Will Army 2025 be a Military Profession?

Abstract

Abstract: Army 2025 is now being built and it needs to have all the right expert knowledge developed into its practitioners and units for immediate use when called upon. That is an immense task given the crunching defense reductions now ongoing. Analyzing the current state of the Profession using Army data on the bureaucratizing influences of the drawdown, on leadership and trust within the ranks, and on the development of moral character of future Army professionals, the author arrives at a less than sanguine conclusion. While the Army will find the necessary efficiencies during reductions, military effectiveness is the true hallmark of the success of our stewardship. ADP1--The Army (2012) (1) ********** In this article I will argue there are no guarantees that Army 2025, now being developed by its current Stewards, will be an effective participant in the military profession. In fact, there is a very good possibility it will not be, to the extreme detriment of the Republic's security. The provenance of this challenge resides within the Army's history and its unique institutional characters. And, as we shall see, the potential solution lies with the quality of the Stewards the Army develops, the leadership they provide through this decade of defense reductions, and the results they do, or do not, obtain. The Department of the Army is, in fact, an institution of dual character. It is at the same time both a governmental bureaucracy and a military profession. Thus there is a powerful, internal tension raging between the competing cultures of bureaucracy and profession. Only one can dominate institution-wide and at the levels of subordinate organizations and units. (2) Presently, and after fifteen years of war, there are indicators the culture of profession dominates that of bureaucracy, but only weakly so. (3) Stated another way, like all organizations the Army has a set of default behaviors that accurately reflect a core functional makeup. Since its establishment in 1775, that default behavior has been, and remains, one of a hierarchical government bureaucracy. Only by the immense efforts of post-Civil War leadership, both uniformed (Major General William T. Sherman) and civilian (Elihu Root), was the behavior of the Army first conformed from bureaucracy to that of a military profession, and then only within the officer corps. The remainder of the Army was professionalized later, though that status was lost in Vietnam only to be renewed in the re-professionalization that occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s. To this day the challenge remains--every morning by presence and policy, Army leaders at every level, and particularly the senior Stewards, must shift the Army's behavior away from its bureaucratic tendencies and to the behavior of a military profession. It simply does not occur naturally; it is a function almost solely of leadership. To be more specific, read carefully the contrasts laid out in the table below: Profession Versus Bureaucracy Comparison (4) Comparison Profession Bureaucracy Knowledge Expert, requires lifelong Non/expert skills based, learning, education, and learned on the job and/ practice to develop or through short duration expertise training Application Knowledge applied as Work accomplished by expert practice through following SOPs, discretion and judgment administrative rules and of individual procedures; compliance professional; commitment based based Measure of Mission effectiveness Efficiency of resource Success expenditure Culture Values and ethic based; Procedural compliance granted autonomy with based; closely supervised high degree of authority, with limited responsibility and discretionary authority, accountability founded on highly structured, task- trust; a self-policing driven environment meritocracy founded on low-trust Investments Priority investment in Priority investment in leader development; human hardware, routines; capital/talent driven by cost management; investment strategy Growth Develop critical thinking Develop tactical and skills to spur technical competence to innovation, flexibility, perform tasks adaptability; broadened perspectives Motivation Intrinsic--Sacrificial Extrinsic--Ambition to service, sense of honor get ahead, competition; and duty, work is a work is a job calling It should be clear from these comparisons of the Army's dual character that a real tension exists within the Army and its subordinate commands and agencies. …