I just knew this story would be relevant on some topic:
More Than Rank Splits Army's Stars and Bars
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 19, 2000; Page A02
A surprisingly candid new Army study concludes that captains are leaving the service in droves mainly because of a generation gap between baby boomer generals and Generation X junior officers. But it also blames President Clinton's scandals, among other things, for undercutting younger officers' respect for authority.
The Army has grown alarmed in recent months because so many captains are leaving that it fears it might have trouble filling leadership positions within a few years. In 1989, just as the Cold War was ending, 6.7 percent of Army captains left voluntarily. In 1999, the number climbed to 10.6 percent, a 58 percent increase.
An internal Army forecast that hasn't been released predicts the departure rate will climb this year to about 13 percent. This steady rise is especially disconcerting because captains constitute the largest rank cohort in the Army, accounting for about one-third of commissioned officers.
"We're losing a generation of good leaders," the report quotes one Army colonel as saying.
Written by Leonard Wong, a recently retired Army lieutenant colonel who is on the staff of the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, the report concludes that the heart of the problem is that "today's senior officers do not understand today's junior officers or their perspectives."
Generals and colonels incorrectly assume that today's captains share their values and life experiences, Wong argues. But Generation X officers, born between 1960 and 1980 and now serving as lieutenants, captains and majors, have a very different view of the world than baby boomers born between the end of World War II and 1960, says Wong, who holds a doctorate in organizational behavior and management.
Growing up in two-career families in which divorce became widespread, with 40 percent of their cohorts spending at least some time in a single-parent home, "Xers became the ultimate latchkey children," Wong said.
As adults and officers, members of this generation tend to be extremely skeptical of authority and less inclined to sacrifice time with families to succeed at work. So, he notes, only 21 percent of captains surveyed by the Army in 1998 said that the Army permitted them to maintain a good balance between work and personal life, compared with 47 percent of captains in 1988.
They also are less impressed with authority, Wong finds. "They have been let down by too many authority figures, ranging from their overworked parents to their commander in chief," he writes.
Asked about this and another critical reference in the study to Clinton, Wong said in an interview that "I know it raises eyebrows." But, he added, "I'm a civilian now," having retired Sept. 1.
Wong is just as critical of the Army's current leaders. He recommends that today's generals and colonels stop assuming that they understand their subordinates and instead shut up and listen to them. "Spend 95 percent of the time listening and 5 percent of the time giving advice," he counsels.
The report also takes commanders to task for reassuring themselves with the dismissive adage that soldiers always bellyache. The difference nowadays, he writes, is that "the complaining soldiers are acting on their grievances."
The gap between generations is widened by the skepticism of younger officers, who are holding their superiors to far higher standards than in the past, Wong says. In the 1998 Army survey, 18 percent of captains said they were dissatisfied with their senior officers, compared with 6 percent in 1988.
Despite that dissatisfaction, today's junior officers trust the Army as an institution even more than their predecessors, according to survey data cited by Wong. In 1998, 76 percent said they trusted the Army to help people when needed, slightly higher than the 73 percent who said that 10 years earlier. Likewise, today's captains overwhelmingly report in surveys that they are proud to tell people they are in the Army and that they value the sense of community it gives them.
Wong recommends that the Army build on that desire for community by making it a "fun place in which to work and live," with more social activities and more recreation geared to the "extreme sport" tastes of Generation X, such as mountain biking and rock climbing. He also called on the Army to revive initiation rituals such as "prop blasts," which have been discouraged in recent years because they have been associated with hazing and alcohol abuse.
The study concludes by warning that the Army needs to get serious about addressing this generation gap because it soon will have a new wrinkle in its demography. The young people entering the Army this year as freshly minted second lieutenants, he notes, are from yet another generation, the group born after 1980 that has been dubbed "Generation Y," "the Nintendo Generation" or "Generation Next."
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
Dick
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