1st Lt. Dan Choi, 2002 West Point graduate, Arabic linguist and Iraq War veteran, is being fired from the United States Army for publicly announcing that he is gay.

In the Army equivalent of a pink slip received by postal mail on 23 April 2009, Choi was informed of his firing because of what he said. The Army wrote, “You admitted publicly that you are homosexual which constitutes homosexual conduct. Your actions negatively affected the good order and discipline of the New York Army National Guard.”

The Army doesn’t care that Choi is gay, but they do care that he told everyone. The Army’s explanation is a weak justification of his firing. More appropriate would have been to say you violated policy, the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, therefore you are fired.

Under federal law, openly gay people are prohibited from serving in the United States Armed Forces. The military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy is the only law in the country that allows for the firing of a person based on open expression of sexual orientation alone.

More than a decade after its implementation, the policy continues to create significant anxiety among gay service members. It is a policy which encourages gay soldiers to lie in order to continue in their chosen profession and selfless service to the Nation. This is in direct conflict with “integrity”, one of the Army’s seven core values. Integrity, by Army definition, is “do what is right, legally and morally. Be willing to do what is right even when no one is looking.” The Army proffers that integrity is its “moral compass” and inner voice. This makes sense: integrity builds trust, and trust builds unit cohesion.

So how does a service member’s admission of sexual orientation “negatively affects the good order and discipline” of a military unit? What makes Choi’s being gay detrimental to good order and discipline? That question remains to be answered. In the early 1990’s, when then President Bill Clinton moved to allow gays in the military, Pentagon brass commissioned a Rand Corporation study of the issue. The study found that gays and lesbians could serve without negative impact to the military. The study was suppressed.

A more appropriate question might be what negatively affects good order, discipline and morale in military units? A few common to mind. Leaders who do not lead by example – they say one thing and do another; leaders who are guided by self-interest – not for the good of the unit or mission; and units where standards are not uniformly enforced. Two more obvious ones are sexual harassment and fraternization. But these are already regulated – we don’t need special regulations for gays and lesbians. Meanwhile, the distancing and dishonesty that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell requires of serving gays and lesbians certainly has a negative impact. One could argue that the policy itself is detrimental to good order and discipline.

Since the enactment of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, more than 12,500 soldiers have been discharged from the military for being lesbian, gay, or bisexual. According to figures from the General Accounting Office, the cost of training replacements for those soldiers exceeded $360 million from fiscal years 1994 through 2003. Included are soldiers in military occupational specialties with critical shortages, such as pilots, intelligence analysts and Arabic linguists. With the dismissal of 1st Lt. Dan Choi, the number just increased.

In a 2004 article for Compass: A Journal of Leadership Magazine, a publication of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, former Army Maj. Lissa Young, also forced out of the profession of arms because of her acknowledgment of her sexual orientation, addressed the failure of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. She wrote:

We are afraid to challenge the assumptions of our institutions even as we respect their foundations. A notable example of our failure is the unwillingness to lift the unconstitutional and incoherent policy, commonly called ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ that prohibits homosexuals from serving openly in our armed forces. They are told they can serve only if they treat their sexuality as a secret they must hide from the world. And in the next breath they are told that a soldier never lies.

What the 12,500 figure does not include are soldiers who complete their service obligations but choose not to continue their military careers because of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Many gay veterans are proud of their service and likely would have continued to serve, but the toll and cost of keeping one’s life secret became too great. It is a choice many talented, patriotic and committed soldiers have had to, and continue to, make.

The time has come to change the current policy. The commander-in-chief has the authority to suspend gay discharges under federal law (10 U.S.C. §12305) to retain any member of the military he believes is essential to national security. President Obama, please invoke your authority and leadership while you work to change the policy.

If any cadets read this request, please forward it to others who might be interested in the issue of where the Patton statue should be installed this spring.  We’d like to include cadet opinions in our survey results.  So far, 70+ grads have expressed the opinion that Patton’s statue should be as close as possible to it’s original location near the library, where it can be seen by all cadets on a daily basis.  Opinions differ on whether the figure should face the library or the Plain. Please visit http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=5RRC36UCsc6RSiiELijbxg_3d_3d or http://tinyurl.com/c2ol2r to complete an unofficial survey of Cadets and graduates by an old grad to provide unsolicited input to the Museum Historical and Memorialization Committee re the new location for the Patton statue.

Thanks,

Fred Bothwell ‘62

G-1

Armor

Dare to be different!

The television sitcom “Seinfeld” made its mark in prime time TV by dealing with everyday situations that each of us encounters… waiting for a payphone, losing a car rental reservation, and waiting for the cable repair man. One episode in particular that I recall is when George Costanza decides to do the exact opposite of his natural instincts.  As a result, George finds good luck by doing the opposite: he finds a girlfriend, gets a new job, and moves out of his parents’ house. By stepping out of his normal routine and comfort zone, George finds immediate success. I’m convinced many of us can do the same!

Sales leaders can learn a lot from this classic TV comedy about “nothing.” By doing “something” and doing it differently, you can make a difference! And more often than not, daring to be different creates a new customer, saves an existing customer, or develops an individual’s courage to take the next risk without fear.

I witnessed this type of risk and its rewards firsthand while a cadet at the US Military Academy at West Point. In 1983, Army Football endured a miserable season on the gridiron, finishing the season with a crushing loss to Navy, 42-13 making it 6 straight years without a win over their service academy rival. The following year, Army chose to do something different. A new coaching staff was hired. They immediately installed the wishbone offense, designed for quicker and smaller athletes that better fit the profile of the West Point football team. As a result, in 1984, Army defeated Navy and went on to beat Michigan State in the inaugural Cherry Bowl.

Whatever the industry, sales leaders must create an environment for their sales team to “do something different.” 

Sales leadership begins and ends with the customer! Knowing their pain points, their challenges and struggles, and understanding their business model are the first steps to doing something different.

Just like a “Seinfeld” episode, “nothing” can be a good thing. Nothing is better than knowing your customers’ business better than they do. Nothing is better than being a valuable resource to your customers and not just a low price. Nothing is better than becoming a sales leader- a sales person who places the priority on customers every day.

And, nothing is better than doing something differently…so start today!

Gregg Schuliger is the Business Manager for Unisource Houston, TX

This article appears in the October 2008 issue of DOTS Magazine,

I’m very proud of my classmate & husband of 21 years. Check out todays Press Release:

Uniformed Services University
of the Health Sciences
4301 Jones Bridge Road
Bethesda, MD 20814-4799
Release No.09-01-02
January 16, 2009

News Release

Dr. Tracy Sbrocco, USUCHD Director of Research (center), President and CEO of the Steptoe Group, LLC, Ronald Steptoe (right); and C.J. Jordan, sign a partnership agreement to develop an interdisciplinary educational training program.

Alumni who have left the military recognize that much of what we learned about leadership in the Army is applicable in the civilian world.   I spend time with business people sharing insights into leadership that come out of my research as an historian and, less often, my own experiences.  Many of my civilian colleagues, most of whom don’t know any veterans personally, are skeptical about what they might learn from a soldier. 

What follows is a blog posting, written for my civilian audience, that underscores why it’s critical for leaders and decision-makers always to put forth their best effort.  

Years ago I spent nine weeks in the U. S. Army’s Ranger School, undergoing commando-style training in which students are deliberately stressed by food and sleep deprivation, strenuous days-long exercises and the pressure of constant evaluation. We took turns filling the leadership positions, but we were all leaders in training, mostly young officers and sergeants. Since it’s harder to lead miserable, cold, wet and exhausted soldiers than it is to lead well-fed and well rested ones, the thinking goes, practice here and you’ll be better prepared for combat.
When our patrol leader indicated that he found the spot, we set up a security perimeter—a big circle of armed men facing outward for enemy patrols that might have followed us. But we were all thinking the same thing: sometimes these supply drops included food. By this point we were subsisting on one or two rations a day while conducting extremely strenuous training. So even though we were in peak physical condition when we began, every one of us had lost weight: ten, fifteen, twenty pounds. We fantasized about food and sleep, sleep and food.

So while one man dug up the metal containers, the rest of us crowded round like greedy children, abandoning the perimeter and the ring of security we were supposed to maintain, dreaming about food. The man digging threw shovels full of sand until the top of an ammo can poked through. I must have stepped back, or looked behind me, because I didn’t see what happened next, but I heard it. There was a pop, followed by a shoosing sound as the air filled with a bright green cloud. It was a booby trap, only a smoke grenade, but real grenades, the kind that kill, work the same way.
“You losers are all dead,” one of the young Ranger instructors said, pointing to the five or six men closest to the hole. I slunk back to the perimeter, trying to look like I had stayed by my post. “Dig a grave,” another junior instructor said, “Big enough for those five.” The glum-looking casualties sat cross legged on the ground while we dug. Finished, we climbed out, waiting to be told to fill the hole. Then the senior instructor stepped in.  He had been in the background, off by himself outside the perimeter, probably smoking, certainly watching. He was a Viet Nam veteran, a Master Sergeant with a full head of brush cut hair, sun-baked skin and an impressive scowl; his face was a war novel.

“All you people get in here,” he said, motioning us into a tight circle. We hesitated. One grenade can get you all. “Come here, I said.” Amazingly we found some hustle left in our tired bodies. The young instructors backed off. “You five, down there.” The five “dead” Rangers obeyed instantly, with none of the scuffling, mute resistance that might have greeted an order from the younger trainers. They flopped into the hole, curling around each other in the tight space, a frieze of dirty uniforms. Their eyes were open, looking up; they didn’t move.

I remembered a story about Marine Corps basic training in the sixties, when some Drill Instructors at Parris Island got drunk one night and took a bunch of recruits on a road march, drowning several in the dismal swamps. “Cover ‘em up,” the Master Sergeant said, reaching over and snatching the rolled poncho from a Ranger student’s rucksack, then throwing it into the hole. We pulled out two or three more and tossed them into the grave where the corpses covered themselves.
“Get out your handbook,” the senior instructor said, gesturing to me, the closest student. I scrambled to find my mud-splattered Ranger Handbook, our bible for everything from planning airborne operations and reconnaissance patrols to blowing up bridges. There were prayers in the back. Prayers over the dead. I read the Rite of Protestant Burial. As I read, the big sergeant kicked some dirt into the hole: it splattered bright orange on the slick green ponchos. When I finished, we stood in awkward silence.

“You men are going to be leaders,” the old man said, “responsible for other people. When leaders make mistakes, when you get sloppy or lazy, when you forget that you’re in charge, when you back off a decision—people are going to get killed. Sometimes, for some of you unlucky bastards, you’ll make the best decision you can—a good decision, even—and people are still going to die. And that’s bad. But if you’ve been screwing off instead of paying attention, it’ll be worse.” He paused; I found I was holding my breath. In almost a whisper, he said, “You’ll wish you’d never been born.” He turned and walked out of the perimeter, shuffling a bit, too old for what he was doing. Like many of the veterans one saw around the Army in those days, he was probably already old at nineteen, instantly aged on some no-name battlefield, on a day when the young men under the ponchos didn’t get up after the training was over.

from www.MyLeadersCompass.com