Zvi listed multiple points. I think that it’s possible that there are militarizes where the soldiers have a strong belief that they are fighting for the right thing and thus have a lot of soul in the game. A good chunk of the military hierarchy also has skin in the game. Very few people in the military hierarchy would first tell you about there supervisor if you ask them to describe their job.
One factor is that the military has a pretty consistent policy of moving officers around to different postings every few years. You never work with the same people very long, except maybe at the very top. This might help enable some of the outrunning-your-mistakes phenomenon mentioned above, but it also probably means you can’t develop the kind of interpersonal politics you might see in a big corporation.
When you say “the military” do you mean “the US military” here? I would be surprised if that’s a consistent phenomena over the different militarizes that exist.
From the long-term military personnel I personally know, it seems very similar to my corporate experience: there are elements of it, but not to the degree described in the book or these posts. I suspect it varies as widely as corporate experiences do—some paths are horrible, some are pretty good.
Having extremely specific goals and expectations goes a LONG way toward avoiding the maze aspects of management.
How does this work in the military? They have a very deep hierarchy: is life in the army above private and below commander-in-chief also a maze?
Zvi listed multiple points. I think that it’s possible that there are militarizes where the soldiers have a strong belief that they are fighting for the right thing and thus have a lot of soul in the game. A good chunk of the military hierarchy also has skin in the game. Very few people in the military hierarchy would first tell you about there supervisor if you ask them to describe their job.
One factor is that the military has a pretty consistent policy of moving officers around to different postings every few years. You never work with the same people very long, except maybe at the very top. This might help enable some of the outrunning-your-mistakes phenomenon mentioned above, but it also probably means you can’t develop the kind of interpersonal politics you might see in a big corporation.
When you say “the military” do you mean “the US military” here? I would be surprised if that’s a consistent phenomena over the different militarizes that exist.
From the long-term military personnel I personally know, it seems very similar to my corporate experience: there are elements of it, but not to the degree described in the book or these posts. I suspect it varies as widely as corporate experiences do—some paths are horrible, some are pretty good.
Having extremely specific goals and expectations goes a LONG way toward avoiding the maze aspects of management.
Is there some reason you don’t think it would be?