Many years ago when I was a junior officer, we were looking for ways to improve morale, get in tune with a new generation of young soldiers, and cut back the number of soldiers who were drinking too much and getting arrested for DUI or, worse, getting into accidents.
Somebody came up with the idea of installing beer machines in the barracks so troops could drink, if they chose, right at home. Our sergeants didn’t think this was a great idea. Unrestricted access to beer would encourage unrestrained drinking and result in rowdy behavior and beer brawls in the barracks.
The troops thought it was a great idea, predictably, and they pressed for it. No decision came . . . which set loose lots of bitching.
Would installing beer machines end the bitching and improve morale? Many of us thought so.
One of my savviest sergeants quietly pointed out to me the flaw in that thinking. “Lieutenant, putting machines in the barracks won’t end the bitching. They’ll just start to bitch about the brand of beer in the machines, except they will be drunk when they bitch.”
We didn’t put in the machines. And today’s Army has worked hard to keep alcohol away from troops. It’s a better, safer Army.
The big lesson I learned from this little episode: as you examine solutions, make sure you think them through down several levels into secondary effects, and when you arrive at what you believe will be a solution, you have to then ask yourself if you have the real solution, or if you have just let wishful thinking set you up for more problems.
This lesson applies to all kinds of problems, large and small. And bitching about brands can take place in all kinds of circumstances. Sometimes these are deadly serious. Let’s change the scene from beer in barracks many years ago to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
In 2003, we marched up to Baghdad, the city fell in days, and the regime of Saddam Hussein collapsed. We saw these victories as a great success and the end of a big problem . . . with little thought given to what we would have to take care of once we had achieved victory.
Would opening the door to freedom bring stability and peace to that tragic country? Many American leaders thought so.
Too bad they didn’t have some savvy sergeant to quietly point out that we hadn’t answered the question about how the changes we started would affect the people of Iraq or the makeup of Iraqi society, which, it turned out, is a jumble of sectarian brands. Iraqis have been bitching about these brands for centuries. Their new freedoms didn’t stop the bitching, sparking disagreements and conflicts that turned our wonderful instant success into a terrible, nagging crisis. It took us years to achieve enough stability for American troops to be disengaged. For years wishful thinking drove a flawed strategy. Meanwhile, the argument in Iraq over brands continues and is liable to do so for years to come.
I learned a second lesson from the beer in barracks episode: surround yourself with sergeants—that is, people with ground truth experience whose thinking is not contaminated with grand theories.
Before we invaded Iraq, we should have listened to more people with ground truth experience in the region (these people were out there) and fewer idea-heavy, big egos in Washington.