthermore, I have had the opportunity to witness great examples of leadership and visit places where researchers and practitioners continue to pursue leadership truths. Whether one cites the great leadership talks around “academic circle” at Air University, the National Character Leadership Symposium at the Air Force Academy, or the interaction with Air Force professionals on a daily basis, I have seen many situations that I would characterize as “great” examples- examples that my colleagues in the private sector probably haven’t seen. I have also realized, however, that we are a service in search of (and, I would contend, in need of) a unifying leadership theme that is Air Force–centric; that embraces the concepts of “leading airmen”;5 that is both pervasive across our entire development spectrum and consistent across our various operations; that embraces our history, culture, and mission- and that resonates.
One can look around academic circle at the various professional military education (PME) programs or at our commissioning programs and realize that the institution does not have a comprehensive, cohesive concept of leadership that is uniquely singular and simultaneously well articulated across the board. Whereas concepts such as “situational leadership” are taught at Squadron Officer College, other methods are discussed at Air Command and Staff College and Air War College- our noncommissioned officer academies even talk about methods and approaches that differ from those learned by officers. The commissioning sources- as well as basic military training, for that matter- also have different approaches to discussing leadership. In almost all cases, a void exists in our current education and training process for discussing what is unique about Air Force leadership. Instead, at the earlier and later part of the spectrum, one finds various speakers relating diverse stories about what “worked” in their experience and what one “should do.” New commanders are usually exposed to these anecdotes. Don’t get me wrong here. I find such stories entertaining and meaningful- as well as necessary for passing along the lore of the organization.
However, the diversity of messages that I have heard, coupled with the absence of fundamental truths based upon rigorous research of what it means to lead airmen, has both concerned and, at times, confused me. From what I have seen, our schools formally present most service members with academic models having no basis in Air Force experience and informally talk to them about Air Force stories. Sometimes the models support the stories; other times they do not. Many times the stories conflict with each other. At the end of the day, the service member must bridge the intellectual gap. During the midcareer years, one encounters more studies and readings concerning examples of leaders (interestingly enough, most of these examples come from outside the Air Force- many from the private sector). In fact, one commonly finds a generic set of processes and methods taught across the board. Air Command and Staff College faculty, for example, teach many lessons about general types of leadership methods, such as conflict resolution, teamwork, and group effectiveness.6 I contend that these methods are more conducive to an MBA style of coursework than to one that fosters a deeper understanding of what it means to lead other airmen. Likewise, the foundations of these studies are typically grounded in private-sector data and situations in non–Air Force settings.
The recent demise of companies such as Enron and Arthur Andersen (as well as Tyco, WorldCom, and a host of others) reminds us that our friends in the for-profit sector need better leaders. It’s likely that in due time they will turn our way for examples.7 In polls that assess the public’s confidence, the military has topped the list for many years running. In fact, recent Harris Polls indicate that the military has received a favorable rating of 71 percent and that major companies have received a rating of only 16 percent.8 In other words, the American people trust us.9 Implicitly, they also trust our leaders and our leadership output. By way of comparison, however, they evidently do not trust many leaders of for-profit industry- as strongly indicated by the instability of the stock market (even in the light of good economic news) during the past year. Americans are wary of their investments due to uncertainty about the quality of leadership in the private sector. One could say that we’re waiting for the other shoe (perhaps both shoes) to drop with respect to the next controversy swirling around corporate leadership. We have witnessed too many accounting scandals, cooking of books, and untruths told to shareholders. As with many other issues in our country, Americans tend to have a sixth sense for knowing what is right- and poor corporate leadership isn’t sitting very pretty.
From my perspective, the lessons from these business debacles are relatively simple- an absence of quality leadership at the helm. In some cases, individuals took an outright and proactive approach to undermine leadership and character at all costs. In other cases, subordinates exhibited a significant lack of integrity, preferring to look the other way rather than ask tough questions- the type of questions that leaders must ask.
How could a company go from the seventh largest in America to a loose confederation of parcels at the bankruptcy fire sale in a matter of months?10 Yet, this happened to Enron- right before our eyes. Even after the company’s downfall, many Wall Street analysts didn’t change their ratings.11 I contend that this example gets at the heart of the leadership vacuum. And don’t confuse this collapse with a decrease in demand for Enron’s product. It’s not a problem resulting from a lack of demand- it is a problem of how a corporation’s leaders didn’t choose the right path. More specifically, they sought personal gain at the cost of their institution. Contrast this scenario to the case of Gen Ronald Fogleman, who put the institution before himself and retired as Air Force chief of staff.12
Interestingly enough, we probably spend more time (and money) looking outside the Air Force for leadership models than we do inside. Our PME programs use them almost exclusively in relation to the formal leadership models presented. Relative to what I stated earlier, this situation is very much a paradox: the for-profit sector values military leadership; however, we look to outsiders to provide us with the fundamental truths. It’s one thing to ask outsiders for help in analyzing the data; it’s quite another to disregard the tending of our own garden in lieu of harvesting the neighbor’s. Why do we do this? I contend that we haven’t taken the time to write down our thoughts- to challenge one another and reflect on what defines who we are as an Air Force. It appears that we have taken the concept of “commercial off the shelf” to a new level when, in reality, we need to capture our own culture and identity- not someone else’s.
Institutionally, too few people are working on legitimate research in this area, and even fewer organized groups are doing so. When was the last time we had people dedicated to researching, applying, recording, and writing their observations for others to consider? When was the last time we charged groups and organizations to do the same? When was the last time we had significant, public Air Force debate on the subject? This issue of Aerospace Power Journal and the one for summer 2001 represent steps in that direction.
As an example of this phenomenon, we should examine where our organizations’ discretionary leadership-training dollars are currently spent. I imagine that most of our money is allocated to leadership or management training that focuses on non–Air Force themes and models. One popular course offering that comes to mind is Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits.13 Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, we focused on Philip B. Crosby and W. Edwards Deming’s principles of total-quality management but transitioned to Covey in the mid 1990s. He proffers good material as a supplement to a core study of Air Force leadership, but in many (almost all) cases, we have used these offerings as the main course instead of the dessert.
Institutionally speaking, these offerings must add up to a nontrivial budget. I would like to support this supposition with a dollar figure, but it’s virtually impossible to arrive at a number because this training is usually paid for by the commander’s discretionary funds on a base-by-base, wing-by-wing, unit-by-unit basis. Headquarters doesn’t track these numbers in detail because it can’t reach down far enough into discretionary expenditures to determine how much is spent on what. A scan of base-education offerings, however, supports the hypothesis that Covey is “in,” and an articulation of what constitutes “leading airmen” is not. The resident commander or education advisor has money to spend on leadership training and chooses from a set of private-sector offerings such as the Covey course. Why? He or she does so because they exist, because they are well packaged, and because there aren’t any alternatives. Many of these courses are good- some are not. None discuss the uniqueness of Air Force leadership in a manner that I propose we need. None discuss what it means to be an airman or, even more importantly, to lead airmen in today’s and tomorrow’s environment. When was the last time anyone saw the base-education office offer training entitled “Principles of Becoming a Better Airman”?
As a former facilitator of Covey’s Seven Habits series, I must admit that I really enjoyed the material. It’s principled, concise, and well focused. But it’s not focused on the Air Force and the unique problems that we encounter. I found Covey’s approach extremely helpful in my personal life as I developed methods for goal setting, prioritization, and vision. In the same vein, however, as an Air Force officer, I found myself yearning for more “Air Force” types of things. Seven Habits is good- but it doesn’t replace the need for codifying what is unique about Air Force leadership. Covey’s is probably one of the more popular training courses that many of us have attended in uniform- there are many others, I’m sure. The point is that we have typically defaulted to hiring outsiders or using non–Air Force models to train ourselves in leadership, when in reality our missions and operations- our Air Force people- require more definition of what it means to lead in our unique environment. Our leadership models are right in front of us on a day-to-day, operation-to-operation basis.
I propose that we attempt to codify airman leadership through a more conscientious approach (research and organizational)- we need to define and articulate it in such a manner that we all speak the same language and play by the same book. Today, we do not. As our service continues to deploy and as our people continue to rotate from supervisor to supervisor and from theater to theater, it is clear that inconsistent models of leadership won’t work. This is not to say that this type of inconsistency and misunderstanding worked on previous occasions, but I contend that the deployment environment exacerbates this problem.
Precedent exists for this concept- in the Army, for example. Since the early twentieth century, that service has actively pursued research on leadership through the Army Research Institute (ARI), which investigates, researches, and documents what works for the Army in the realm of leadership.14 A perusal of ARI’s publications and research agenda reveals that the Army does research- Army-focused leadership research. ARI proactively looks within its service to determine what works best and, most importantly, why it works. The institute’s material is first rate, and its highly dedicated staff and approach support the Army mission. A brief review of its research agenda for 2002 speaks for itself.15 ARI has dedicated itself to finding what works for the Army.
From 1975 to 1986, the Air Force used an analogous but not identical approach with the initiation of the Leadership and Management Development Center (LMDC) at Air University. One of the primary responsibilities of this group involved traveling around the Air Force to consult with commanders on leadership topics and to conduct organizational assessments of entire units at the request of the unit commander.16 I was just coming on-line in the Air Force when the program disbanded, so it’s difficult for me to make objective judgments on the efficacy of LMDC, but from what I’ve read, it filled an important niche. A literature search on LMDC products indicates that interesting research occurred during this time frame as well- on Air Force leadership, culture, and the effect on families. By the mid 1980s, however, the Ira C. Eaker College for Professional Development at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, absorbed this group, and its core missions evidently dissipated at that point.17
I firmly believe that it’s time to reexamine the type of model that dedicates Air Force people to conducting rigorous research on topics of Air Force character and leadership- the core issues of our service. This vision goes far beyond the essays produced as part of the graduation requirement at Air Command and Staff College or Air War College- I envision a much more robust research process. This effort must support other activities, such as the development of coherent leadership doctrine, the establishment of operating procedures for commanders across the service, and the construction of principles that can be categorically used during all phases of PME as well as officer and basic training. This process also would encourage us to look inwards for the development of relevant base-level training that can support our institutional notions of leading airmen.
My professional instincts tell me that they probably do. Why do I believe this? Studies indicate that an organizational culture such as the Air Force’s probably has leadership models unique to how it conducts business. There almost have to be. ARI has found them for the Army. Private-sector organizations have found uniqueness in what they do and how they lead.18 How could we recruit, train, operate, and interact as we do if it were otherwise? Very few professions do what we do- the only others are the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, who have unique aspects to their operations, history, and, consequently, cultures as well. At the very least, I think we’ll find traits that may be similar in a general sense and that differ by the degree to which the airman operates. I think we have to give this process a fair shake by examining who we are and how we lead- and document our findings in a meaningful way for our people. At the end of the day, by answering the question What is an airman? we will begin to define what is unique about who we are and how we lead.
To date, people have proposed purposeful ideas on what is unique- concepts such as centralized control and decentralized execution, for one.19 There may be many others. The key for us is to take the time and energy to begin to explore this issue further. Of course, history can be a starting point for developing our hypotheses for what we explore; both James Hooper and Dr. David Mets have made this point.20 Furthermore, we not only need to look more introspectively now, but also we need to project where we’re going with respect to our operating environment. If it is true that our Air Force is likely to transform itself more than it has since the Wright brothers began working in their bicycle shop,21 I also suspect that we will have to approach the future in a more proactive way to define what our leadership model is- one that focuses upon what it means to lead airmen.
Round Lake, Illinois
Notes
1. Roger Cameron, PCS to Corporate America: From Military Tactics to Corporate Interviewing Strategy, 3d ed. (Dallas: Odenwald Books Publishing, 2000), 17.
2. Stephanie Overby, “Leadership Lessons from the Modern Military,” CIO Magazine, 15 April 2002, on-line, Internet, 15 August 2002, available from http://www.cio.com/archive/041502/hs_leadership.html.
3. Carla Johnson, “What HR Can Learn from Military Veterans,” HR Magazine, June 1997, on-line, Internet, 15 August 2002, available from http://www.shrm.org/hrmagazine/articles/default.asp?page=0697TOC.HTM.
4. In “The Sources of Leadership Doctrine in the USAF,” elsewhere in this issue, Dr. Shannon Brown analyzes the history of leadership doctrine in the Air Force, concluding that almost 40 years have passed since the Air Force has published a comprehensive doctrine document on the subject.
5. See Maj Gen Charles D. Link, USAF, retired, “Leading Airmen,” Aerospace Power Journal 15, no. 2 (summer 2001): 7–12.
6. “Leadership and Command,” Distance Learning, Version 3.0 (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air Command and Staff College, July 2000).
7. At the Air Force Academy’s National Character Leadership Symposium on 21 February 2002, David Gergen from Harvard University’s Center for Public Leadership spoke about Harvard’s interest in how the Air Force Academy develops its leaders.
8. Both The Harris Poll from 16 to 21 January 2002 and the Fox News Opinion Poll from 2 to 3 April 2002 show similar results.
9. Humphrey Taylor, “Whom Do We Trust to Tell the Truth? . . . Whom Do We Trust the Least?” The Harris Poll, no. 61 (12 December 2001), on-line, Internet, 15 August 2002, available from http://www.harrisinteractive.com/ harris_poll/index.asp?PID=273.
10. Steve Priest, “Code of Conduct: A Matter of Trust,” Chicago Tribune, 18 January 2002, 18.
11. Paul R. La Monica, “Where Wall Street Went Wrong,” CNNMoney, 29 November 2001, on-line, Internet, 15 August 2002, available from http://money.cnn.com/2001/11/29/investing/q_enronanalysts.
12. Dr. Richard H. Kohn, ed., “The Early Retirement of Gen Ronald R. Fogleman, Chief of Staff, United States Air Force,” Aerospace Power Journal 15, no. 1 (spring 2001): 6–23.
13. Stephen R. Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990).
14. “ARI: A Brief History,” U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, on-line, Internet, 6 June 2002, available from http://www.ari.army.mil.
15. US Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, “FY 2002 Program” (Alexandria, Va.: ARI, October 2001).
16. T. A. Arnold, “A Grip at the Grassroots (LMDC’s Traveling Teams Consult with USAF Personnel),” Airman, 1979, 16–20, 23.
17. Air University History (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University, 31 December 1995), on-line, Internet, 3 June 2002, available from http://www.au.af.mil/au/history.
18. For example, see “Leadership Model,” National Aeronautics and Space Administration, on-line, Internet, 15 August 2002, available from http://leadership.nasa.gov/nasa/lmd/Model/Leadership%20Model%20Summary.htm; Boeing’s model, on-line, Internet, 15 August 2002, available from http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/aboutus/ leadershipcenter/xblc3.htm; and The Veridian Leadership Model, on-line, Internet, 15 August 2002, available from http://www.veridian.com/Aboutus/leadershipModel.asp.
19. See Maj Gen Charles D. Link’s foreword to Lt Col John J. Zentner’s The Art of Wing Leadership and Aircrew Morale in Combat, CADRE Paper no. 11 (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, June 2001), vii.
20. See James T. Hooper’s article “Creating Strong Leaders and Strong Units: Using Air Force History as a Leadership Tool,” elsewhere in this issue; and Dr. David R. Mets, “In Search of a Twenty-First-Century Air-Leadership Model: Fodder for Your Professional Reading,” Aerospace Power Journal 15, no. 2 (summer 2001): 40–51.
21. Link, “Leading Airmen,” 7–12.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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