TOXIC LEADERS HAVE TOXIC CONSEQUENCES

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There was a very interesting piece about Army Leadership by Greg Jaffe (a consistently excellent journalist) in the Washington Post of June 25 2011. It carried the provocative headline:

ARMY WORRIES ABOUT ‘TOXIC LEADERS’ IN RANKS

Let me quote briefly from the piece:

A major U.S. Army survey of leadership and morale found that more than 80 percent of Army officers and sergeants had directly observed a “toxic” leader in the last year and that about 20 percent of the respondents said that they had worked directly for one.

The survey of about 22,000 Army leaders was conducted by the Center for Army Leadership and comes during a year when the Army has removed or discipline three brigade commanders who were en route to, or returning from war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Selection to command a combat brigade, which consists of about 5,000 soldiers and is commanded by a colonel, is highly competitive in the Army.

The Army defined toxic leaders as commanders who put their own needs first, micro-managed subordinates, behaved in a mean-spirited manner or displayed poor decision making.

…..About half of the soldiers who worked under toxic leaders expected that their selfish and abusive commanders would be promoted to a higher level of leadership.

Hmm! The Army’s findings are disturbing though I guess that the good news is that the subject is being discussed in the first place.

Personally, I have great affection for the U.S. Army (insofar as one can have feelings for such a vast organization) which was why I spent many months with units in the Nineties, and have followed its activities so closely ever since. In fact, most of my American  friends are either serving or retired military, and the majority of those are Army. My interest is both personal and professional. Where the latter is concerned I planned a series of books around that institution. So far, only The Devil’s Footprint, which features the 82nd Airborne, has been published, but Getting To Know The Warfighters is due out shortly, and other military related books will follow.

Based upon both my field research and experiences, the Army has a long way to go before it gets its leadership up to the standard required. The reasons are structural so extremely hard to eradicate. They include:

 

• The fact that the best and the brightest tend not to go into the Army. This doesn’t mean that there are not some notable exceptions, and that there is not considerable competence, but more that the Army, as a service, does not attract restless, cutting edge talent. Worse, its culture actively discourages intellectualism and academic brilliance, particularly when it comes to the more senior ranks. ‘Clubability’ rather than talent is preferred. Bright people tend to question the status quo and the last thing Army generals want is the very system that treats them so well to be questioned. Dave Petraeus and a few others are exceptions – though they shouldn’t be -  but the overall standard of generals is not high  and the Club of Generals, both serving and retired (informal but no less real for all that) likes it that way.
• An excessively authoritarian and rigid culture that, by definition, discourages creativity, initiative and original thinking. After all, if you are conditioned day after day, and year after year, to follow orders, and regard The Army Way as being the only way, you are scarcely likely to question the system particularly as the system actively discourages such behavior. Such action is typically a career breaker. In contrast to ‘The Big Army, ‘Special Forces’ have considerably more autonomy and and freedom to use their initiative, and the results speak for themselves. This raises the whole question as to whether as to whether Special Forces training and culture should not be adopted more widely.
• Careerism has become endemic to the Army culture. There are various definitions of careerism, but few are as pithy as this one from thefreedictionary.com:  careerism - the practice of advancing your career at the expense of your personal integrity. Needleless to say this scourge is not confined to the Army but is widespread in politics, business, the professions and academia.

I could write much more about this, but will save it for a longer paper. But the overriding point is that the whole question of Army leadership is vastly important; and, up to now, has not received the attention it deserves.

The Army, despite its massive power tends to be excessively sensitive to criticism – ‘defensive’ would inadequately describe its mindset. Accordingly, let me soften my words by paraphrasing Ernest Hemingway. The above photo is of him in Milan in 1918. 

The U.S. Army is a fine institution; and its leadership is worth improving.

We pay for its inadequacies in both blood and treasure.

 

Victor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HEART-ATTACK COURTESY OF MICROSOFT. ONE OF MANY

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As I recall, I’m supposed to be working up to a serious post on economic matters, but meanwhile you (my merry band of readers) are due a report on Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer. Consider this an interim report because I’m damned if I yet know how it all works.


I guess it is supposed to be intuitive, but I don’t think I’m being unreasonable in wanting a HELP MENU. There isn’t one. This is Microsoft country where all the Microsoft Pharisees already know what to do, and the rest can go and do anatomically impossible things.


I remember the days when I was introduced to a program called Word Perfect, and thought I had died and gone to heaven. It was pretty much WHYSIWYG and it had a marvelous set-up page. In it, you merely chose what you wanted – ‘defaults’ in the jargon of the medium - and it did exactly that until YOU changed it.
Today, software seems to have a mind of its own; and I don’t take kindly to it. I set the FONT SIZE at 12 point and it immediately changes to 9.9. And so on! Yes, I know that there is probably a simple solution to all this – if one is familiar with the ‘Microsoft Way’  - but I regard such an assumption, in the absence of a HELP MENU, as arrogance.


There is no doubt at all, but that software is improving, but I still have a suspicion that the people who write software, and real people, come from different races; and from different planets at that. They certainly come from different cultures, and, believe me, that shows.


I hold Microsoft – its movers and shakers - in debatable regard for the following reasons:

• For most of the last quarter century plus, they have marketed operating systems that have overpromised and under–performed to the great distress of hundreds of millions, probably billions, of users. I hate to think how many businesses they have bankrupted, suicides they have caused, relationships they have destroyed, and heart-attacks they have induced.  Personal computers are personal, and the consequences of their failure are just that.
  
• They are a monopoly, and have long abused their dominant position.  They have maintained it though unethical behavior. In fact, I see scant evidence that Microsoft has a moral sense.
  
• They don’t have a healthy corporate ethos. Whereas Google has thought through the obvious fact that treating people well pays – consider the corporate environment and 20% time to do what you please – Microsoft just believes in long hours, and divide and conquer. As their architecture reflects, they are remarkably dull slave-masters.
  
• I don’t know what goes on in the bowels of Microsoft, but their people come across – particularly when considered in relation to their resources – as lacking the innovation gene, and excessively corporate in mindset.

Apple’s courageous decision to switch to a more reliable Unix based operating system illustrates the contrast. The corporation took the risk that its user base put up with having to buy completely new software because the new Apple OS would not run legacy software – and it paid off. Apple has the proven ability to generate significant customer loyalty over the long term. Microsoft primarily trades upon corporate inertia.


I think I’ll leave my latest comments on Windows Live Writer for another day.


Regarding UNIX, I came to the conclusion years ago that I should using it. I was talked out of by all my DOS/Windows support system on the grounds that I wouldn’t get the support I needed, there wasn’t enough software available and it would cost too much to run. In the end I went with the prevailing wisdom. It is frequently, perhaps normally, wrong. It was in this case.
It’s a foolish thing to defy one’s instincts.

Victor.

I THOUGHT I WAS GOOD AT DEALING WITH DEATH. IT APPEARS THAT I AM NOT.

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The first death I ever witnessed was that of a motorcyclist descending a hill beside the common in Chalfonts Saint Peter in Buckinghamshire, England, who failed to make a turn, crashed into a wall, and broke his neck.

I was about five when it happened, and only a few yards away from the point of impact. I remember the crash, and the fact that his head was at a funny angle, but I don’t recall any blood. He was wearing a helmet and leathers. At that age, I didn’t know what death looked like, but he looked – and was – dead. I didn’t stick around. I went on home with my carton of cigarettes and told my mother what had happened. She didn’t believe a word.

Today, children aren’t allowed out by themselves at such an early age but that was then, and I had a fairly unusual mother. From the age of five I had been sent down to the village to buy her cigarettes. I normally bought them by the carton. I was known as “the little boy in the pith helmet who likes Craven A.” The pith helmet was a military affair, given to me by one of mother’s many boyfriends, which fitted me little better than a basin. But I loved it. The only outfit, that I know of, that wears such headgear today is the Royal Marines (see photo).

I am always feel mildly jealous when I see them in action. I thought I had the monopoly on such cool gear. The point of a pith helmet was to keep the sun off – scarcely a threat in England in those days. My helmet was made out of some kind of insulating cork composite, covered with cotton and a spike, and was wonderful in the rain. It was like wearing an umbrella.

Thereafter I considered myself as a person of experience and capable of dealing with death. When relatives and family friends died off, I wasn’t particularly phased. I was never taken to the funerals. Death was normally a line in a school letter; and remote. Face after face sort of faded away. I wasn’t entirely unaffected as the ranks thinned, but I rationalized that it was the natural order of things.

I dreaded my grandmother dying. She was the person I loved most and was closest to, and a constant support under any, and all, circumstances. She didn’t fuss and she didn’t nag. In times of crisis, violent or otherwise, she was as cool as a cucumber. When I was bought home at dawn by a police car after being mugged and injured by a gang in north London – we chased and caught them and they were imprisoned - she didn’t turn a hair. She merely helped me out my torn clothes, and cooked breakfast. She had been a nurse in WWI and an Air Raid Warden in WWII during the blitz in London so death and injury just went with the territory. When she died, my heart was broken. I knew life would never be the same; and it hasn’t been. 

Over the years I’ve experienced death in various ways and in various forms but I have never had so many friends die as over the last six months. It started with Jo who killed herself as a small group of her friends, including me, stood around her bed. She was dying anyway, in enormous pain, so all she really did was chose the time and circumstances; and I salute her for that.

Since then, one more person who I knew well, has died in this building, as have five other friends elsewhere – mostly of cancer.

I guess I should accept all this with equanimity, but the truth is that the death of each friend has hit hard. It doesn’t fit my self-image. I like to think of myself as reasonable compassionate, but stoic.

I fear that is not the case. Perhaps, on balance, it’s  a good thing. But I still feel sad.

 

Victor

 

 

 

 

BOOKS: “STILL POINT OF THE TURNING WORLD”–T.S. ELIOT (courtesy of Johann Hari)

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The  Huffington Post often tends to look as if it was edited by someone on roller skates zipping around a warehouse full of piles of potential material; and grabbing stuff at random.

It lacks the professional feel of a New York Times. That said, there is plenty of content in it, and every so often one finds a gem.

Besides, I admire what Arianna Huffington is trying to do, especially in the context of the massacre of the media that has been taking place over the past decade or so.

Big Media (as in big corporate media) has not served this sector well. It seems to have forgotten the vital role that the Constitution dictates for the press (in all its forms). Profit it a fine thing, but the role of the media has never been (should never be) just about profit.

There is also its mandate to keep the electorate informed. If the electorate is treated like mushrooms,  it will vote like them. I guess  you know what they say about mushrooms. The Son Tay raiders (you can Google this) had a badge made up which said, more or less: “Kept in the dark, and fed horse shit.”

One could apply that remark to the American public with one proviso: All too many of us seem to want to remain, if not in the dark, in a state of  legally drugged distraction. Prescription meds constitute our hit of choice. And we are worried about the Iranians getting The Bomb! We already have it; and apparently most of us are permanently high, or otherwise not in full command of our faculties. Am I joking? I wish I was. I would have thought that the fact that more than half the adult population is on drugs would be a source of concern, but apparently not.  I guess that is one of the primary effects of being drugged.

I have just been reading a book about the Son Tay action – The Raid – which I thoroughly recommend.

But, let me return to my finding, that veritable gem of erudition (made all the more so because I agree with it)..

Such a gem is a piece by Johann Hari, a columnist for the London Independent. It’s entitled In The Age of Distraction, We Need One Thing More Than Ever: Books Unfortunately, this hyperlink does not seem to work so go search manually.

The more important point is: Bully for Johann!  The following is an extract. The full piece – if you can track it down - is well worth reading.

A book has a different relationship to time than a TV show or a Facebook update. It says that something was worth taking from the endless torrent of data and laying down on an object that will still look the same a hundred years from now. The French writer Jean-Phillipe De Tonnac says "the true function of books is to safeguard the things that forgetfulness constantly threatens to destroy." It's precisely because it is not immediate -- because it doesn't know what happened five minutes ago in Kazakhstan, or in Charlie Sheen's apartment -- that the book matters.

That's why we need books, and why I believe they will survive. Because most humans have a desire to engage in deep thought and deep concentration. Those muscles are necessary for deep feeling and deep engagement. Most humans don't just want mental snacks forever; they also want meals. The twenty hours it takes to read a book require a sustained concentration it's hard to get anywhere else. Sure, you can do that with a DVD boxset too -- but your relationship to TV will always ultimately be that of a passive spectator. With any book, you are the co-creator, imagining it as you go. As Kurt Vonnegut put it, literature is the only art form in which the audience plays the score.

T.S. Eliot called books "the still point of the turning world." He was right. It turns out, in the age of super-speed broadband we need dead trees to have living minds.

If that  last paragraph doesn’t resonate from your gullet to your zatch, you’ve had one pill too many.

 

Victor.

 

CLOSE, BUT NO MERMAID

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I like to sit and just think every now and then (ideally every day) because I find thinking without distraction both productive and fun. I call it working.

Ideally, I’d think while standing on my head – it really does seem to work – but I’ve never had the discipline to take up yoga. Besides, writers tend not to be joiners – except in the interests of research. If writing is involved, we will probably go anywhere and do anything. 

Quite how far one would push such a concept is an interesting thought. How can I write about killing if I have never killed etc. Ponder that next time you read one of my thrillers.

Today, I was trying to think about thinking, but the Blue Angels were screaming across Seattle’s leaden sky so it was rather hard to focus.  They come once a year to do dangerous things on July 4, and they rehearse in advance just so they don’t hit Mount Rainier. You never quite know what might set that thing off, and in case you’ve forgotten, it’s a volcano; and really quite close.

No one can see the Angels of course, given Seattle’s climate, but they sound terrific unless you are trying to think. God invented AAA and guided missiles for very good reasons. Triple A is Anti-Aircraft Artillery as you probably know.

Since I didn’t have a Patriot missile battery to hand, my thoughts bounced around a bit, but I did come up with the thought that writing is rather like sailing. A disciplined writer normally doesn’t suffer much from writers’ block (except when the Blue Angels are around) but there is no doubt at all that sometimes – as when a following wind obligingly makes an appearance – the words flow more easily. My tendency then is to make the most of it because the feeling then is so strong, it is virtually an imperative.

Does that conflict with one’s other duties? Of course it does; but so does life in general. 

I’m not quite sure what to do with my sailing metaphor though I might if I knew more about sailing. In truth my experience with the sea has been mixed. It tried to drown me when I was six by sweeping me out to sea at Brittas Bay in Ireland. I learnt to swim in a hurry, I can tell you. 

It tried to drown me again when I was fifteen when I discovered, after I was well out to sea trying to avoid Dun Laoghaire harbor (that’s in Ireland), that the canoe I had just bought had holes in it. Damnably awkward timing. I was about two miles off shore with the current against me.

I drowned. I exaggerate.

A fishing boat hauled me out a couple of hours later by which time I was so cold I couldn’t move. Thus, I learned all about hyperthermia the way a good writer should – first hand. If an early morning walker  at the end of the mile long pier hadn’t lifted his binoculars and noticed something bobbing in the sea… I’d have had to research sex with the mermaids. It probably would have worked out. You have a lot of sexual energy in your teens.

It tried to do me in a few years later when I was swimming off Tangier, Morocco. I got severe cramp and suddenly couldn’t move. I wasn’t too far out, but I was beyond shouting distance. My waves were interpreted as being social. In the end I floated until the pain passed. It took some time. I got nicely sunburned while bobbing around.

And when I finally went sailing in a real sailing boat with a mast and ropes and windlasses and things – and a crew who knew what they were doing - I seem to recall spending most of my time trying to avoid being decapitated as the boom swung from side to side. What a loss to literature that would have been!

Still, I can recall that feeling of exhilaration I experienced when I had no more lunch to throw up, the wind was doing what the wind ought to do, the crew were doing all the work, and the boom was spending a few minutes in one position. I guess I felt for that brief time as if I could conquer the world. It was a  truly wonderful feeling.

I guess writing is like sailing without a crew, and without being sea-sick.

 

Victor.

 

 

 

 

FROM A FOUNTAIN PEN TO AN APPLE – WITH A RIFLE IN BETWEEN

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I’m a great believer in the idea that one should learn the tools of one’s trade so well that one’s muscle memory takes over, and their use becomes a reflex rather than requiring conscious thought. That approach is the basis of military training, and, whatever you may think about the military, it works.

I can still remember exactly how to use the first rifle I ever trained with – a  bolt action .303 Lee Enfield No.4 (a commendably accurate weapon) even though it has been half a century since I have used one. My instructor was a Guards Sergeant Major and he was superb. He told us that the first thing he and his men had done after landing in Normandy was polish their boots. Then they had killed Germans.

The basis of acquiring such reflex skills has traditionally been made of: a good teacher; a good manual; and constant repetition over a period of time until the necessary skill is mastered. I stress the importance of time because  although one can often master principles fairly easily and quickly, only repetition over a period – weeks, months and years rather than days – ensures that reflex skill that is so desirable. Musicians, singers and shooters practice regularly for exactly that reason.

Mastering computer software seems to require a different approach largely because however straightforward it seems to be initially, in reality most software is complex, powerful, constantly evolving, and there is so much of the stuff.  Research suggests that most of us seem to cope by learning only what we think we need to know; and ignoring the rest. Indeed that has been my approach for many years. I held to the view that I should focus on writing, and anything that didn’t support that goal was nothing more than a distraction.

Over time, I have come to the view that such a narrowly focused approach is not good enough, and that a writer today needs to have a much deeper understanding of the application of computer technology than is necessary for pure writing. My reasoning is that writing is more and more going to be linked to multimedia; the very formats we read are changing; information management has become increasingly important; and distribution technologies are going to change beyond recognition.

When I first went to school, I learned to write with a pen one dipped into an ink pot; and I regarded a fountain pen as advanced technology. 

Can one adapt? I don’t think any of us have any choice in the matter. Besides, it’s fascinating (though it can be MADDENING), so I look forward to becoming as comfortable in this new world as I once was with my rifle. 

But where do I find the computer equivalent of Sergeant Major Hennessey? I shall polish my shoes and meditate.

 

Victor.

 

 

 

 

WRITING IS A MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, BUT, IN REALITY, IT’S A LONG, SLOW, DEMANDING, EVER ELUSIVE PROCESS FOR MOST OF US

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But, I’ll be an exception I hear you think ( we authors have special powers , you know).

Perhaps. Could happen. But, let me tell you, it doesn’t happen that way for most of us – even if we have early successes.

Part of the reason is that it takes a truly incredible amount of time to become proficient at the core skills of writing; and part of the reason is that you just need time to build up experience of life; and learn to understand, and then communicate, its nuances and complexities. And then there is the business of dealing with agents and publishers. That requires the skills of a Sun Tzu combined with the pragmatism of a professional hit man. And body armor for your back is strongly advised. Those people think treachery is just another form of socially acceptable behavior, are born stiletto in hand – which is why they naturally gravitate to publishing - and like to keep in practice. Many are charming.  Check out the sexual orientation of the target in question before making your move.

How much time are you talking about? Take a deep breath, sit down, and have some medicinal brandy at hand. Absinthe used to be all the rage, but that is no longer so popular since it shrank Toulouse Lautrec.

I’m talking decades. Those ten year things. A couple, possibly more of them. Marathons are easy in comparison. Writing is more akin to going on the Crusades, probably several times,and could well have the same casualty rate. Fortunately, chastity belts no longer come into the equation. When it comes to sex, we writers don’t do as well as poets and painters, but we do ok. In the interests of research, you understand. And sometimes that’s the only way you get to know what’s going on. Think of it as REE – Research, Espionage and Exercise. As for love, that’s why poets were invented.

But, how do you – we - keep going? We write a lot and while we are writing we don’t think of our problems. That’s the whole point. Better yet, after a while, when you’ve learned to get in the zone on demand, you will find the process both exhilarating and curiously calming. And then there is wine, the company of friends (who won’t understand you, but will support you in other ways), the pleasures of the sex you feel drawn to – and books. If you are going to learn to write, you have to read. A lot.

Any suggestions? Too many to list, but I will draw your attention to the Paris Review series of interviews with writers originated by George Plimpton. They’ll give you a taste of the world you are entering. And then there is Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast which will convey a pretty good sense of the emotional costs that accompany this very dangerous quest. It’s supposed to be non-fiction, though that is arguable, but, either way, it’s a beautiful book. And what finer purpose has a writer, but to create such a wonder.

All will be forgiven if you do – especially if you are dead.

 

Victor,