US Army Photo by Staff Sgt. Marcus Fichtl
By presidential appointment and congressional approval, the commissioned officer corps of the United States military serves as the principal leadership cadre of the armed forces. The duties of small unit leaders are often delegated to non-commissioned officers, but the ultimate responsibility of mission accomplishment or failure always rests with the commissioned commander.
October 30, 2013 – Photo by Staff Sgt.Tim Chacon
“…the expectations of a Major are very different than those of a captain, and not everyone knows what these expectations are or the impact they have on personal and professional success.”
-MG(R) Tony Cucolo, “In Case You Didn’t Know It, Things Are Very Different Now: Part 1”
While attending the Command and General Staff College (CGSC), instructors and mentors constantly drove two points home. First, transitioning to the rank of Major and the expectations of a Field Grade Officer is a difficult and steep learning curve. Second, what made an officer successful at the company grade level does not necessarily translate to success as a Major. I have been a combined arms battalion S3 for ten months now and during this period I’ve planned, resourced, and executed field training exercises, live fire events, gunneries, an NTC rotation, and spent enough hours on my Blackberry that I never want to see one again. However, I can definitively say two things about my instructors’ advice: They weren’t kidding about either point … and they vastly downplayed both.
I wrote this article while sitting in a hotel room in Madrid contemplating how I got here. I was visiting the Spanish and Portuguese militaries as part of my experience in the Army’s Schools of Other Nations (SON) Program. I have spent the last nine months studying at the Colombian Superior School of War, and I sometimes pinch myself to make sure I am not dreaming.
In 2007, if you told 2LT Player, a “CHEMO” for 3-7 Field Artillery, what the next decade would look like, he would have told you to stop teasing him because he had to finish the USR. I am confident about what he would have said, because I am him, just ten years later. However, in the next ten years, I served in multiple leadership positions at the platoon and company level. I also served in a joint special operations unit, taught ROTC, and was selected to attend a foreign service’s ILE.
U.S. Air Force Photo by Airman 1st Class Clayton Cupit
Balance is a commonly misunderstood topic in the Army. When leaders mention the need to have balance, many react with an eye roll (here we go again), or a smirk (does it really exist?). Many leaders are viewed as having workaholic-like characteristics. A cursory Google search confirms this: Army leaders possess workaholic characteristics. We come in early to free up time during the day; we spend more time at work than intended; we work hard because our buddies are working hard.[i] But we are who we are: Soldiers and leaders who have endured 17 years of persistent conflict, force structure realignments, force reductions, and lowered promotion rates. We are in a profession that comes in early, works hard, and depending on requirements, stays late. Balance is difficult to understand.
My recent promotion triggered me to reflect on my years as an “Iron Major,” the years often considered the most challenging in an officer’s career. It subsequently led me to reflect on the ebbs and flows of balance during my career and ask myself where I was out of balance, why I was out of balance, and how did I manage to balance it all? When I looked at the problem through this lens, I concluded balance really does exist, and it is a combination of personal choices and professional requirements.
Balance – it’s a concept many military professionals embrace philosophically but fail to employ in their day-to-day lives. We are committed to our profession, and with that commitment comes significant responsibility. We carry the organization’s weight on our shoulders all day, every day, knowing our performance impacts Soldiers’ lives and their ability to accomplish mission. Further, we know that most jobs are “make or break” for our military careers. If you want to be a battalion commander, you have to excel in key and developmental positions. We know our personal lives are important, but that often importance gets lost in the grind of our daily duties: emails, meetings, last-minute tasks, serious incident reports; the list goes on and on. This article isn’t intended to solve balance, providing a simple equation to calculate how much time you need to spend at the office today. Unfortunately, it just isn’t that simple. The purpose of this essay is to provide a better definition of balance for the military professional.
Photo by Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod
As officers (both commissioned and non-commissioned) our personal and professional lives are bound together, trying to split them apart is an exercise in futility. The real question isn’t how to achieve a nirvana-like balance between personal and professional time – it’s determining WHY we feel the need to work the hours that we do. Once we answer that question for ourselves, we own it as grown men and women. I offer a few points to my fellow officers: the Army is a profession, but not an excuse to neglect yourself or your family; bottom line, it’s about how much you get done, not the hours spent at work; ensure you aren’t wasting your own time or that of your unit; do the routine things, routinely; make time to think about the next set of objectives; trust and invest in systems; and lastly, know your red lines.
U.S. Army photo by Spc. Dustin D. Biven
Major James Bithorn recently wrote an excellent post with the goal of preparing new graduates from the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) for their next few years following graduation (check it out here). My goal is to complement his well-written article with a description of the expectations that newly minted SAMS planners will encounter, particularly at that first assignment – the post-SAMS utilization as planners at two or three-star headquarters.
You have spent the last nine months working hard – reading 300-400 pages per night, writing, and revising your monograph repeatedly, studying for oral comprehensive exams – and now you are finally ready. Having walked the stage at Marshall Auditorium and the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) in your rearview mirror, you can now focus on the next three years of your life as a Field Grade (FG) Officer. Given that the Army has made an investment in your ability to solve complex, ill-structured problems, how do you take this knowledge and apply it as a Corps or Division planner and later as an S3 or XO? The following is a compilation of lessons learned – some easy and others a bit tougher – that I have gathered during my tenure in a Division. This essay traces the path of a maneuver Field Grade, from utilization as a planner to Battalion and finally Brigade FG time. Though the paper follows my perspective as an infantryman in a BCT, my aim is to provide a resource useful for any SAMS graduate, regardless of branch.
Stay Positive
Congratulations to the graduates of the 2017-18 GCSC class. In a few weeks, you will depart Fort Leavenworth and starburst outward to new assignments across the world. But before you move to the next part of your career, I would like to offer you one piece of advice. Almost two decades ago, I was in your shoes and I dealt with many of the same struggles that you are about to face. Since that time, I have witnessed the annual arrival of new Majors to our Army units. Through these experiences, I have come to believe that there is one leadership quality that separates a Major who makes a positive difference and those that fall victim to what I call the Angry Iron Major Syndrome. The pattern begins early, with your experience in prior units or during your year at Fort Leavenworth. The symptoms start with seemingly innocent conversations, such as when peers gather and every conversation devolves into raging against the ‘Army’ machine. Some of this venting and discussion is cathartic, but much of it becomes poisonous. Be mindful that, when you introduce and perpetuate this perspective, negativity can lead to cynicism and emotional frustration. If not controlled, this pessimism can become your defining characteristic. I believe that the attitude that you bring to your next series of assignments will determine your effectiveness and your legacy.
“What the graduates of Leavenworth provided… was a shared language and attitude towardproblem solving.” – Peter J. Schifferle, America’s School for War
In his 2010 study of officer education and Fort Leavenworth’s impact on the Second World War, historian Peter Schifferle opens with a discussion of the early influence of Leavenworth graduates on the Allied Expeditionary Forces under General Pershing during World War I. Pershing leaned so heavily on those officers that “a standing order required that every Leavenworth graduate disembarking in France would be detached from his unit and sent directly to Chaumont.”[1]Charles Herron, chief of staff of the U.S. 78thDivision and himself a Fort Leavenworth graduate, underscored the value of those men to the American leadership during the war, stating “[A Leavenworth man] understood what you said and you understood what he said.”[2]