![]() It is like riding the middle part of a marathon on a bus. Powerpoint is training wheels for the mind. Lucid writing leads to lucid thinking and vice versa. Writing lucidly and clearly is one of the most important skills there is. ![]() And if not, well, they will have to learn-because ban Powerpoint. ![]() But if West Point is so great, surely that shouldn't be beyond the reach of its graduates. Yes, writing great memos is a lot harder than Powerpoint. It's what you use when you're unable to write lucid, clear, concise English prose, which is harder to do than churning out slides and bulletpoints. (Right? Right?) Powerpoint is also an intellectual crutch. Surely this is not a problem that US military officers have to worry about. Having slides to point to makes it easier to stand up since everyone's eyes are on the slide and not the speaker. Social-as Joel Spolsky has documented, the reason why Microsoft developed Powerpoint and why Corporate America embraced it is because your average office drone is afraid of speaking in public (speaking in public is a common terror). Powerpoint is an intellectual and social crutch. Perhaps nothing has been so established as the noxiousness of Powerpoint to productivity. Powerpoint is also a cancer on business, but unfortunately that pesky First Amendment won't let us ban it there. Powerpoint culture is deeply ingrained into the marrow of the US military, but that's the point: rip it out at the root. At this point, cutting off the gangrenous limb is the only option. The cancer on the US military that is PowerPoint has been thoroughly documented. And I'll bet you a pretty penny that they would perform better than BA-OCS grads or West Point grads.Ģ. ![]() Given the realities of US military culture, getting rid totally of service academies is probably impossible (though it would be a powerful symbol, reverberating throughout the force), but making room for 20-year-old lieutenants should be feasible. (Given that the internet exists, the officer can earn a BA on the way, without leaving active service or slowing down his career.) In Ye Olden Days, young people admitted to the French service academies had to spend a year as a private before enrolling. There should be a clear and obvious path that takes a smart, eager 18-year-old and turns him into a 20-year-old lieutenant with active service experience. The absurd credentialism of the US military that always requires a BA for the officer course, and the idea that a 22-year old with a BA out of Kansas State is more qualified for OCS than an equally smart 19-year-old with a year or two of service under his belt makes no sense. (This is why I believe military forces should set a firm retirement age at 50, but this is outside the scope of this post.) In the IDF, you are selected for officer training outside of high school. From Alexander the Great down to Philippe Leclerc, great generals are young generals and, notable exceptions notwithstanding, old generals typically lose to younger generals. Get rid of service academies, or at least degree requirements for promotion to officer. With that in mind, here are some practical suggestions on how the US military (and other armed forces around the world) can learn from the IDF:ġ. (See, for example, Tom Ricks's must-read piece, General Failure.) Sadly, one feels that this is also too often the case of the US military, even though it has been at war for over a decade, and even though it is tasked with protecting the security of the world. Because they haven't had to fight major wars for decades, most armed forces of the rich world have become, at least in some measure, large, lumbering bureaucracies. To one who keeps abreast of military affairs, the contrast between the IDF of the Six-Day War and most Western armed forces today couldn't be more stark. One of the key elements that makes the IDF what it is is its culture that was one of the things that shone through The Lion's Gate, Steven Pressfield's excellent oral history of the IDF's greatest feat of arms, the Six-Day War. I don't think anybody doubts that the Israel Defense Forces are, pound for pound, the best fighting force on Earth.
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