How Leadership Drives Change in the Military

Military Leadership

How the Military Changes

Organizational change is a complex process in most cases, with those at the top of the hierarchy having the authority and power to institute changes while those in the trenches generally lack both the power and the authority but often having the expertise needed to guide needed shifts. In well-functioning organizations, change travels both up and down the hierarchy, with the final authorization for any shift in policy coming from the top echelon. However, in the most hierarchical organizations, all changes must be conceptualized and initiated from the top. Such is the case in the military.

Because of the strictures of its hierarchy, the military is famously resistant to changes. However, the military has also been able to accommodate significant changes over the course of the last half century, from racial integration to a far greater inclusion of women in the armed services to the current shift to include openly gay service members. There have also been numerous technological shifts both in terms of weapons systems and in strategy. For any comprehensive change to occur, Nielson (2010) argues, there must be "an organizational entity with broad authority able to craft, evaluate, and execute an integrated program of reforms." For the U.S. Army during the decades after the war in Vietnam, that entity was the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command or TRADOC.

Without such an agency, which existed outside of the military while at the same time sharing a history and a series of overarching goals and philosophies, it would not have been possible "to ensure that changes in personnel policies, organizations, doctrine, training practices, and equipment were integrated and mutually reinforcing." Moreover, an outside, or at least semi-external entity such as TRADOC, is necessary to ensure that there is a consistent push for the entire time that substantive change takes to occur, a time frame that may be decades long.

However, there is also a recognition among military scholars that for substantive change to be enacted, the military must promote officers with certain qualities that will ensure that they are both open to change when ideas come from other sources and capable of diagnosing current practices and structures for areas where change might be most beneficial. Pierce (2010) notes that "strategic leaders of the Army believe that they operate on a day-to-day basis in an organization whose culture is characterized by: an overarching desire for stability and control [and] formal rules and policies." Such a philosophy is one that is fundamentally incompatible both with the needs of the armed services to encourage change when it is beneficial.