This quote used for the title here was said by pretty much everyone I think, but this one was taken from Pythagoras, the math guy. At its core, this saying is pretty true.
If you open your mouth, even if 50% of what you say is right, you are going to look like a fool because the other 50% of what you say is wrong. On the other hand, if you just stay quiet and only speak on what you really know, then 100% of the words you say will be right and everyone will just know you as the person who knows his stuff. Its a pretty straightforward concept.
This same concept can be applied to military leadership. I will leave you free to examine that on your own time. For the purpose of this paper, I want to talk about leadership in a technology-enabled 21st century Army. I want to talk about knowing when communications should be taken out of group and into private, when a meeting could have been an email, and when an email could have just not been sent.
Chapter 1 – Keep your one off questions and shit, out of group chats
As an NCO (and I imagine the same is true of commissioned officers), I am in like 15 different army-related group chats over 3 different apps. There are a lot of wildly redundant group chats because there will be an NCO-All chat, an NCO-All minus SGT Snuffy Chat, a Squad Leader chat, a general leaders chat, and the list goes on. Its all the same info in all the same places. Its a massive overload of getting the same information many, many, many times. In a situation like that where there is already an information overload, we need to not burden the char with messages that are only intended for maybe one or two other people in that chat group.
Let’s take for example, a message is passed to an NCO chat or two, saying that people need to go get tested for COVID. Why is it then that two people need to spend the next 15 minutes in that chat sorting out what time one is going to pick up the other? Does the NCO group overall benefit from this? No, not even a little. Could this entire communication been done privately between those two individuals and gotten the same results? Yes, completely.
It is times like this where two people, or a small subset of people use a mass notification platform to conduct private business that they have opened their mouths and become the fool. They are the person who demonstrates that they clearly don’t understand the time and place for certain communications, and solidifies that they are a poor communicator.
Chapter 2 – Meetings that should have been calls or texts
I love where I am at in the Army, and the unit isn’t too bad. In fact, it is one of the better units I have been in, and while I don’t intend, even a little bit, to stay in the Army after this contract, this is a great place to spend a few years. In fact, it is so great that I have been doing everything I can to stay here longer.
First, I went to submit an FSTE but was told no, do an AIP because then you get more money. Ok, cool, I like money. I submitted my AIP. After about six weeks it came back denied, so I began to look into doing an FSTE after all. It still seemed like a good idea, so I put in for it.
Now, at the point, COVID-19 had been sweeping the globe and made drastic changes to the movement of personnel in the Army. A new COVID-19 FSTE option was outlined where you could say that the pandemic was negatively influencing your ability to smoothly PCS, and an extension would be granted. I submitted my COVID-19 FSTE at the same as my Soldiers; their’s were approved, and mine was denied because it sat long enough in the queue for processing that they were “no longer processing COVID-19 FSTE”. Frustrating but ok, I will submit a regular FSTE.
This FSTE sat, and sat, and sat as my DEROS inched closer and I ran the risk of the FSTE being denied strictly because I am on projection and they don’t want to change that. Then one day, I got home at 0800 after a 12-hr shift, and two hours into my sleep, I get a call that 1SG needs to see me in his office to talk about my FSTE. Shit, this will be bad news. I get up, get dressed, drive to the company and 1SG is nowhere to be found. So I wait.
Eventually I find my PSG who is with the 1SG and we have the talk. The only thing he wanted to talk to for was, “Why did you submit an FSTE and not an AIP?” What. The. Fuck. I did submit an AIP, and while the 1SG wasn’t there, the PSG was the one that it went through in GEARS and he should’ve known. I explained that I did and it was denied and was told that was all they needed for me and they would continue routing it.
On one hand, why did no one fucking care about the AIP last time the FSTE got to final approval and was told no, but now that I am resubmitting weeks later they do care?
On the other hand, WHY THE FUCK WAS THAT A MEETING THAT HAD TO HAPPEN? From the time I got the call to the time I found 1SG, we are looking at over an hour of time wasted, for a conversation that took at most 45 seconds? We all could’ve saved so much time by just doing it on the phone.
In this case, by opening his mouth and wanting a meeting, leadership proved to me that not only do they have zero concern for Soldier’s sleep schedules who are on nights, but that it is also apparently impossible to determine the correct method of communication. Once again, by taking action and not looking into something already documented, I am once again shown the fool
Chapter 3 – Read the fucking “to” line
This is actually the event that spurred me to write this post. As we all know, for whatever reason, the military webmail only gives us a little tiny amount of server space before our mailboxes are full. Most of the almost full mailbox is my mailbox sending me messages that my mailbox is almost full. This is annoying but not really controllable. What is controllable, is making sure that we aren’t sending emails to people that already got the email, effectively doubling the amount of email they get.
Today I got an email three times. The same damn email, three damn times.
The first time, I received it as part of the BN ALL Distro. Then one high speed individual forwarded it to the leaders distro with a “See forward” pasted on top. Next, I got it again from the PSG with “Please pass along” written on top of the rest of the chain I already had gotten all of.
Why the hell if you see something is sent to the entire battalion, do you need to forward it to every single tiny little organization within the battalion as well? WE ALL ALREADY GOT IT. FUCK!
This proves, a third time, that leadership can’t communication properly in a technological Army. Emails, texts and calls are all treated as some newfangled gadget that makes it easier to run your mouth just for sake of saying something. Leaders at all levels need to stop and think before communicating and think:
- Is the method I am using really the best way to communicate the message?
- Is this message only being sent to the target audience and no one extra?
- Does the recipient even need this info?
If the answer to any of those questions is no, then STOP. Don’t communicate. Fix it until the answers are all yes, then send. For an Army that preaches and bases itself on Shoot, Move, and Communicate, we are going a real shit job at communicating.