My initial advice was that he was trying the directing leadership style with experienced subordinates on something that wasn’t time-critical. It would be more effective to walk them through why it was important to the squadron to do call-downs [consensus-building] or to tell the Cadet Deputy “I don’t care how you do it, but I want to know the status of 100% of the Cadets 24 hours before the meeting.” [Delegating]. see footnote

A few hours later, I realized how common this problem is in CAP. Cadets (and Seniors) become de-motivated, and either don’t or can’t do their jobs. All too often, the “leadership” response is “the beatings will continue until morale is improved.” In the software field, this is associated with burned-out programmers, who have come to believe that nothing they do will make a difference, so why try? (Don’t believe me? Try reading Dilbert for a few weeks.) In CAP, we have a name for people with this problem: Former Members.

I recently noticed the book "Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes", by Alfie Kohn sitting on my University’s Bookshelf. Now, GVSU, like many state colleges, is a haven for commie-pinko-liberals, so I figured the book would, at the very least, be entertaining. In fact, it might even have some practical insight into how to fix this problem. see footnote

The author points out that our idea of incentives/punishments is very similar to behaviorism - motivating rats to run a race or push a button in order to receive a piece water or a snack. The author claims that human beings are not lab animals, and if you treat them like lab animals, they will develop a feeling of resentment. He goes on to spend several hundred pages proving this, and makes several good points. see footnote

Once the author points out the problem, the book doesn’t spend a lot of time concentrating on the answer. The major solution Kohn offers is called the Three C’s: Content, Collaboration, and Choice. I was very surprised to find that many of the ideas overlap CAP’s Leadership Principles, and are very effective at making good people do their jobs better.

Content

It’s very hard to use money to keep someone at a boring job when they have offers for other employment. It’s even harder to keep CAP Cadets when our programs are boring. After all, they could be playing ball, skiing, watching TV, etc. Yelling at subordinates to show up to meetings never succeeds, and offering them social activities doesn’t work too well either. CAP dances aren’t so special when the local high school has a dance a week.

Instead, the solution is to re-visit our training curricula, and make our programs interesting and exciting to the youth of today. Personally, I believe that a good Cadet Programs class inspires the mind, excites the heart, and quickens the pulse. Finding a way to live the 52-16, but keep things fun is a real challenge. It might take practicing speeches in front of a mirror (with a watch), getting feedback from parents, Cadets and Seniors, researching “How other Squadrons do it”, etc.

In terms of Organizational Behavior, CAP is, essentially, a gang (see footnote). People join gangs for a sense of belonging and shared experience. It’s through that shared experience that something that they might otherwise think of as boring (like drill) becomes exciting. To make our program “fun”, we need to find ways for Cadets to solve problems as a team, and feel like they are a part of something.

Collaboration

This one seems obvious, but is often ignored. If we have Cadets who aren’t obeying orders, there is probably a reason. If we don’t know the reason, we haven’t done our jobs. By fighting for feedback with our subordinates, we can find out what’s wrong and how to fix it before it becomes a major attitude problem. In addition, this gives the subordinate the little impressions that matter: Ideas like My Opinion Counts, my performance makes a difference, I am a part of this, I am not ignored. All these ideas can have a profound effect on the performance of a subordinate.

Choice

To some extent, this overlaps with ideas like homogenous assignment and delegation, but I think Kohn would argue to give subordinates more freedom in every way: Ask for their feedback for their next duty position, set up your goals and then say “I don’t care how you do it, just get it done legitimately.”(see footnote) At Boulle-Norman, when the Cadet Commander writes the quarterly schedule, he just sketches in the National Requirements like testing, safety, PFT, and moral leadership. All of the time that is traditionally given to phase I training is delegated as “Flight Commander’s Time.” The Flight Commander’s read the list of goals set by the Cadet Commander and break up their time, working on what they know the Flight needs in order to meet those goals.

By empowering his subordinates to make decisions, the Cadet Commander is building in his Flight Commander’s the ideas of responsibility and authority: I am a part of this, I can make a difference. The Flight Commander can also delegate some authority down the chain, perhaps splitting up time by having the Flight Sergeant teach the vast majority of the Phase I material.

After thumbing through Kohn’s book, I came away with a few glimmering ideas. First, that the ideas of Content, Collaboration, and Choice might help our Cadets feel like they are “a part of things” where pizza parties and boot-shining had not. Since that time, I’ve tried to come up with a practical application to keep our Phase I/II Cadets who are on the verge of quitting, and get them involved.

Here’s my idea so far: Every few years, we re-write our Phase I training program. Why not get these cadets on the review committee, and ask them “How can we make this fun but stick to the 52-16?” The committee would also have a Senior and a Staff Cadet or three on it.

Comments, thoughts, criticisms, complaints? I’m looking for feedback. Please feel free to  drop me an email.

Additional Reading

For another interesting take on bribery, reward, and punishment, I recommend Joel Spolsky’s Article: Incentive Pay Considered Harmful. It’s about as long as this article, and has some other interesting points.

Footnotes

1: The idea here came from ECI-13 The CAP Senior Officer Course, Volume 4, Section 4-2 (Situational Leadership.) (return to article)

2: Years ago, CAPM 50-3 The Leadership Laboratory taught me a lesson in one of it’s Phase III chapters. Essentially, it said, you may fundamentally disagree with someone on something, and you be able to teach them a thing or two. However, just because they are wrong about X and you are right about it, doesn’t have a thing to do with Y or Z. In fact, you could probably learn a thing or two from them as well. Personally, I’ve found that actually applying that attitude in real life has an amazing benefit: It helps you learn stuff. Who would have guessed? (return to article)

3: I can’t say I agree with all of those points; for instance, Kohn concludes that our entire system of competition is wrong, and wrote a book about it titled No Contest: The Case Against Competition. I, however, have seen far too many Cadets get wonderful, positive things out of the National Cadet Competition, and fall too many Squadrons fall apart because they don’t have anyone to compete against, and thus, no reason to be excellent. (return to article)

4: Special thanks to Capt. Robert Sunman (Spaatz #585) for this contribution to the article. (return to article)

5: Regarding the Software Field, I think Peter DeGrace said it best in his book "Wicked Problems, Righteous Solutions: A Catalogue of Modern Software Engineering Paradigms". To quote him:

“Suppose you have a software development project to do. For each traditional phase, you can draw from a pool of experienced people. Rather than have several designers do the design phase and have several coders do the construction phase, etc, you form a team by carefully selecting on person from each pool. During a team meeting, you will tell them that they have each been carefully chosen to do a project that is very important to the company, country, organization, or whatever. This unsettles them somewhat. You then give them a description of the problem to be solved, the figures for how much it cost in time and money to do similar projects, and what the performance figures for those systems are. Then, after you have gotten them used to the idea that they are special, having been specifically chosen to do an important job, you further unsettle the team by saying that their job is to produce the system in, say, half the time and money and it must have twice the performance of other systems. Next, you say that how they do it is their business. Your business is to support them in getting resources. Then, you leave them alone.

You stand by to give them advice if you are asked. You get their reports, which come regularly but not as often nor as voluminously as the waterfall model. But, mostly you wait. In something like the appointed time, out pops the system with the performance and cost figures you want.

Sounds like a fairy tale, doesn’t it?” - DeGrace, 155 (return to article)