Stardate 20020820.1209

(Captain's log): Zach Barbera writes:

One other comment. When living in Singapore I was helping someone start a place called Stress Management Centre, he had an MA in Psychology and specialized in test stress for kids and the like. I was helping him develop programs and when working on leadership I was reading upon the Marine Corps and found it interesting that their philosophy was that every Corpsman should be equally capable of doing every job in the Corps. Everyone is trained to do everything, keeping away from specialization. I guess it is a good assumption that the Corps as the forward action unit would be taking heavy casualties and if someone goes down it helps if there is always someone to step into the role.

There's more to it than that. It's certainly valuable on a purely utilitarian basis for individual soldiers to be able to fulfill many jobs, but that's not the best reason for doing this.

A lot of the purpose of training is less to give the soldiers specific skills as much as it is to give them confidence and make them aggressive and make them feel as if they are part of something larger, something that they want to be part of. When a man says, "I'm a Marine" then he's saying something about himself. He's not just a normal man, he's a Marine. But he's also saying something about the organization; he's part of something large and damned well glad, too. (Well, most are, anyway.)

The Marines think of themselves as elites. (A lot of others would agree with them.) The Army has its "Special Forces", but the Marines have no such thing because from their point of view every Marine is at that level.

That attitude, where the Marines as an institution have great confidence in each individual Marine, changes how individual recruits thinks of themselves and of their own relationship to the Corps. The Marines aren't just giving this idea lip service, they're acting on it. They give individual Marines the kind of training you describe because they know that the recruits can handle it, even if the recruits themselves don't believe it going in. But coming out, they know. They've proven to themselves that they can do things they had never believed possible. And after they leave training, the Marines continue to give them big jobs and show confidence in them, and they continue to prove they're up to the job.

Where this manifests is in morale, unit cohesion, aggressiveness, dedication, initiative. Marines don't follow orders because they're afraid of court martial, they do what they're told because they want the Corps to succeed in its mission. Most Marines won't end up taking advantage of that extra training as such; a lot of what they learned they may never use. But the deeper result of that training, on self confidence and attitude, affects them every day they spend in the Corps.

Some managers in business learn this: people will grow into jobs. People who are trusted will become stronger. Give a person a new job to do, and they may flub it but they may not, and if you take the chance you'll end up with a more valuable employee afterwards.

All humans have an inherent drive to improve themselves. When people are put in positions where they don't have any opportunity to grow, stuck in a dead end, they will become sullen and unmotivated, but if you give them that opportunity to make themselves better, then they will become dedicated and motivated and far more productive. And they'll be loyal. You've done right by them, and they'll return that and do right by you. This is management by enlightened self interest: you make people do what you want them to do by making it so that they themselves benefit from it, in ways other than simply receiving a paycheck. That's the only real way to make people dedicate themselves to the goals of a larger organization.

The very best military officers know this. Of all the fine things Admiral Nimitz did in WWII, the very finest thing, the best indication of his quality as an officer and a man, happened on his first day in Pearl Harbor. He was sent to Hawaii to replace Admiral Kimmel shortly after the Japanese attack, and it was clear that Kimmel was losing his job because of the disaster that happened on his watch. Kimmel's staff fully expected that they, too, would be sacrificed, and morale was low. Nimitz walked in and said to them that he had full confidence in them and wanted them to all continue doing their jobs. He then brought in only a very small number of new officers, and otherwise left everyone in their previous jobs. Morale went up about five notches in about five minutes.

After that, he owned them. They would have followed him to Hell if he'd asked. They'd do anything for him, and that contributed to turning around the war in the Pacific in just six months, which was truly something of a military miracle. Part of the reason why Nimitz was able to turn the situation around was because his inherited staff lived up to his expectations, just as he knew they would.

Nimitz was that kind of man. This is one of the reasons I respect him so deeply.

But people see through bullshit. The only way to get this effect is to really believe it. If you're trying to snow them, they'll know. You really do have to think your people are good and that they can be trusted and will be able to do the job. You have to show it and not just say it. If you really make that commitment, you'll discover that you were right, becaus