The Rank Problem
In any discussion about Army writing, it typically only takes about five minutes for rank to come up.
It often starts when people read ‘lieutenant’ on the by-line. You promptly hear the groans crescendo as the collective eye-rolling builds into a hurricane.
Criticism usually begins by discounting the subordinate, saying they lack experience, which aside from assuming they don't have any, is the one thing they can't acquire without time. The message is clear: Shut up. Wait your turn.
Except good ideas aren't about whose turn it is.
Most of the time the rank problem is with the higher leader, not the subordinate. Subordinates are rarely disrespectful, because they own all the risk if they are. Instead, it is all too often the higher officer or NCO who messes up the interaction in one of three ways:
Injecting their rank into a situation that doesn't warrant it. When examining an idea, your rank will rarely be important. When in a leadership role, talking with subordinates about work, rank makes sense. But when debating an article on how drones impact the balance between offense and defense, rank is not relevant. In the latter, you are an interlocutor, not a Colonel. There is an odd aversion to this concept in the active component, but it’s overblown. COMPO 2 and 3 navigate this code switching every day, with little fanfare.
Rank also has nothing to do with the editorial process. Many of the most well regarded outlets today are run by volunteers, to include From the Green Notebook, and the Irregular Warfare Initiative. In some cases the editors are junior soldiers to the submitting officers. In many of the other cases the editors are not even serving members of the military. Editors are working to make submitted pieces the best they can, and to make them fit the style and substance of their outlet. Pulling rank with an editor is a fast way to get your piece pulled instead.
Assuming their rank makes their ideas better. This mistake is perhaps the most insidious, because it stifles the sharing of good ideas and innovations across your unit. Being a leader in the Army does not mean you're not actually charged with coming up with good ideas. Your job as a leader is just to pick the best idea of those presented.
I was lucky enough to learn this early when, as a platoon leader in Ar Ramadi, my half-bradley / half-tank platoon was trying to figure out how to execute a mission. My section sergeants and squad leaders were gathered around a white board with my platoon sergeant and I as we overengineered the problem. My driver dropped by just to check what time the tracks needed to be ready, took a glance at the white board and, from the mouth of babes, solved all of our problems with an idea so simple we all winced for missing it.
We had been lulled into the false security that as leaders we had the answers. Instead our job was just to solicit ideas from our formations, to anticipate and weigh the consequences, and pick the best ones.
Failing to Mentor. Maybe the lieutenant’s idea does need work. What are you doing to coach them?
Resting on our rank isn’t making the formation better. Our role as a mentor is to lead your subordinates to growth. We need to replace ourselves. To do this we must help juniors with their ideas, not just tell them they are wrong.
Ask probing questions. Help lead the junior soldier to the risks in their idea, or the wider context they can't yet see from their foxhole. Anticipating second and third order effects is a skill that’s often honed by a lot of failing. Our experience should humble us, not make us arrogant. Instead of dismissing a subordinate’s idea out of hand due to lack of experience, lead them to new knowledge and ideas. Rochambeau famously did this with General Washington.
Our subordinates will be leading our formations faster than we realize. Help them grow rather than shutting them down.
The CSA has made reinvigorating writing his priority, to re-energize our ability to learn, think, experiment, and do the hard work we need to do to prepare the Army to fight a war none of us have ever fought before. That’s going to take a lot of new ideas. As a senior leader in the Army, putting your own rank in check and instead fostering a haven of experimentation and innovation that mentors junior leaders could be significantly more impactful than just getting your name on a by line.
 | A guest post by
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In my experience as an NCO, my ideas are not always taken seriously despite their relevance or worth. I might be an outlier due to my educational background, but the point is that there are incredibly intelligent and capable Soldiers across the formation who make up the full spectrum of the rank structure. I believe that if the Army hopes to evolve at the same pace as technology and our adversaries, leaders must engage with and give voice to the ideas that come from unexpected places across the force.
The US Army has a striking deference to rank that I have noticed is not nearly as replicated in foreign militaries (even some that we assume are top down). This deference is reflected in writing. Pieces by senior leaders, even if they are not particularly insightfully, are heavily referenced by other Army leaders.
I like the insight into the different culture in COMPO 2 and 3. At CTCs, I noted how National Guard units often displayed more mission command and low-level initiative, and I attributed it to a more flattened hierarchy. A National Guard battalion commander might military outrank a company commander, but that company commander could well have a more successful civilian career. In the German Army, Aufstragtaktik was enabled by a military culture that had a flattened hierarchy because all the Junkers that dominated the officer corps were viewed as social equals. It was unseemly to micromanage a fellow aristocrat, who you might outrank militarily, but he might outrank you socially.