Thread--loosely related to haircuts.

Nearly 20 years ago at the War College a guy named Dr. Wong went out in search of understanding why most of my peer group, company grade officers in the late 90s, left the army in droves.

2/Over 100 company commanders, me included, were interviewed for this study. The results can be found at: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2002/ssi_wong.pdf
Worth a read.

3/ The summary: "If the transformed Army will require leaders who can operate independently in the absence of close supervision, the current leader development experience of company command will have to change. [Cont.]

4/ Consequently, the author asks for senior leaders not to do more, but to do less and thus give subordinates more freedom to innovate."

5/ today we look at this and mutter, well, no shit. But this was a brutally honest study that hit pause for the Army. We were on the wrong path. 350-1 requirements were impossible to accomplish. Task saturation was real. We were bleeding talent.

6/ Just before the paper came out, 9-11 hit. It was early Afghanistan. Tactically, things were going well. Money and focus poured in. Stop loss. Motivation. The paper was shelved and we got 20 more years of PT belts. US Army WTF is born.

7/ Where are they now? Most of my generation of jr officers got out. A handful came back post 9-11. Those that stayed are retired, a few brigade commanders, and a lot of what was then new functional area officers. The stiflers? They survived too.
They are the senior leaders.End.