A Culture of Accountability, Part 1: QMN071

Martial Mental Models: The Quartermaster Newsletter, Monday, 2 December

(This week’s report is a 10 minute read)

BLUF: I’m hearing more and more often that civilian organizations have difficulty applying military-based leadership and management concepts because many civilian organizations lack a real culture of accountability. People seem to think that the military has something the private sector doesn't: an ethos where each individual has a significant stake in the success or failure of the larger group - an ethos that calls upon each person to act with responsibility and initiative. Is it possible to create a comparable culture of accountability within organizations in the private sector? This week our first step is to look closer at how the US military creates, spreads and maintains its own culture of accountability.

Brady here. One night in the summer of 2005, in the desert halfway between Kuwait City and Basra, Iraq, I sat under a streetlight and wrote a letter. In my note, formally but sincerely, I expressed my condolences for the death of one of my soldiers, a scout in a light infantry battalion, to his parents back in the United States. I explained who I was, what had happened that led to his death, and my gratitude to his family for who he was and everything he’d done. As I wrote I though a lot about whether his death could have been prevented, if his death was worth what he was trying to accomplish at the time, and I asked myself if I could have done something to prevent it. 

Soldiers from the 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard), the U.S. Army Band, “Pershing’s Own”, and the 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) Caisson Platoon conduct military funeral honors with funeral escort for U.S. Army Air Force 1st Lt. Seymour Drovis in Section 57 of Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia, Oct. 16, 2019. Photo by Elizabeth Fraser.

Overall, writing the letter was a difficult task because the truth is that he hadn't really died. The evening I wrote this letter was the night before my battalion was to cross the border into Iraq during some of the most intense fighting after the initial invasion, and my battalion commander gave me the name of one of my scouts and the nature of his presumed death and told me to come back to him in a few hours with the letter to his family. It was an exercise designed by my commander to impress upon me that I'd be accountable for the injury or death of any of my men in our upcoming missions - and that decisions on my part wouldn't just affect me legally or professionally, but that they'd affect my conscience and soul. 

The more I talk in depth to business leaders about the concepts in The Quartermaster, the more I hear the same refrain: civilian organizations have difficulty applying military-based leadership and management concepts because most civilian organizations lack a culture of accountability. People seem to think that the military has something the private sector doesn't: an ethos where each individual has a significant stake in the success or failure of the larger group - an ethos that causes each person to act with responsibility and initiative. The question becomes: how can we create a culture of accountability in our company - and is it even possible? I think the first step in answering these questions is to consider what the US military’s culture of accountability looks like, why it exists, and how it’s created and maintained - which is what I’ll cover this week. Once that’s established we can determine what might be done in the private sector - and that’ll come next week.

What is a culture of accountability? In this case, it’s a shared sense that makes the aims of the larger group more important than the wants of the individual. This sense permeates everything everyone in the organization does, and leads them to be honest and up-front about their performance in order to make sure the organization is bettered, and not harmed, by their part. In my military experience there are a few pre-requisite individual values or traits for this sense of accountability: Integrity, Courage, and Selflessness. 

• Integrity: In order to hold oneself accountable to the organization, an individual must first be accountable to his or her own self. 

• Courage: A lot of accountability rests on the willingness to face bad consequences in service of the truth. This takes courage.

• Selflessness: As with any other habit, we are what we repeatedly do. Putting the welfare of others before one’s own requires conscious effort and practice.

Without these traits in every member of the group, I'm not sure a real culture of accountability can grow. And to be clear, I’ve seen military leaders who’ve lacked some of these pre-requisites, but they were the exceptions that proved the rule.

How is a culture of accountability started in the US military? In his book Take Command, entrepreneur and angel investor Kelly Perdew explained his experience at the US Military Academy at West Point was that it’s started on an individual level and then expanded across the organization through advancement in leadership roles. In a conversation he had with AOL founder and Ranger Hall of Fame member Jim Kimsey, Kimsey explained this to Perdew about his experience on his very first day at West Point: 

“I was told there were only three answers to every question: “YES, SIR,” “NO, SIR” and “NO EXCUSE, SIR.” It took me a long time to fully appreciate and internalize what that really meant. Internalizing and living by the idea that there was NO EXCUSE was a very valuable lesson I’ve carried throughout my life. It means that you bear responsibility for all of your own actions, and as a leader you bear responsibility for the welfare of those in your organization and the outcome of its missions.”

In the military, the culture of accountability comes as a result of leadership preparation, which starts immediately for every member, even those at the very bottom of the chain. Leadership preparation starts on day one because any member may be called to lead or accomplish the mission alone given the uncertain nature of combat. 

Practically speaking, the US military’s culture of accountability is first imbued upon the individual through daily continuous performance with inspection. Two great examples are personal appearance and physical fitness. No matter where someone started their military career, they’re always subject to inspection of their uniform and usually their weapon (in nearly every case this is a rifle) and continuously assessed on their physical fitness with predefined metrics. Starting in basic training, this happens in the open, in front of everyone, and a dirty weapon or an insufficient amount of pushups is plain to see and can’t be disputed. You either prepared or didn’t - and you get to experience the consequences of each outcome. It’s a great motivator, but it’s also a standard-setter across the force. And in the truly great organizations, the public nature of physical fitness tests goes all the way to the top.

So once this culture is established in the individual at the very beginning, how is it manifested within the organization as a factor of leadership? Because accountability governs how individuals in a group work with one another, I think there are a few different kinds of accountability within the US military’s culture:

• Accountability up, or to ones superiors, often looks like responsibility. It's making oneself the focal point for performance and vowing to do everything in one’s power to get the job done. The “no excuse” principle mentioned by Jim Kimsey above is the most palpable manifestation of this kind of accountability - where individuals take full responsibility for success or failure regardless of circumstances.

• Accountability across, or to ones peers or teammates, often looks like reliability and care. After working very closely with our nation’s best noncommissioned officers (NCOs) in both infantry and special forces roles for nearly ten years, I can say that this kind accountability is a very strong driver and predictor of success for frontline managers. It often manifests itself in a culture of accountability as a concern for professional reputation and a concern for the well-being of teammates, and provides and added layer of quality to everything they do. I can’t stress the value of this kind of accountability enough - and media from Blackhawk Down to Band of Brothers often illustrate this pretty well.

• Accountability down, or to one’s reports, looks like integrity or honesty. There is no more corrosive behavior to an organization than a leader who doesn’t take responsibility for the group they lead or themselves. If they break the rules (or law), or violate the organization’s stated values even once, it sets the example for the entire organization and puts nearly everything they say and do into question. Along the same lines, a leader known for candor and making hard decisions can get unwavering supportive if the decisions themselves are unpopular.

With so many levels of responsibility to so many people, accountability begins to look like a complex system of personal and professional trust. Indeed, with the way most of the US military functions, where decisions are pushed to the lowest possible level  trust is required because leaders can’t be everywhere all the time and must be confident their subordinate leaders will accomplish the mission no matter what happens.

So knowing how culture of accountability is created in the individual, and then spread across the group through interdependencies in every direction, what must be done to reinforce and maintain this ethic? This accomplished through a few different methods, which include ratings & awards, AARs, and cultural examples:

• Ratings and awards - The services of the US military each have their own rating systems which are all mandatory at least annually. Often decried as inflated or as a negative motivator, nonetheless ratings systems and awards provide baselines for assessment and official recognition of achievement or valorous action. 

• After Action Reviews (AARs) - The practice of continuous self-assessment of both individual and unit actions immediately following events is a key practice of accountability in every corner and at every level of the US military. This works the muscles of self-reflection and actualization, but also require that the individual do so in a public forum and commit themselves to improvement. The importance of this continuous practice for a culture of accountability can’t be overstated. While issued and reviewed privately, the task my battalion commander gave me, of writing a letter of condolence in advance, acted as sort of a “pre-mortem” or AAR-before-the-fact where I examined what might well happen in the upcoming action and prepared for it.

• Cultural Examples - The US military, like any other force in the world, bestows awards on those recognized for heroic or valorous action, usually in the face of extreme danger. The US military uses profiles such as those gathered by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society to create models for the kind of behavior prized of its members in combat. These awards not only reinforce selfless behavior, they provide examples to the entire organization of its definition of accountability: taking responsibility for the situation at hand, no matter one’s position, and doing one’s utmost to achieve the goal, or to care for others in spite of often hopeless odds. 

The US military is a unique organization by almost anyone’s standards, but it’s important to keep in mind that it has it’s limitations and certainly it’s own list of failures, and that it’s members are only human. But these people perform and relate to each other in ways that can be examined, modeled and replicated. The life-and-death nature of combat creates requirements, urgencies and motivating factors you don’t find in business, but that doesn’t mean civilians can’t start preparing employees for leadership from day one, or hiring for integrity, courage and selflessness. Next week we’ll look at the ways organizations outside the US military can start to create a culture of accountability of their own. (BJM)

*****

WORLDS COLLIDE: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen on the Nature and Causes of Progress (46 min) “So for example, if you look at the U.S., productivity growth mid-century or say between, you know, 1920, 1970, was maybe about 1.9% a year. Now most economists think it’s much lower, maybe around sort of .4% a year, something like that. So we’re at least by economic measures, generating progress more slowly than we used to be. Now, whatever the rate at which we’re kind of making progress or figuring out ways to do things better today, whatever that absolute level is, it would be much better if we were doing it more effectively, if we were able to solve the most important problems that face us today in 50 years and 100 years rather than 500 years or a thousand years, right? So the meta question we’re really interested in is how does progress happen, how do we discover useful knowledge, how is that diffused, and how can we do it better?” (BJM)

PREPARING FOR FUTURE CONFLICT: NATO, US Army to conduct air assault 'forcible entry' exercise in Lithuania (4 min) “While the exercise is of course intended to function as a massive deterrent against any kind of great power European attack on NATO, such as a Russian invasion, Scrocca emphasized that DEFENDER will operate with a 360-degree focus to include the prospect of enemy attack from any direction. At the same time, the countries chosen for forcible entry exercises clearly include areas of substantial strategic value when it comes to deterring possible Russian aggression. Furthermore, there has been a long process of escalating tensions with Russia, not only including the invasion of Ukraine several years ago but more recent problems as well. Some of these include the cancellation of the INF Treaty, increased development of low-yield nuclear weapons, new weapons testing, Eastern European force maneuvering and tense global hotspots including the two countries.” (BJM)

TRULY CONSIDERING APPLICATIONS OF AI IN WARFARE: The Art of Command, The Science of AI (12 min) “But generals and civilian officials alike warn that AI-driven command and control must leave room for human judgment, creativity, and ethics. The question is how to strike that balance. “You’re going to provide your subordinates the best data you can get them, and you’re going to need AI to get that quality of data,” said recently retired Gen. Robert Brown, “but then that’s balanced with, they’re there on the ground.” Military leaders must make their own judgment calls based on what they see and hear and intuit, not just click “okay” on whatever battle plan the computer suggests, as if they’re paging through the latest Terms & Conditions boilerplate on their smartphone.” (BJM)

Remarks Complete. Nothing Follows.

KS Anthony (KSA) & Brady Moore (BJM)