Air University Review, January-February 1978

In the course of a brief Air Force career, I have had the opportunity to read the works of many successful men, among them statesmen and general officers, as they reflected on their careers and passed along the wisdom of their experiences. I recall that in each case, no matter how valuable I thought the advice to be, I envied that individual. I simply envied his position of being important enough to be asked for his opinion. Now I do not pretend to be important enough (yet) to have my advice sought after. Rather, having the opportunity to reflect on his or her own experiences is something any junior officer would relish. I hope no one will object if I take pleasure in assuming a role usually filled by senior officers.

Basic to this discussion, and basic to the first five commissioned years, is the decision by the junior officer to make the Air Force his career. Many factors bear on that decision. The newcomer to any career area is going to do a lot of thinking about the opportunities and drawbacks to devoting his life to that line of work, and it is certainly no less true of a junior officer in the Air Force. It is a time when the individual and the system are sizing each other up. Obviously the junior officer is concerned with much more than this one decision; many have already made it. Yet everything about the Air Force lifestyle has a bearing on it.

Perhaps the most tangible aspects of a career with the Air Force are salary and benefits. We know we will never get rich, but we have enough to he fairly comfortable. I think nearly all of us feel that way, regardless of rank. But we also realize that the peacetime military is one of the few organizations in society where benefits are decreasing. Although benefits are not a big issue now, the lack of them will be. Air Force officers have a common concern for the future, concerned not so much for future raises as for the erosion of the benefits we already have.

Another tangible aspect of military life is geographical location, especially as it relates to one's family. In general, however, location is not that big an issue, but it will get bigger as the number of PCS moves decreases.

Another, less tangible aspect in deciding whether to stay in the Air Force is the risk of failure. One has to look at it from both a practical and an idealistic standpoint, but I really cannot say which is the more important. Practically speaking, none of us wants to fail. (But more than that, I think we want to do the best job we possibly can, especially the young officer just starting out.) But there is a risk of failure in any profession we might choose. In the Air Force, failure can result in getting passed over for promotion and involuntary separation. The early years of a career area trial period where an individual is rated a few times and gets a feel for his or her own chance of success. It is a time when an individual must learn the type and amount of work needed to achieve success. But there are no assurances, even for the hardest worker. This is a competitive business from the start, where there is simply no room at the top for all those who want to be there. It is an organization in which the price of continued membership is continual advancement.

Theoretically, though there are many living examples to deny this, the Air Force is an organization where you cannot reach your own level of incompetency. It is either up or out. But if you put the fear of failure aside for a minute, I think this knowledge also has a profound effect on job satisfaction. Take, for example, a young copilot who has probably wanted to fly since he was a young boy. To him being a copilot is probably a good job in itself. But he knows that to progress he must upgrade to the pilot seat, then to instructor pilot, then to evaluator. The system has a built-in dissatisfier; you know that if you stay in the same job for very long, your career will not progress. It is a problem, especially if the avenues of progress are blocked. For the copilot, there may already he an overage of pilots, making it difficult to upgrade.

In talking with my contemporaries I find that the heart of the matter lies in how people are selected for advancement. We realize there is a chance of failing in any endeavor. Indeed, it is a basic part of any challenging career. But it is certainly easier to assume the risk of failing if you know you will be judged fairly and on your own merits. But other, intangible factors get in the way--politics, charisma, who you know. There are also a number of less subtle ways of saying that our advancement system is somewhat less than perfectly objective. I think that this is one of the hardest things for an idealistic newcomer to understand.

One of the men I admire most is a major who has spent eighteen years in the Air Force. He received his master's degree through AFIT, is personable, frank, does his job well, and looks after his men, yet he has been passed over three times for lieutenant colonel. He is being allowed to complete his twenty years for retirement because of his regular commission. But to me there is real irony in the way he became regular. One day years ago, the members of his class at navigator training were told they could have regular commissions, but they would have to remain after class that afternoon to fill out the paperwork. He stayed. Now that story is not exactly motivating to a young officer, but to him his career has not been all that bad. The opportunity to live all over the world, his education, and his job have been compensation.

I do not intend to discuss the OER system at great length. Junior officers certainly have no monopoly on complaints about the OER system. Personally, being rated fairly is the most important aspect of job satisfaction. I hear constantly that pilots will be rated better than I because I am a navigator, but being an Academy graduate makes up for it. It is more than just a matter of being recognized for one's efforts because the OER is the crucial factor in promotions and, therefore, success.

There is also some risk in succeeding, I have been told by a number of senior officers to enjoy my years on a flight crew because they offer the most time off and the fewest responsibilities. I am hard pressed to believe them, for most of us crew members seem very busy to me, but it does point up something interesting. Most of us look to the job of wing commander as an example of success. The prestige and responsibility are tremendous, but so is the sacrifice. To say it is a 24-hour-a-day job is no exaggeration. PCS moves are frequent, and I would guess that their disrupting effects on home life are temendous. It is up to each individual to decide whether the prestige, and pressure, are for him.

These three "I's" are the things most junior officers would like to change. I am also grouping them because they are really three nebulous concepts and hard ones to substantiate.

Keeping informed is one of the biggest problems in any organization. This is especially true for the junior officer because of his place in the organization--at the bottom. I think it is safe to say that we rarely get the same information as the senior officers, and, therefore, it is harder for us to see things the way they do. I think we see considerably less. Remember the experiment in which a particular story is passed around the room in whispers from one person to another? The version told by the last person is somewhat different from the original. One at the scene of a breaking news story often finds the version in the next day's newspaper rather different from what "happened." Really, the system and human nature are at fault, but on the other hand, I do not see many people going out of their way to keep us informed either. What this means to a junior officer at his place in the system is misunderstanding and a bit of demotivation. A leader's decisions are no better than the information he has to base them on. We are leaders, too, and in today's Air Force, information and reason, not blind obedience, are the basis for much of what we know as leadership.

In looking back to the story-telling experiment, we realize that the reason the story changed so much was that different words mean different things to different people. Even if all the factors bearing on a commander's decision are known to a particular junior officer, he still might not understand it. He is an individual; he is newer and less experienced. It is that simple. His perspective is inherently different.

Junior officers will admit this, but they do not view it as a disadvantage. On the contrary, they are eager and willing to apply their own outlook and intelligence to any situation. Yet I have never talked to a junior officer who felt that his intelligence and abilities were being fully utilized. It is partly our fault--and I realized that from talking to a number of junior officers who admitted it. As one of them put it, we have "tunnel vision." All we really know of the Air Force, or at least all of the firsthand information we have, is what we have experienced in our initial assignments. It is difficult for me, in my first operational assignment, to realize that what I am doing now is not necessarily what I will he doing four years from now, and soon. I am speaking from the standpoint of a young crew member, and not from the standpoint, say, of a young systems project officer. With this bias in mind, then, let me continue. Just as many junior officers perceive that their information is limited, likewise they feel that their opportunity to send information back up the system is also limited. It seems to me that I hear the expression "just another warm body" all the time. Another expression I hear frequently is "crewdog." It is an old one, but it is still applied to us, for junior officers make up a large part of the "crewdog" force. The point is, the expressions persist and for a reason. For example, crew members are given the responsibility of flying the airplanes, but most of us feel we have little input into deciding how they are to he flown.

I tried very hard to nail down some good, specific examples but with little success. Many junior officers seem to find the forum for expressing their ideas very limited, which can reduce the job of crew member to a mechanical one. The problem is two-sided: on the one hand we feel our opinions are not solicited; on the other we feel we are being "led by the hand."

There is a definite relationship between being left out of the decision-making process and my next topic, integrity, which is a sensitive subject to say the least. In using the word, I do not mean to indict anyone's character. Rather it is a convenient label under which to group a number of intangibles. Let me start with the "my door is always open" syndrome. That is a phrase uttered by many sincere men, at all levels of command, who are truly interested in the welfare and ideas of their men. But, unfortunately, some insincere types use it, too, and it is this latter group that gives the phrase its bad name. I cannot really say why this is true, but many junior officers I have talked with felt they could not go to their commander or operations officer with problems or suggestions. Maybe it was a fear of reprimand, or maybe they did not want to jump the chain of command. Maybe there is a feeling of distrust. I will not pretend to be able to explain it any further, but it is a problem of integrity that even the most sincere commander must overcome.

A. number of junior officers I have talked with mentioned this second example. It has to do with the apparent hypocrisy generated by the energy crisis. We are all familiar with the tremendous amounts of fuel burned by our aircraft, yet how many times do those same aircraft orbit in the holding pattern because they are not allowed to land early or because of constraints on flying time that quarter? It is the same Air Force that asks us to turn our thermostats down to a chilly 68° .

In researching this study I solicited a wide range of opinions. Much of what I heard was "Such and such is all screwed up," or "That's just not right." But when I asked for specific examples, all I got was a shrug of the shoulders. Politics and hypocrisy abound in our organization. Of course, it is not just in the Air Force, but in government, business, everywhere. I do not know how to get rid of it except to try to rid it from my own actions. But it is something junior officers are very sensitive to.

It occurred to me that I have devised this whole article without mentioning war or the possibility of getting killed. It is something no one talks about, I suppose, because it is something each of us must face on his own. I fervently hope that my contemporaries and I can spend our careers flying only training missions. But on the other hand, each of us knew what the military was all about when we joined. I hope that if I am ever called, I will be ready; and that the cause for which I am being asked to risk everything is a worthy one.

One has to have a special sense of humor to work for the Air Force. We are really pretty good at laughing at ourselves, too, as evidenced by the popularity of the television show "MASH" among service members. It is a parody of the things that go on around us everyday. Many say it is what goes on. Moreover, I think a sense of humor is essential for preserving one's sanity amid the endless stream of directives and policies that come down to us. I do not think there is anyone who could make it through basic training, for example, without a sense of humor. I do not know what happens as one gets older or has been in the Air Force a few years--maybe it is a

thing called responsibility-- but often the only ones I see smiling are the junior officers. This may be interpreted as bad attitude, but it is not. Injecting some humor into a serious situation can help relieve the pressure; taking the edge off a situation may be more important to a junior officer, but all too often it is equated with not caring. There may be junior officers with a bad attitude who take everything lightly, but the majority probably use humor for what it is worth: a valuable tool for keeping things in perspective.

Another inconsistency concerns those junior officers who decide not to make a career of the Air Force. The first few years are a trial period, and many are going to decide against the Air Force. This does not necessarily make them villains, and it does not necessarily mean they do not care about doing their job. Some of them joined because they wanted to serve their country; they leave because they feel their obligation has been fulfilled, and their talents can be better used elsewhere. The Air Force may be guilty of not properly using the talents of these individuals once they have announced their intention to leave. Commanders are less willing--and this is understandable--to give them a high rating on their performance report. I do not know how often this happens, but I think some unfortunate alienation occurs.

But on balance, there must be a number of things that keep junior officers in the service long enough to become middle managers (at least). I would guess that the man who likes the Air Force the most could list a lot more of its faults than its positive aspects. Maybe we take the good things for granted until the need arises. At Loring AFB, Maine, it is popular to complain about the weather, the black flies, and the lack of stores, but many enjoy themselves there nevertheless. We draw satisfaction from our work in different ways, but there are a few important aspects most junior officers have in common.

To begin with, most junior officers agree that the initial five-year commitment is a good opportunity. It affords a decent paying job and a comfortable lifestyle from the start. I do not know the exact figures, but few of today's college graduates find jobs in the field they majored in. For that matter, how many graduates know exactly what they want to do? The Air Force, then, provides excellent direction for the recent graduate. A commission can make the transition years useful and productive as well. If a college student can get over the fear of committing five years of his life, he will realize that he is not giving up or losing those five years at all. The Air Force commitment is an opportunity to experience the military and other aspects of society as well.

One of these aspects is people. Almost without exception people make the assignment, because of the close-knit nature of the Air Force community. Some contend that we in the military are brainwashed, but we certainly do not come from the same mold. More than in the usual college experience, one associates with people from all parts of the country. It does something positive for one's outlook to live, work, and socialize with such a diversity of individuals. Certainly that opportunity alone would broaden the outlook of a college graduate.

But the experiences, like the people, are also diverse. Even the newest crew member at Loring has already lived in two or three different parts of the country he might never have seen otherwise. I have been skiing, scuba diving, parachuting, and done other things I never would have done had I not joined the Air Force. I learned to fly, and now I am getting my master's degree—free--to say nothing of other educational opportunities. There is even something positive to be found in the unpleasant experiences, like basic training and survival. Although one would not care to go through them again, he learns some invaluable lessons there about human nature and himself.

I would introduce a third consideration which one hears little or no mention of these days maybe because it smacks of patriotism, a theme no longer fashionable in our society; I feel there is some sort of higher calling associated with a military career. (I asked two friends if they agree. One said "Hell no"; the other "Yes, definitely.") It is easy to be cynical about it; after you have been pushing paperwork all day, it may be the last thing on your mind, but I think that it is important to remember that each of us is responsible in some way for the nation's defense. It is not something you write home about or get misty-eyed about, but it is an aspect of our job that places military service on a level with other prestigious professions such as medicine and law. It is a part of job satisfaction that executives in business and industry may never know.

The last area has to do with change and with a junior officer's attitude toward his superiors. We are all taught early in life that the best way to effect change is to work within the system. It is not until much later we learn that to effect change we must be in a position of influence in the system. To achieve that position is a long process that involves hard work, sacrifice, and compromise. Although I have not been there yet myself, I would guess there are many successful, influential men at the top wondering just what they were trying to do in the first place. What effect does the system of which we are a part, have on the individual?

Hardly a day goes by that I do not hear someone imply of a superior that if he were in so and so's position he would have done things differently. I feel that way, too, yet when I do occasionally find myself in so and so's position, my brilliant, clear-cut, and logical thinking escapes me. I realize that so and so has a tough job. The middle manager finds himself in so and so's position more and more, often, and there he is intensely evaluated, not only from above but also from below by a group of intelligent, eager young people, the junior officers.

From what I have seen of middle management in the Air Force, it is strong and getting stronger. And well it should be, with the many new management tools being developed and put into use today. No smugness is intended here. By and large we junior officers are receiving good management, and probably middle management would rather hear it from a subordinate, one of the resources being managed, than from superiors. It is well to remember that both groups are sensitive to the opinions of the other. I remember very well at navigator training the offhand remark a captain made about "those stupid young lieutenants." Those of us who overheard him

had a low opinion of that man from then on; he remains irrevocably despised by us to this day. Moreover, we are sensitive to such remarks even when they are made in fun, which that one was not. We lieutenants are very conscious of the fact that we are lieutenants. But on the other hand, we are not always impartial judges either. Often one mistake by a superior tends to wipe out all the good he may have done, especially when it is a mistake in human relations.

My point is twofold. One is that our relationship to superiors is a two-way street. Unfortunately, junior officers are not always fair in their judgment of superiors. We tend to be somewhat emotional and idealistic--at least we show it more--and we are quick to criticize. The second point is the suggestion that middle managers (and their superiors) remember their own ideals, those things they used to get emotional about; they are probably still around, still waiting for somebody to do something about them.

First Lieutenant Thomas M. Hall (B.S., U.S. Air Force Academy) is a B-52 Electronic Warfare Officer at Loring AFB, Maine. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Systems Management from the University of Southern California Study Center at Loring. As a former member of the Air Force Academy Debate Team, he was invited to address the Air Command and Staff College on the attitudes of the junior officer.

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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