Parris Island Heads

I came across this Lego diorama of a head (bathroom) in boot camp. It's a reproduction of the final boot camp scene from the movie, Full Metal Jacket. 

When I shared this image with friends, they were amazed that the heads were actually arranged like this. Yes, we were literally side-by-side and face-to-face in some of the barracks we stayed in at Parris Island, South Carolina.

Every evening in boot camp we had 50 mins of free time just before taps where we could read and write letters home and socialize with the other recruits in our platoon (about 60 of us). The very first thing we’d all do when free time began was make a beeline to the head to poop so we could do it at our leisure. Believe it or not, we would read our letters and have discussions in this arrangement while giving our fellow recruits a courtesy look-away when completing the final paperwork.

The military excels at pushing people beyond their comfort zone in a safe, controlled environment.

Veterans Day for Marines

Every Marine knows the date, 10th of November, which makes the following day, Veterans Day, a bit different.

Veterans have Veterans Day to commemorate their military service on the 11th of November. And the Marines have the Marine Corps Birthday to commemorate their roots, one day earlier. All active duty and former Marines will wish each other a happy birthday on the Marine Corps Birthday. Marines will also tell you that the timing of these two back-to-back American holidays is ideal since it gives Marines a day off after their Birthday Ball celebrations and festivities.

America’s military is a unique breed of people who are called to serve, not only to protect their country, but, more importantly, they’re called to serve through their oath: to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. The distinction between country and Constitution is vital because it prioritizes the principles spelled out in the Constitution ahead of the desires of our citizens or the values we codify in laws.

A Unique Breed

U.S. Marines are a unique breed of America’s military. While each of the military branches have different missions and specialties, one key fact that makes Marines different from the rest of the U.S. Armed Forces is that all Marines are combatants. They are all basic riflemen trained to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver, or repel the enemy's assault by fire and close combat. More specifically, the Marine Corps does not have doctors, dentists, chaplains, etc. However, since the Marines work so closely with the U.S. Navy (a separate military branch) they receive health and spiritual services from Navy doctors, medics (called corpsmen), chaplains, etc.

Additionally, the Marines are a small, tightly integrated military corps with both tactical fixed-wing (fighter jets) and rotary-wing (helicopters) to support their ground troops. The U.S. Army only has tactical helicopters to support their ground troops. If the Army needs fixed-wing combat support, they’d call on the U.S. Air Force.

Celebrations and Observances

Veterans Day is officially observed with two minutes of silence at 11:11 AM PST to commemorate the ending of WW I on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. (It’s celebrated at 11:11 AM PST instead of EST so that all time zones in the United States can celebrate it simultaneously.) Additionally, dozens of parades and ceremonies are held, throughout the country, along with deals, discounts, and freebies, to honor our Veterans.

While Veterans Day is marked with two minutes of silence, the Marine Corps Birthday is observed with two hours of pageantry, throughout the world, at Marine Corps Birthday Balls. The highlight of the Marine Corps Ball is the cake cutting ceremony which follows a basic script where the first piece of cake is presented to the guest of honor. The second piece of cake is given to the oldest Marine present who then presents the youngest Marine with the third piece of cake to symbolize the passing of experience, knowledge, and tradition from the old to the young.

Even though active duty Marines aren’t yet veterans, they greatly appreciate having the next day, Veterans Day, off from work to rest up from the previous night’s celebrations. 

Semper Fi and thank you for your service. 

US Marines Documentary: 'Anybody's Son Will Do'

Before leaving for Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island I watched this documentary, Anybody’s Son Will Do. It's a real and raw take on the boot camp I went through in the 1980s.

On the bus ride to boot camp I read a pamphlet that accompanied the documentary. The one comment that stood out in my mind was that Marines will trade casualties for time. And that’s what we’re seeing at Kabul Airport. This is one of many missions that Marines carry out while supporting and defending the Constitution. Today, Marines are guarding the airport perimeter so not only American citizens can return home, but also so Afghans, who served and supported America’s mission, can get out.

The following piece describes my first day on Parris Island and what led up to it: http://joemoreno.com/TheIsland.pdf

Happy Birthday, Marines

Circa Feburary 1987

Today is the Marine Corps Birthday. It's kind of a big deal.

On 10 November 1775, the Second Continental Congress resolved to raise two battalions of Marines. The birthplace of the Marine Corps was Tun Tavern, in Philadelphia, where the first recruiting drive was held.

The Marine Corps birthday is recognized with a cake cutting ceremony. While standing before a formation of Marines, three pieces of cake are cut. The first piece of cake is given to the guest of honor. The second piece of cake is given to the oldest Marine present. Upon receiving the second piece of cake, the oldest Marine will pass it on to the youngest Marine present, without eating it, signifying the passing of experience and knowledge from the old to the young of our Corps. The oldest Marine will then receive the third piece of cake further emphasizing the fact that we care for our young Marines before we look to our own needs.

"And so it must be."

Semper Fidelis. 

Advice to USNA Class of 2018: Be Decisive

Today's USNA '18 Graduation: Those covers (hats) fly high.

Advice to USNA Class of 2015
Advice to USNA Class of 2016
Advice to USNA Class of 2017

The Basic School (TBS), in Quantico, VA, is where second lieutenant Marines are trained to be "Officers of Marines." The key principles I was taught there were leadership and decisiveness. Leadership in the military is, in many ways, similar to leadership in the corporate world in that your authority comes from your job position. Obviously, rank, in the military, also reinforces a person's standing.

Decisiveness is the ability to make timely choices and take action. The challenge with decisiveness, especially in the military, is learning how to make decisions with incomplete information. At TBS, we were taught that a good decision, made now, is better than waiting for ideal information, that may never come, in order to make a perfect decision, later. This tenet taught me how to prioritize tasks by repeatedly focusing on my choices before and after, it until it became second nature.

When to make a decision?

I believe it's important to make a decision as late as you can, if the delay has no penalties. It's OK to decide not to make a choice, now, if a decision isn't necessary. Sometimes, I would explicitly state why I was putting off a decision. As an oversimplified example, "Tonight, I don't need to decide what I'm going to have for lunch, tomorrow, because we won't order lunch for another 15 hours."

But, in the military... especially in combat... we were taught to make the best possible decision, right now. All too frequently, when we were faced with an important tactical decision, our senior officers (captains), who were training us, would yell at the leader, who was taking too long, "Make a decision, lieutenant. Right now. Make a decision."

When I was the lieutenant in charge and I heard this, it put a tremendous amount of pressure one me as I was forced to make an immediate decision in front of those I was leading. My solution to avoid this in the future was by staying one step ahead of the situationat hand. (An important skill that was reinforced when I was training to become a pilot.) More and more training that's as realistic as possible (rehearsals) helps, tremendously. But that's not always possible. My backup was to instantly recognize what choice I could make, now, that would further our mission while maintaining a responsibility to the long term.

A colonel once told me he kept his decision skills sharp by always planning for many possible scenarios. For example, he said that, when he's driving, he always made sure he had a way out. Specifically, the colonel told me that would not pull up too close to the car in front of him, at a traffic light. If the car in front of him stalled at the traffic light, he still had enough room to turn out of his lane while continuing to move forward. (Why retreat when that's not the direction you want to go?)

Getting into a good habit is called self-discipline. Discipline is to the Marines what innovation is to Apple, except, in the Marines, discipline will literally save your life, both in combat and training.

When to change a decision, without being indecisive?

Indecisiveness is a pet peeve of mine. Indecisiveness is changing one's mind when no new information has presented itself.

Simple decisions can be made and reversed if there's no cost or penalty, "I know that I wanted to have a tuna salad sandwich for lunch, earlier, but I've decided to place my order for the chicken club." There's nothing wrong with that since I hadn't yet placed my order. But, I wouldn't call back, after ordering my lunch, to change my decision once I've finalized it. That would be indecisive. I would rather live with my decision to eat something I didn't fully enjoy rather than flip-flop. That's how I live with my decisions.

Putting off a decision, as long as possible, keeps your options open. But, in a life and death situation, that delay to consider your options might only be seconds.

Decision-Making Principles

My key principles in figuring out when to change a decision are:

1. Has new information come to light that wasn't available, before; and, if I don't change my decision, will my mission fail or will my earlier decision violate a key principle, policy, or law?
To maintain integrity, I take this one step further. New information doesn't mean information that was available six months ago, but I was too lazy to research; new information means there's no way I could have/should have known about it before making my decision. A person's judgement is only as good as the information it's based on.

2. Will changing my decision significantly simplify the task at hand, while still accomplishing my mission; and can the change be promulgated to all parties in a very timely manner?

Good decisions, based on principles, make for strong leaders.

USMC Order of Battle: How it's Budgeted

Second Battalion, First Marines Supply Section

I joined the Marines when I was a naive teenager. I didn't know an officer from an enlisted person and I had no idea of how the military operated. Of course, I began learning all that on Parris Island. But, it wasn't until nearly ten years later, when I was a supply and fiscal officer for an infantry battalion (1/9 and 2/1) where I learned how military budgets worked. One supply chief I worked with used to tell me, "Sir, just take last year's budget and add 10%." While that was a great estimate, I still had to submit detailed calculations to support our budget requests.

Order of Battle

In our infantry battalion, we had close to 1,000 people, nearly all Marines except for about 70 U.S. Navy personnel for medical and religious support. Unlike the other services of the U.S. Armed Forces, every Marine is a combatant, so the Navy would support us with non-combat specialties. (There is one case that comes to mind of when a Marine would be considered a non-combatant and that's if they are captured and classified as prisoner of war.)

The Marine Corps likes to organize maneuver elements into groups of three:
Three Marines form a fireteam (plus a fireteam leader).
Three fireteams form a squad.
Three squads form a platoon.
Three platoons form a company.
Three companies form a battalion.
Three battalions form a regiment.
Three regiments form a division.

In practice, each unit requires leadership and support. A squad has a squad leader. A platoon has platoon commander, a platoon sergeant, and a guide (the guide marches at the front of the platoon carrying the guidon). The larger the unit, the more leadership and support is required.

Our infantry battalion had the typical five companies. Three were line companies used as maneuver elements, meaning that they'd engage in combat as a single unit on the front lines. The other two companies were support units. One was the weapons company, which is a maneuver support unit that provides organic fire support to the three line companies. The weapons company wouldn't see action as an entire company. Rather, they'd be split up into smaller elements (detachments) and attached to the line companies (as reinforcements) with their crew-served weapons (weapons requiring more than one person to operate such as a heavy machine gun or mortar).

Supply Support

H&S Company organizational chart (c. 2017)

As a supply officer, I was a part of the other support unit, Headquarters and Service Company (H&S). This company is where the commanding officer and his staff, which I was a part of, were organized. Supply officers are sometimes referred to as secondary staff officers since they usually report to the logistics officer who was considered primary staff. (For details on staff work see #3 Leading vs Staff Work.)

As a supply officer, I typically had one to two dozen Marines reporting up to me. On the battlefield, moving supplies around requires coordination via a trained logistics expert. Whereas, on a ship in the Navy the reverse is typically the case; a naval supply officer oversees logistics operations since it's not as challenging to move supplies from one part of a ship to another.

In addition to the commanding officer's staff and the supply section that I previously mentioned, an H&S company is also comprised of communications, motor transport, maintenance, armory, and cook sections that are administrative or technical. H&S does have one tactical unit, the scout sniper platoon, used for organic reconnaissance and engaging select targets.

The beauty of the Marine Corps is that every Marine's a rifleman. So, it's fairly common for cooks or communications Marines to go on patrol or be used to provide security around a base.

So, how is all of this budgeted and paid for?

Paying for War

As a second lieutenant, I learned, on the job, how budgets work but my knowledge was limited to the scope of my experiences.

There are two basic forms of military budgeting that I was involved with. Baseline budgeting, for training during peacetime, and contingency budgeting for wartime.

Contingency Budgeting

4th LAR Supply Section

Contingency budgeting is simple. Simply buy what you need, regardless of cost. It's like throwing out the checkbook register. Since it's war, money is not a big concern, especially at the battalion level. I experienced this when I served with 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion (4th LAR) after their return from the "March to Baghdad" in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. We simply ordered all the repair parts we needed to refit our battalion. I don't recall how much that totaled, but the division headquarters was keen to let us know that we ran up the highest bill of any other unit in 4th Marine Division. But, that was expected since we were the only "heavy" (mechanized) battalion that was entirely mobilized from the Marine Corp Reserves.

Baseline Budgeting

Baseline budgeting is a bit more tedious than contingency budgeting since we had to figure out how much our training was going to cost, ahead of time. Luckily, we had the Redbook. The Redbook is a manual of cost factors used to "cost out" training events. There is a lot of paperwork involved when repairing anything in the military, and for a good reason. Maintenance Marines typically don't realize it when they're filling out the repair forms, but the paperwork they submit captures specific details of the maintenance costs for every item repaired, from an M-16 to a tank. All of these costs are captures and averaged across the First Marine Division. The Redbook would give me, as the supply and fiscal officer, a reference to know that, on average, for every day an M-16 is used, we should plan to spend 2¢ on maintenance (not counting the ammunition) or for each day an M-1 Abrams tank is used it would cost $185.

With the Redbook, I would simply layout our peacetime training plan and figure out which units and equipment would participate in each event. Unfortunately, I had create the spreadsheets from scratch and keypunch the data, myself; this would typically take about ten days to complete. Luckily, I didn't have to budget for payroll and food since that was a fixed cost managed by the Marine Corps, at the highest level (there's no overtime in the military). Ammunition was budgeted for in terms of numbers of rounds, but not dollars, so that, too, wasn't a concern of mine.

Although baseline budgeting was tedious, it was a rewarding document to send up the chain of command. If we were short funds, we had hard data to make our case for additional money. Since Marines change billets every two to four years, most everyone is new to their current job position, including the commanding officer. Presenting this level of detail to my commanding officers made them keenly aware, if they were asked to participate in an unscheduled exercise or task force, that their first question should always be, "Who's paying for this?" Even in the Marines, it was pay-to-play. Semper Fi.

Me, Apple, and the Marines

Podcast interview: I’m always excited to talk about Apple, WebObjects, my time in the Marines, and working with Guy Kawasaki, Dave Winer, and It's Borrowed:

TMO Background Mode Interview with the CTO of It’s Borrowed Joe Moreno

Advice to USNA Class of 2017

Today's USNA '17 Graduation: Those covers (hats) fly high.

Advice to USNA Class of 2015
Advice to USNA Class of 2016

Today, the US Naval Academy Class of 2017 graduated. What would I tell these eager second lieutenants and ensigns? So many things. I learned some key leadership tricks while at the Academy. Some were hard to do in real-life, like Damn XO. Others were simple like the advice that General Krulak told us: when checking into a new unit, get the record books of all of those in your charge and read through them. They'll be impressed when you talk to them, for the first time, about their past, civilian or military. This would simply be a gimmick, though, if you don't stay on top of what's going on in the lives of your Marines. Take the time to know your Marines, even if you need to take notes to remind yourself of their details.

Management vs Leadership

As a new 2nd Lt or ENS, you will be face new and unfamiliar leadership challenges as you move from being an individual contributor to a leader. As an officer, you're more than a manager. In some cases, there are similarities between managers and leaders and in other cases these roles are completely different. An example of where a manager, in a civilian corporation, isn't a leader is an account manager which might be the job title for a sales person with no direct reports.

So, what about the similarities? What's the difference between a leader and a manager of people? The key thing to remember is that leadership transcends levels of an organization. When I worked at Apple, my manager's name was Tony. Since Steve Jobs was four levels above me, he was not my manager, but he was most certainly my leader.

As a new leader, you'll have to learn to take recommendations from your Marines and then decide what to do. Sometimes your subordinates will give you great advice and sometimes they'll give you some not-so-great advice. You'll learn; many times, you'll learn from your mistakes. Just don't repeat them.

My last piece of advice is don't take yourself too seriously. One way to do this is by subordinating your ego which is harder than you think. Here's one way to do it: when telling others about your personnel, refer to the Marines under you by saying "us" or "we" instead of "my Marines." In other words, don't say, "My Marines inventoried the warehouse," rather, say, "We inventoried the warehouse." It's a minor issue, but unless you're the CO then you're part of a the team, not the commander, and your Marines will follow your example.

Military Misconceptions

I had two misconceptions about military retirement when I was a young buck, probably because I’m not a military retiree.

My first misconception was that my four years attending a federal Service Academy (Annapolis, West Point, Air Force Academy) would be applied to my retirement when I reached 20 years of active service. It turns out that’s not the case. However, my four years on active duty at Annapolis would apply to retirement from a civilian federal job.

My second misconception was that I could retire at 20 years. Although retiring at 20 years (or a lesser amount for medical reasons) is effectively how it works for nearly all veterans, there’s a small nuance that’s often overlooked. The military (especially the Navy and USMC) technically calls “retirement” a paid retainer for a period of time, which means that they can still call you back to active duty, involuntarily. What happens if you don’t return to active duty for the call up? Well… the federal government knows where you live since they’re sending you a “retirement” check so they can simply stop paying you.

As we used to joke at Annapolis, NAVY stands for Never Again Volunteer Yourself.

Simple Influences

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
– Leonardo da Vinci

The Marines and Apple have been the biggest influences in my professional life... my way of thinking... my work philosophy.

At the end of the day, they both respect and seek simplicity. Simplicity of design in products. Simplicity of design in tactics. While both organizations are well respected leaders in their fields, they go about solving problems in different ways. One's procedural and the other's artistic. One creates and the other destroys.

But, there's nothing wrong with creating good and destroying bad.

The Right Way to Fire the Wrong Employee

Direct reports should never be blindsided by their performance evaluations, good or bad.

Most companies hire employees "at-will," meaning either the employee or employer may terminate the employment relationship at anytime. However, when an employee isn't carrying his or her weight, the direct manager should try to correct the employee's behavior rather than ignore it.

The best way to fix an employee's behavior is through formal counseling sessions. During these sessions, the shortfalls and expected behavior is explicitly noted. But, these counseling sessions must be constructive and set the employee up for success. You shouldn't only document bad performance, but also good performance, as it happens, for reference during his or hers annual performance review.

Nevertheless, it's not easy to look a person in the eye and tell them they're not cutting it. I first encountered this situation when I was a second lieutenant in the Marines.

The Few. The Proud.

As a new supply officer for an infantry battalion, I worked with a staff sergeant who didn't provide the expected level of customer service. He was my direct report, with other Marines under him, and over the course of a year I counseled him numerous times following each incident of unacceptable behavior. The core of the problem was that he was focused inward, on taking care of our Marines, which is commendable; but he did it at the expense of our mission, which isn't acceptable. I frequently received reports from other staff NCOs and officers telling me what I already knew: he was immature, abrasive, and argumentative. The staff sergeant had an "us against them" attitude. He believed that others in our battalion were abusing our supply section. However, the real issue was a lack of understanding by others, outside of our supply section, about our policies and procedures. Unfortunately, rather than trying to educate others on how the system worked, he would simply reject their requests in a confrontational manner.

Fast forward to a year later. I've been promoted to first lieutenant and he's been promoted to gunnery sergeant and it was time for his annual performance review. Until the late 1990s, written performance reviews, known as fitreps, were grossly inflated to the point that nearly all Marines were rated outstanding or, at the very least, excellent. Anyone who didn't do a good job was usually rated average because it was easier to "damn with faint praise" than rank a Marine below average. A below average performance review officially made the fitrep adverse which required additional paperwork that most Marine officers wanted to avoid. It's human nature to not want to spend a lot of time on people who provide little value.

I discussed this issue with my peer officers when it came time for me to write up my annual review on the gunnery sergeant. We agreed that this Marine deserved an adverse report, but we felt it wasn't worth the extra paperwork. However, I couldn't bring myself to file the report as average. So, I filed it as an unsatisfactory fitrep, known as a "double signer" since it had to be signed twice. One signature for acknowledging the overall report, and the other signature to explicitly acknowledge that it was an adverse report. It wasn't that we hadn't discussed this possibility in the past, rather, he simply didn't think I would go through with it.

During this annual performance review I showed him my documentation of the issues I had discussed with him, during the previous year. The documentation included a mock fitrep I had drafted up on him a few months earlier during a checkpoint counseling session. During that checkpoint session, I presented the below average mock fitrep to the gunnery sergeant and said, "If I had to file a fitrep on you, today, this is how it would be." We talked about it in detail, but, in the end, he didn't heed my guidance and he disposed of my notional fitrep.

The other officers in the battalion deeply respected my decision to issue an adverse fitrep, including my commanding officer who was the reviewing officer – my CO fully agreed with my assessment.

The outcome to this process was complicated, as I knew it would be, since we were deployed to the Persian Gulf. "Firing" him meant he would have to continue to work under me, since finding a replacement wasn't practical. Needless to say, it was awkward and uncomfortable to continue working together. And, since we never saw eye to eye on customer service, not much changed. It's one thing to fire someone and have them be gone; it's another thing to have to continue to work together on a daily basis.

Something I liked about the Marine Corps, that is lacking in the corporate world, are candid evaluations when someone's not performing well. I've seen civilian managers, who had a problem with a direct report, complain about it to most everyone else in the office other than the employee with the issue. This behavior, on the manager's part is, at best, complaining and at worst, it's disingenuous leadership.

For me, this was a learn-as-you-go process and there's no better teacher than experience. More importantly, this experience has paid dividends, many years later, by teaching me to empathetically deal with problem people head on in order to maintain a responsibility to the long term.

Process Flow Diagrams

USMC supply system process diagram.

Most full time employees have a keen understanding of their daily processes. However, others, outside the organization, can easily become frustrated when they have to get involved in a process they don't understand. We experience this when we visit the DMV, file our own taxes, etc.

I learned a great way to solve this problem when I was a student at the Naval Academy in the early 1990s. As a midshipman, I had the opportunity to participate in a teleconference with Dr. Deming. Dr. Deming is known for his significant contributions in business management throughout Japan after World War II. In the mid-1980s, his Total Quality Management (TQM) teachings were adopted by the U.S. Navy and branded as TQL (L for leadership).

I paid close attention to Dr. Deming's comments during his conference call since I was raised by a father who spent a career in quality assurance.

The key issue Dr. Deming spoke about, that was actionable for me, were his comments about process diagrams. He pointed out that businesses need to diagram their processes, with names below each box of the person responsible for each step. This point stuck with me for two reasons. First, because it was an epiphany; and, second, because he was a bit of a curmudgeon about it. I got the impression he'd consulted to many businesses, over many decades, that didn't follow his simple, sensible advice.

Process Flow Diagrams

Process flow diagrams are very simple to create. Here's a real world example I developed in the Marines. While creating process diagrams, both in the military and in the corporate world, I refined my technique beyond what I learned from Dr. Deming into a highly effective tool.

Each box in a process diagram represents a step in the process for a particular task. (In my example, commodity is military-speak for customer.)

The text inside the box is a short description of the step. The first word inside the box is the department responsible for that step. If you have more text than can fit in a box then you may need to break that into multiple steps. 

Three items are listed under each box.

The first item is the job description of the person responsible for that step, along with an employee's name.

The second item is the most likely problem (MLP) encountered that holds up that step.

The third item is the solution (Sol) to the MLP. In other words, how to avoid the problem in the first place. 

Real World Reception

In the real world, this document can be received positively or negatively. A lot depends on how well an organization's processes are thought out. When I shared my process flow diagrams with my commanding officers, they were very well received. After all, the military has well established procedures, even if they're not always obvious.

In the civilian world, I got a lot of push back at one company I worked at (not Apple). No one had a clear understanding of the organization's internal processes. Initially, that surprised me when I started working on this simple, side project. Then, it became clear I was asking managers questions about things they didn't know, but should. This resulted in unresolved finger pointing and passing the buck. That organization reinvented the wheel over and over. Needless to say, it was an ineffective organization to work in as I discovered most every procedure was handled ad hoc.

Good definitions make for clear ideas.

Living in a Safe House

The architecture of my Nairobi safe house reminded me of San Diego.

In 2005 I lived in a safe house in Nairobi. Actually, I lived in a couple safe houses, but the layout was essentially the same. What's different, in the real world compared to the movies, is that most safe houses aren't obscure hidden buildings with desolate interiors. Rather, like the White House, they are reinforced houses to prevent home invasions.

Sleep safely on the second floor, behind bars.

My safe houses were located in compounds with six to twelve other homes surrounded by walls topped with concertina (razor wire) and 24/7 guards. Another group I worked with lived in, what we affectionately called, the cathouse (Civil Affairs Team house) which had everything my house had plus an electric fence.

The windows in my safe house were covered with reinforced burglar bars and the bedrooms were located on the second floor where I could lock myself in, similar to a jail cell. There was a lever on my bedroom wall that I could pull to blow out a section of the bars to escape if there was a fire.

The red lever on the wall would blow out a section of bars.

It's hard to believe it's been almost a decade since I lived in Nairobi. This metropolis is the tech center of East Africa and the weather's better than San Diego. The city is located about 1° from the equator and, at a mile up, it's above the mosquito line. The summer highs were in the 80s and the winter lows were in the 50s. Nairobi gets a little more rain than Southern California so things we irrigate for in San Diego, like banana plants and birds of paradise, grow naturally without any humidity.

I highly recommend a trip to Nairobi and safari in Maasai Mara.


Author: Joe Moreno

Colonial Infrastructure

Last night I had a conversation with a fellow former Marine officer. We talked about our experiences while on deployment. One thing that struck me was the differences between a former British colony and a former French colony.

From my experiences in Africa and South West Asia, I noticed that the French colonies were not the place you wanted to be, especially if there was a French Foreign Legion garrison stationed in the country, like Djibouti prior to 2011. British colony infrastructure and public education were noticeably better, on many levels, than the French which is why countries like India and Kenya really shine when it comes to lines-of-communication and STEM.

Encouraging Aggressiveness

What happens when a Marine loses equipment in combat?

One of my jobs in the Marines was as a supply officer for an infantry battalion at Camp Pendleton, CA. The majority of our warehouse was stocked with "782 gear" (/seven-eighty-two/) which is individual combat equipment and field gear such as helmets, canteens, ammo pouches, flak jackets, etc. A Marine would check into our battalion and he'd receive his standard issue of gear.

In the mid-1990s a standard issue was worth about $1,800. If any equipment became damaged or unserviceable due to routine use then it could be surveyed (one for one exchange) for a new piece of gear.

The odd part was if a Marine lost a piece of GI gear he didn't have to pay for it, even during peacetime. It may seem strange that someone entrusted with tax payer equipment didn't need to pay for losing it but it makes sense. The idea is to promote aggressiveness. Or, more specifically, to not encourage passivity in combat. We don't want Marines to find themselves discouraged from attacking an objective if they get a bill for equipment lost in the attack. After all, we're talking about combat. And we fight like we train so the same rules, along with a high degree of safety, should be applied in peacetime.

The formal process of filing a missing gear statement included having the Marine counseled by an officer outside his chain of command. During a counseling session the Marine would be encouraged to reimburse the government for the lost gear, but he was specifically told that he had no obligation. The Marine would make a written statement and the officer would certify his counseling session. During an audit, I'd have to produce this paperwork to certify the adjustment to our inventory records. There's a fair amount of paperwork involved in maintaining a chain of custody for government equipment.

My Experience  

When I was a second lieutenant at Quantico (TBS) I lost an expensive pair of Gore-Tex gloves during a night attack. Out of a sense of duty I moseyed over to the supply section and wrote a $120 check made payable to the U.S. Treasury. The sad part is the Marine Corps doesn't recover any of these funds – my money went directly to Uncle Sam and, in return, I was told it came with the uniform. Semper Fi.

Let Him Fail

I learned a lot at Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Quantico, VA.

Before you can lead you first need to learn how to follow. In boot camp, at Parris Island, my drill instructors taught me how to follow. At OCS, the goal was to see how well I could lead.

I was one of the only prior enlisted Marines in my OCS platoon, so my sergeant instructors assigned me as the platoon commander. The candidate assigned under me, as my platoon sergeant, was a subpar performer. Pairing top performers with subpar performers was a common tactic at OCS. It’s a learning experience for both.

Two things stick out in my mind when I was the platoon commander.

Non sibi

First was the fact that I ate last. The Marine Corps is a big believer in taking care of your Marines’ needs before your own. My platoon would file into the chow hall before me and we’d all leave at the same time.

Stay in Your Lane

Second was the fact I had to supervise and lead without intervening or interfering. As the platoon commander, I didn’t march in formation with my platoon. The problem was my platoon sergeant kept making mistakes. He’d make mistakes marching the platoon, taking muster, organizing his reports, etc. When this initially happened, I jumped in and took over. The third time I did this my senior sergeant instructor pounced on me with a loud and resounding, “Let him fail, Moreno! You can’t do his job for him. He needs to learn for himself.”

In a flash I learned a valuable leadership lesson. It’s hard to sit back and watch someone learn from their mistakes at your expense even though it’ll pay off in the long run. Give your subordinates a little buffer and breathing room to try new things so they learn what works and what doesn’t. This is a key principle when transitioning from an individual contributor to a leader as it builds trust and confidence in the team.

Band of Brothers
You can see this leadership lesson in action at the 4:00 mark in this clip. Dick Winters is the battalion XO (although this scene portrays him as the battalion CO) and he tries to step in to lead a company that's pinned down due to poor leadership under fire. In the heat of battle Winters's commander stops him to remind him it's not the battalion commander's place to lead a company. That's a tough lesson to learn when people you know are being killed before your eyes and you can fix it.

Communication Pipe

When I was a 19 year-old Marine I listened to a captain talk about communications and military operations. He told us stories about his part during the invasion of Grenada and his time in Beirut. In the 1980s, very few Marines had seen combat, so his thoughts carried a lot of weight.

The captain had some insightful experiences. One point he made was about, what he called, the communications pipe (we call it bandwidth, nowadays). As a communications pipe increases, more stuff gets added. The problem is that we always fill it to capacity. The upside is as bandwidth increases, the older technologies, like text chat, can shine during a crisis. His point resonated with me on 9/11 when I couldn't reach my boss and fellow Apple coworkers in NYC via phone or e-mail. But, AIM, being such a low bandwidth channel, worked without a hitch.

Double Standard, Double-edged Sword

Double standards, when fairly applied, aren't a bad thing.

As a Marine private, I would be punished if I showed up 30 seconds late to muster. Yet, it wasn't a problem if an officer showed up late. Clearly that was a double standard – late is late, no matter your rank.

When I was a corporal I saw a fellow Marine, who was one rank lower than me, get caught shoplifting a pair of socks at the PX on Camp Pendleton. His reason for doing it? It seemed too easy to get away with it.

He ended up getting punished at office hours, reduced in rank, placed on restriction, and he had to forfeit two-thirds of his pay for a couple months.

Other than this infraction he was a model Marine – he followed orders, set a good example, and he was one of the fittest and fastest runners in my battalion of over a thousand personnel. A couple years later he applied for a prestigious assignment, embassy duty. He was accepted into the program and, not surprisingly, he did very well.

The Marines typically preach: To err is human, to forgive is divine. Neither of which is Marine Corps policy. But an enlisted Marine's ability to overcome a momentary lapse of judgment is a testimony to the belief that mistakes, even dumb ones, can be overcome.

Just to be clear, here's the double standard: Had it been a Marine officer who was caught shoplifting then his/her career would be over. A Marine officer's judgment should be impeccable. Same rules, different results. A double standard? Yes. Appropriate? You bet.

Happy birthday Marines and happy Veterans Day.

Everyone's a Leader

At the top of the list of leadership traits is, "set the example." This was drilled into us at the Naval Academy and in the Marines. While no one is perfect, how often someone sets a proper example is a good indicator of their character. This applies to both good and bad examples.

Every person sets an example that others will follow. Think of it as a meme. It usually happens without us realizing it. This is one reason most of us speed on the highway, even when we're not in a rush. Since most everyone else is speeding, we just follow their example and hope we don't get caught.

Case in Point
One personal example of bad leadership I once set, which could have seriously injured or killed two kids, happened when I went for a run with a friend. We stopped at a red light in a crosswalk of a six lane road with a 55 MPH speed limit and a center divide. We looked to our left and noticed that no traffic was coming so we started to cross with the intention of waiting on the center divide until it was safe to go the rest of the way. Unbeknownst to us, there were two kids, about eight or ten years old, on bicycles, just behind us. As we started to run in the crosswalk against the red light, the two kids followed our lead not knowing that we intended to stop at the center divide. Since they were on bikes, they overtook us and continued beyond the center divide into traffic where a couple cars had to jam on their breaks to avoid hitting the kids. One of those vehicles was a police car. While the kids ended up not being struck, my friend and I received an appropriate tongue lashing from the police officer about setting a bad example which has stuck with me to this day.

Even though I was no longer on active duty in the Marines when crossing that six lane road, I still should have set a good example. Actions will always speak louder than words.

NJP & Request Mast

Over the centuries, the military has done a great job at refining some processes and procedures for handling matters quickly and efficiently There are two, in particular, that stick out in my mind.

Non-Judicial Punishment
One common U.S. military procedure is Article 15 non-judicial punishment, also known as "office hours" or "captain's mast," depending on the branch of the military.

Think of Article 15 as "Judge Judy" for punitive matters. Although the defendant almost always has the option of choosing a trial by court-martial, they rarely do. It's usually a clear cut case that the defendant is guilty. They'd rather accept the lesser punishment handed out at an Article 15 procedure than a stiffer sentence from a court-martial conviction.

Request Mast
Another very effective, yet rarely used, procedure is request mast which allows any Marine to redress a grievance up their chain of command without repercussions.

A Marine will request mast when there's an issue which can't be handled at a lower level. This process cannot be denied and the request has to be passed along with no more than a business day's delay between each link in the chain of command --- all the way up to the commanding general, if requested.

What type of complaint could be so important that it can't be handled but at the highest levels? Let's just say that you'd better get this right if you're requesting mast. As a matter of fact, I've never seen a Marine, that I personally knew, request mast. But, I have heard of a few interesting stories.

Military Police
The most memorable case of request mast I've observed was requested by a Marine military policeman (MP). The MP had arrested a squadron commanding officer for DUI. The CO was booked and released. But, the case "disappeared." Obviously, the CO had influenced someone to make his problem go away.

Enter the arresting MP, who, if I recall correctly, was a lance corporal. He requested mast all the way up to the base commanding general. Lo and behold, the CO, who was a colonel, was outed. Part of the colonel's punishment was to enter "level 3" (in patient) alcohol treatment.

See, there is justice.

Author: Joe Moreno