Leadership in the Army

The manner of leadership in the army is appalling. Something expected of an organisation where rank takes precedence over all other things (including common sense and human decency) and where officers advance without necessarily learning proper management skills.

Yet officers who are weaned on such a rank crutch will soon find that forced compliance is superficial and, on many levels, useless and harmful. When thrust into a situation which requires them to motivate their subordinates, they first attempt, usually unsuccessfully, motivational platitudes (eg: we have the utmost trust in our NSFs, we care for our soldiers, etc), failing which they then fall back to using ranks and threats: I’m a Major so you better follow instructions, else I will charge you. Instead of trying to align the tasks at hands with either the short-term or long-term goals of the conscript, the officer forces the task onto him, making the conscript feel exploited and thus unwilling to work. This invariably leads to the conscript doing the bare-minimum to avoid punishment--- the quintessential lose-lose situation.

Some officers are under the misimpression that all NSFs are sloth-like and thus need to be forced to do work with implied threats. Yet this misses the point: the reason why NSFs put in minimal effort is precisely because they feel they are forced to work.

Consider a win-win situation, which can be constructed by providing the conscript incentives to produce good work, either in the form of rewards (privileges, offs, recognition, etc) or by engendering ownership among the NSFs. Such an ideal situation used to exist in my section--- in return for privileges like a flexible roster and additional off, NSFs produced exemplary work. Producing excellent work became a matter of personal pride and should work quality drop, it would be the NSFs themselves rather than the bosses who would root out the problem and solve it: for example, “slackers” were either ostracised or posted out (via political angling).

Sadly, that win-win situation and culture vanished with the arrival of our new CO. To his credit, our new CO is relatively visionary and seems to have a relative clear idea of where our unit is going. However, he is sorely lacking in implementation and inter-personal skills. He does not recognise that his new policies, some of which indeed progressive, are in sharp contrast with our office’s established working style and are thus viewed unfavourably. Qing Emperor Guangxu tried it with his Hundred Days’ Reform, JWW Birch tried it with his slavery reform: both neglected the environment around them and paid with their lives and freedom. While neither as extreme nor as severe, our CO is in a similar predicament.

This is compounded by him being a new addition to our office. He thus suffers from the perception of being the outsider who makes changes without first understanding our office. In addition, he does not realise that many of his policies are seen as giving us unnecessary, additional work and he has not chosen to justify them, possibly due to the top-down superiority syndrome (i.e. they are just NSFs).

However, unlike most offices where NSFs are menial slaves and are not essential (the officers could, but wouldn’t want to, make their own coffee or shred their own paper), in my office, NSFs do most of their officers’ work, and are indispensable (in fact, most of us wonder what our officers do, besides going for two hour lunch breaks and watching drama serials). Thus, it’s essential that NSF morale is kept high, for there’s a direct correlation between that and quality.

However, our CO does not seem to realise this: his recent policies seem to disregard the feelings of the NSFs and have not endeared him to us. His high-handed implementation style has further alienated him: for example, recently, he decreed that any conscript caught using MSN or playing online games would be charged. That raised the ire of those affected and as well as those who opposed it in principle and contributed to a sharp drop in morale.

Granted that most conscripts do not enjoy such benefits, which admittedly seem out of place in the military, that has been the established culture in our office, encouraged by one CO (he explicitly told us that we could do our own work once we were done with our office tasks, as long as they were well done) and tolerated by another. Even if our present CO felt that these activities were inimical to the smooth operation of our office and needed to be halted, he ought to have taken the time to understand the matter from our viewpoint, and subsequently proceeded from there; ultimately, the autocratic manner in which the diktat was imposed will only do more harm than good.

Furthermore, it seems he has not properly analysed the pros and cons of such a decision as well as possible effects. The main motivating factor for such a move seems to be the belief that such activities affect our work quality, but removal of these sources of entertainment will drive us to either seek other ways to pass time or to be less productive. Moreover, the morale hit that this latest move has incurred will invariably manifest itself in the reports we do, i.e. for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.

As a unit, we have experienced great fortunes, with previous COs and officers enjoying rapid promotions and comfy jobs. That was in part due to our unit’s exemplary products, a result of the harmonious relations between the bosses and the NSFs; our new CO enjoys none of this, and when the day comes when he requires support from the ground, he will find none. He will reap what he sowed.