The Needs of the Army

I need to preface the rest of this post by saying that these are my opinions, my views, and that Lauren is a great soldier who would never think to question things as strongly as I'm about to. If she asks me to, I will take down or tone down this post...

Lauren got her specific job assignment for Fort Belvoir today--Legal Assistance. These are the attorneys who help soldiers write wills, fill out paperwork, deal with loan-sharks, etc.

Legal Assistance a job that, while very important, can be competently performed by a trained monkey. It wouldn't even need to be that well trained, like the ones who can play baseball and help you fight crime and the like. A poorly trained monkey with little to no movie star potential could do this job.

Back in the day, Lauren worked in the Fort Carson Legal Assistance Office for 3 months, before moving on to administrative law--finance law, health care law, stuff like that. Moving back to LA is basically a demotion, and a big one at that.

Lauren all of a sudden finds herself in a position where her talents are not being fully utilized by the Army, and she's not receiving any sort of personal professional development to boot. I call that Lose/Lose. The Army calls it Standard Operating Procedure.

Oh, the Army will generally try to frame things in such a way to make it seem that it's got your best needs, as well as those of the Army in mind. But junior soldiers and officers in the Army see right through this stuff. We are frustrated by a system that often seems, from our vantage point at least, to be strangling itself on its own rigidity. We recognize and embrace the necessity of a fixed chain of command, but we chafe at the notion that regardless of our performance and aptitude, we have very limited ability to advance through it at a rate any faster than anyone else.

My friend Robin works at PG&E, and she's soared through the ranks, ahead of countless workers that, while competent and industrious, lack Robin's brilliance for the work. As such, she manages folks who are much older than she, and she's constantly on the lookout for further advancements.

I'm sure there are plenty of good reasons, organizational impediments and the like, that prevent such mobility within the Army. That suggest that such mobility would bring the Army down like a house of cards. Fair enough. But if Human Resources, and higher level officers wonder why each year 75% of their best people (my estimate) leave at their first available chance, don't come complaining to me and wondering why we prefer Robin's setup to our own.

What's the silver lining in all of this? Lauren will hopefully have the ability to take a leadership role in the office, to bring to bear her exceptional organizational abilities upon improving the way the Legal Assistance operates. When I was in the Army the first time, and found myself in strange jobs that I really didn't know what to do with, I was blessed to have the kind of trusting, empowering, highly proficient bosses that would let me swoop into an office, implement change, and lead. Will the same hold true for Lauren's new chain of command, who are from everything I've heard very competent, smart, squared away JAG's? I think it will. But as always...we shall see.