Document created: 31 October 03
Air University Review,
January-February 1973
Colonel Victor F. Phillips, Jr.
The poignantly searching question that forms part of the title of this article appears in Ward Just’s book Military Men.1 It might well be asked by junior officers in today’s Air Force and provides the thesis for this article: lieutenants and captains contemplating Air Force career status are influenced by their observations of blue-suit middle management.
In recent years the military establishment has placed great emphasis on enticing the junior officer to join and remain in the ranks of careerists. These efforts, as manifested by increased pay, greater responsibility, career development programs, and interpersonal interaction between superior and subordinate, are to be commended. The payoff, presumably, is in a higher retention rate among “quality” officers completing their initial tours of active duty. This concentration of attention on younger officers leads me to believe that we may be neglecting the equally important middle management segment. Perhaps “neglect” is too strong, but certainly there has been less articulation about the “middlers.” Yet it is this segment of Air Force managers toward which the younger officers direct no small amount of attention in assessing their own future.
As a student of management and organization, I recognize the pitfalls in arbitrarily segmenting management into “lower,” “middle,” and “upper.” For the sake of convenience in this instance, I would classify USAF officers with less than 10 years’ commissioned service as lower management, between 10 and 20 as middle management, and above 20 as top management. Admittedly, this classification fails to account for the particular job a person holds or for exceptions such as the “fast burners” who are colonels and commanders or directors at less than 20 years of service. However arbitrary my divisions, I believe they are reasonable and generally accurate.
I have the uneasy feeling that, generically speaking, we accept Air Force officers in middle management (my definition) as a “given.” That is, they are pretty well committed to a career once they pass the 10-year mark, and we need not be that much concerned about their retention. We are, of course, concerned about something called “career progression” for this group. These officers are past the initiation rites and are now supposedly demonstrating some capacity to rise to top management. There are transfers, school attendance, staff or line assignments, and all the other, perhaps too frequent, “good stuff” that moves this group along toward the top. Yet there is also a certain amount of perceived square-filling and some jobs that must be performed although seemingly unrelated to top managerial development.
Many people feel that providing junior officers with better pay and jobs of greater responsibility represents the best way to induce them to stay on active duty after the initial tour. While partially agreeing, I maintain that an important variable in the decision model has been overlooked or not sufficiently considered: the junior officer, in deciding on his future, looks ahead 10 or so years and asks, “What is that group doing, for that is where I will be fairly soon?” To contemplate the long run (temporally speaking) is to see most colonels and general officers gainfully employed and well paid. But that is a long time away; what lies between now, the alpha, and star rank, the omega, in the junior officers’ perspectives is middle management.
My reasoning about the middle management role in the Air Force as a decision variable for junior officers is partly intuitive and partly empirical. Last year, I was privileged to be a member of a group of officers that conducted an Executive Management Seminar for selected Second Air Force (SAC) commanders and key staff at a West Coast base. Concurrently, we were able to interact at some length with the base Junior Officer Council. The Council appeared to be a representative cross-sectional mix of rank, age, jobs, and career/noncareer intentions. Most of the Council members seemed satisfied with their present jobs and pay. One point that appeared to cause dissatisfaction was their “look down the road” toward the middle management area. Several examples were cited to illustrate their feelings that majors and lieutenant colonels were being under or improperly utilized. The Council members generally felt that they and their contemporaries occupied or were undergoing training to occupy positions of responsibility and challenge, had minimum complaints about present pay, but were concerned that if they committed themselves to a USAF career the job challenges tended to diminish or stagnate as they entered middle management. At least from their present perspectives, this view seemed to be the way things are. I have since talked with other junior officers and find general agreement with these feelings.
What are some implications of the junior officers’ attitudes about middle management? First, it appears obvious that the USAF has made quantum strides to satisfy junior officers during their initial tours of duty. The gains are there, but more will need to be done on a continuing basis. Second, perhaps we have paid less attention than we should to the longer time perspective. We have become preoccupied with the here and now time frame of the first-termers and have concentrated on upgrading their work and pay. In stressing these items to this group, we may have neglected their intermediate future. Implicitly, we may be saying, “Aren’t you happy and fulfilled now? And look what the future holds for you at the colonel/general level!” The junior officer may respond, “Yes, things are going reasonably well now, and I am aware of the fine opportunities that await me if and when I get to top management in the Air Force. What concerns me is what lies between now and then. Will the path be exciting or stultifying?”
Again from Ward Just’s Military Men, “How do you get an innovative, aggressive man through the middle management of the Army, where life can be very, very dull?”2 I believe that in the Air Force we need some re-evaluation and explanation. The re-evaluation should be directed at sustained assessment of our middle managers and their jobs, and the explanation should address what the middle manager is doing and why it is necessary for him to do it.
The middle management segment of the Air Force is large in sheer numbers in addition to being geographically and job disparate. It is difficult in a number of variables to compare the USAF on a one-to-one basis with civilian industrial firms, which are often held up to us as paragons of organizational virtue. The apparent conclusion that large civilian organizations are better able to track their managers through the middle years of management by providing them with a continuing series of meaningful jobs is not altogether germane—or accurate. Even in some large private sector firms, middle management numbers only a few hundred or less, as opposed to the literally thousands in the Air Force. Do we, then, just give up and rationalize that Air Force middle management is too large to handle? I think not. The “morale” construct is difficult to understand, quantifiably measure, and work with, but I am not aware of any manager worth his salt who neglects it. So, too, Air Force middle management, while large, diverse, and not easy to handle, needs continuing attention.
In evaluating middle management, we certainly do not want to glamorize it
just to present a bright, but false, picture to junior officers. We do need to take
a closer look at a couple of concepts. First, are we providing real management
jobs and opportunities for our middle managers? Are they spending 90 percent of
their time in routine duties that contribute less than 10 percent to the
mission? Are they forced by fiat or neglectful supervision to expend 90 percent
of their energy on items constituting 1 percent of their budget? Are we forcing
them to be so involved with “Mickey Mouse” work that they become discouraged
and obsessed with the hygiene (job environment) factors, while the motivational
(job itself) factors, such as recognition, sense of achievement, etc., go
wanting?3
Second, the idea of forced, multivaried assignments needs re-evaluation. I am not sure that periodic transfers and school attendance are always cost-effective or experientially worthwhile, at least to the degree required of our middle managers, who perceive that getting their “tickets punched” at the “right” times and places is mandatory for success. We may have established a self-fulfilling prophecy: Those whom we promote are those who have had their tickets punched; therefore, the proper route to the top is to get your ticket punched. I am not sure that the acquisition of needed experience, sagacity, and eclectic leadership is always enhanced by the generally applicable policy of periodic changing of jobs, attendance at schools, etc.
Third, we should attempt to implement better performance evaluation and human asset accounting procedures.4 Fourth, the people at DCS/P, Military Personnel Center, and the Human Resources Laboratory should be encouraged to take a closer look at middle management, but obviously not to the exclusion of lower and top management.
Finally, the emphasis in career management should be on a sequential,
sustained basis: “Organizational development is concerned not solely with the
individual, nor solely with the organization, but with the symbiotic and
synergistic relationship between them.”5
The “explanation” that I mentioned previously is really nothing but a rationale. It forces us to ask “Why,” to assess, to re-evaluate, and then to articulate what we are doing. I have the feeling that some of the skeptical looks being cast at USAF middle management by junior officers are due in part to a lack of well-founded explanations of the functions and purposes of 10- to 20-year officers. We need to address the issue of what positive things are being done for middle management to encourage junior officers to aspire to that step on the ladder to the top.
The question which forms the subtitle of this article is not rhetorical. We cannot assure every young officer that he will be Chief of Staff and that each step along the way will be one of glamor and maximization of self-actualization. But we can provide him with better perspectives to help him analyze his Air Force future, especially in the transitional years of middle management. Junior officers will always have opinions on the attractiveness of being a staff lieutenant colonel at forty, but words like “desiccated” should not be a preconceived factor in their judgment.
Air War College
Notes
1. Ward Just, Military Men (New York: Avon Books, 1972), p. 153.
2. Ibid., p. 230.
3. Frederick Herzberg, Work and the Nature at Man (New York: World Publishing Co., 1966), Chapters 6-8.
4. George Berkwitt, “The Big New Move to Measure Managers,” Dun’s, September 1971, pp. 60-64. Also, see such books as Appraising Managers as Managers by Harold Koontz and Evaluating and Improving Managerial Performance by Virgil Rowland. The interdependent subjects of human asset accounting and measurement of managerial performance need a great deal of attention and study. Further consideration of them is beyond the purview of this article.
5. Daniel Kegan, “Organizational Development: Description, Issues and Some Research Results,” Academy of Management Journal, December 1971, p. 454.
Colonel Victor F. Phillips, Jr., (D. B. A., Indiana University) is Chief, Human Resource Management Studies, Air War College. After a tour as navigator-bombardier in Korea, he has served in Air Rescue Service; as instructor, AFROTC, University of Connecticut; Hq AFROTC, Maxwell AFB; aide-de-camp to Commander, Air University; and five years as Associate Professor of Economics and Management, USAF Academy.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,
academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official
position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air
Force or the Air University.
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