Who Was Tangled in the Chain When We Threw it Out the Window

To the professional military man, the chain of command is as inviolable a management concept as it is an absolute necessity in combat. Most leaders feel that no matter what else changes as the military adjusts to the times, the chain of command must be preserved. The feeling is so strong that we have not yet recognized, or at least not yet admitted, that the chain of command as the military once knew it exists no longer. The primary purpose of this article is to point out that the chain has been replaced and to describe the “situation” that has replaced it. In the process, areas requiring a re-evaluation of current practices and thinking will be indicated. A comprehensive analysis of the overall effects of the change is not possible until Air Force leaders recognize that we may be acting according to principles that we have gradually and unconsciously invalidated.

In the very narrowest sense, the chain of command, based on the principle of the unity of command, is the hierarchy of commanders from the highest to the lowest echelon in the military. It has traditionally indicated both levels of responsibility and channels of communication from one level to the next. In a broader sense, the chain of command has involved not just commanders but all personnel in positions of responsibility; as such, it represented a clearly defined channel of communication between any commander and any man in his unit, down to the man at the bottom. Viewed from either end, the chain was the same. The links the man at the bottom went through to raise a problem with his commander were the same links the commander went through to transmit orders and directives. The chain clearly defined where each man’s responsibility lay: that is, the supervisor he was responsible to and the subordinates he was responsible for. Strict adherence to the chain insured that each man was given a fair opportunity to fulfill those responsibilities. It did so by enabling each supervisor and commander to know and influence everything that occurred in his area of responsibility. The chain insured that all communication coming down and going up or out went through the supervisor.

Right now, from the commander’s viewpoint, the chain may appear to be intact. He transmits his orders through a clearly defined channel to the lowest working level in his unit. That channel is clearly defined one way only. In the Air Force, looking from the bottom, an airman is faced with a maze of channels to his commander.

For example, to a wing commander, the chain of command between himself and an airman in his field maintenance squadron is fairly simple. Any orders he gives that affect the airman are transmitted roughly as shown in Chart 1. Maintenance-related directives go through the solid-line channel, nonmaintenance-related through the broken-line channel. Note that even going down the chain, specialization has created more than one channel.

Chart 1. Chain of command from wing commander to airman: maintenance-related directives follow the solid line; nonmaintenance directives follow the broken line.

Chart 1. Chair of command from wing commander to airman: maintenance-related directives follow the solid line; nonmaintenance directives follow the broken line.

Coming from the other end, any problem the airman has can be brought to the attention of the commander through the network shown in Chart 2. This maze exists in varying forms in all the services. It has been developing for many years. Its construction has been driven by a tendency and need for specialization and by the constant search for effective methods to handle personnel problems in the modern military. There was and is a legitimate reason for each channel to exist.

Chart 2. An airman's approach to the wing commander may seem to be a complex of possible alternatives, but each channel has had its own specific raison d`etre

Chart 2. An airman's approach to the wing commander may seem to be a complex of possible alternatives, but each channel has had its own specific raison d'être.

In this age of specialization, the first sergeant was long ago consigned to administrative and housekeeping details while the noncommissioned officer (NCO) in the shop took care of those problems dealing with the primary mission of his unit. For years now, any airman who could correlate his problem with the specialized function established to handle it could go directly to that function (CBPO, the legal office, etc.). In addition, the chaplain and the congressman have been long-standing receivers of the problems of disgruntled airmen, especially when a “satisfactory” answer is not forthcoming from elsewhere in the system. Each base now has an Airmen’s Council that also transmits communication from the man at the bottom to the man at the top. The more recently established Equal Opportunity Councils function similarly. Within the past few years most major air commanders have established the position of Chief Master Sergeant of the command to keep in touch with their enlisted personnel. In the sense that those filling these positions act as ombudsman for the airman, they too have become part of the maze.

On the surface, nothing may appear to be wrong with this situation. Each channel deals with problems in different areas. A few are open to problems in all areas. Whatever overlap exists is considered to be necessary, even desirable. In total, they are all ways to solve personnel problems and enable the commander and his men to keep in touch. The sad fact is that as channels of communication, taken separately or together, they have failed. At least many commanders think so. If this system were effective, commanders would not have seen the need to create additional channels of communication with their men as they have done in the form of hot lines and base newspaper columns. These latest channels indicate the need for a thorough, objective look at the system we have created. However applauded these latest innovations are, and despite the significance of the problems they have been instrumental in solving or preventing, their effectiveness will be short-lived. In the end, they will become another, unesteemed part of the maze. Ultimately, this proliferation of channels and functions could be creating more serious problems than it has solved.

The greatest miscalculation to be made at this point is to think that the half of the chain of command that remains, the order-transmitting half devoted to mission accomplishment, will be unaffected by the transformation in the other half. It will be affected; and the person who may already be feeling that effect is neither the commander nor the airman but the NCO supervisor.

There is a valid reason for a commander to establish hot lines and to keep his ear to all the other channels. His responsibilities require an awareness of his men’s problems, views, morale, gripes, etc., so that he can constructively take care of them before the unit’s effectiveness deteriorates. To a lesser degree, each subordinate supervisor has similar responsibilities toward and for his men; and each requires similar knowledge to accomplish those responsibilities. Yet the maze that replaced the chain of command works against the supervisor’s gaining that knowledge. The more sincere and effective a commander is in stating that he wants to hear every man’s grievance, the less likely it is that the intermediate supervisor will be confided in and given a chance to solve problems he could and should solve. In a few cases, the supervisor may be a part of the problem, and the existence of all the other channels may be justified solely on that possibility. In most cases, however, the supervisor is not involved. He should be.

No matter what level a supervisor occupies, when one of his men takes a problem above him for solution, especially a problem he could have handled had he been aware of it, then confidence in that supervisor may be weakened on three counts:

First, the airman’s confidence in the supervisor’s ability may be weakened by atrophy because he has little need to test it. At a time when direct, working relations should be placed on a “human,” personal basis, the system says to the airman: “Take your orders from your supervisor but take your problems elsewhere, anywhere but to him.” The rapport necessary for an effective working relation between an airman and his boss is given little chance to develop. The system, by encouraging only an orders-giving-and-receiving relationship between the airman and his supervisor, dehumanizes that relationship.

Second, the commander’s confidence in the supervisor may be weakened each time he is presented with a problem that in the past the supervisor should have solved or at least been the first to bring to the commander’s attention. This will assuredly occur if the commander does not realize that the system, and his contribution to it, facilitates bypassing the supervisor.

Third, the supervisor’s confidence in himself may eventually be weakened. The best, rather than the worst, will be most affected. They are more likely to have been able to handle a problem and to have been most sincerely interested in doing so. The weak supervisor, on the other hand, is probably relieved that he did not have to be bothered; or, worse, he couldn’t care less.

This is not as much pure conjecture as it may seem. During a recent tour of Army units in Europe, a retired Army lieutenant general found that NCO’s did, in fact, feel that they were being bypassed in the chain of command. He correctly labeled this an unsatisfactory condition but concluded by swearing fidelity to a chain of command that no longer exists.¹

At the very least, the NCO’s of the Air Force, our first-line supervisors, should be sounded out on their feelings and feel for the new “chain of command.” If there is frustration and lower morale, it should quickly become apparent.

These observations might still not be worth pursuing if it were not that one of the toughest positions of leadership in the Air Force is occupied by the career NCO who supervises first-term airmen. Leadership, in the sense of influencing human behavior to accomplish a mission in the manner desired by the leader, is much easier when the men the leader works through are committed a priori to accomplishing that mission and to the professionalism a military career entails. The supervisor of airmen at the lowest level must carry out his responsibilities through personnel who are not necessarily mission-oriented. The true test of leadership comes when a job must be accomplished with men who are not personally dedicated to the mission of the service. The NCO supervisor must daily exercise this type of leadership.

This is not the place to discourse on the characteristics of an effective leader. However, it is generally agreed that, among other essentials, the effective leader must know his men and be directly concerned with their welfare. Such knowledge, to be applicable, requires complete communication between the leader and his men; such concern, to be credible, must be demonstrated. The maze that has replaced the chain of command obstructs the NCO in exercising his leadership on both counts. It is increasingly harder for the NCO to know his men and have complete communication with them when the system offers the men numerous ways to avoid communicating with him. He can hardly demonstrate concern or assist them when the system encourages them to seek assistance elsewhere.² Calling the current situation a generation gap or a credibility gap between lifers and nonlifers is an oversimplification. Wherever there is a generation gap between an NCO and his airmen, the communications maze we have constructed insures that it will remain and probably widen.

This article is little more than one opinion that the chain of command no longer exists. Whether it is gone completely or simply buried under a maze of communications channels is debatable, as is the tentative conclusion that the first-line leadership of the Air Force is in danger of being weakened as a result. There may be other problems, or there may be no problem at all. The assertions made in presenting this situation should be closely examined. Any debate on their validity will help focus attention on a communications Topsy that should not be ignored.³

Perhaps the greatest weakness in this proliferation of channels is only the unrealistic expectation that an 18-year-old airman with all of three months’ military experience can judge which channel will be most effective in solving his particular problem. In many instances the airman may haphazardly try several or all of them—a shotgun approach. But in that event we have provided the shotgun and carefully aimed it back at the Air Force. The airman has only to load his problem into the chamber and pull the trigger. In other instances the airman may simply riot and see who comes running.

This maze will remain. It is too much a part of the Air Force’s organizational structure. It is the structure. But it requires the Air Force in every way possible—through training and education programs and through the words and actions of every commander—to give the NCO supervisor a chance to do his job. We tell the NCO that he must be a leader. Let’s be sure that he is given the opportunity to function as one by indicating that he is the first man for the airman with a problem to see. Then let’s provide all the support necessary to solve that problem while at the same time keeping the NCO supervisor directly involved. The effect on discipline, morale, retention, unit effectiveness, and aspirin consumption by harried commanders might be surprising.

1. Interview with Lieutenant General Bruce C. Clarke, USA (Ret), in The Pentagram News, 18 November 1971.

2. Interestingly enough, one of the more recent discussions of leadership in the Air University Review (“Leadership—Seen from the Ranks,” March-April 1971, pp. 76-83) emphasized the paramount importance of the development of team spirit. Obviously, here too the maze operates to thwart much of the NCO’s efforts.

3. For example, the observation that the commander’s hot lines and newspaper columns will eventually lose their effectiveness can be considered further. This will occur, and not simply because their novelty has worn off.

A commander has overall responsibility for his unit and its mission. Regardless of the rhetoric that proclaims the smallest problem of the most junior airman in a unit to he also the commander’s problem, the commander cannot afford to become involved in all the details of doing all the jobs and solving all the problems. The hot line provides a way for most if not all to be brought before him. Yet if a commander personally attends to every minor irritant and problem in the unit, he risks personal exhaustion and the deterioration of his unit’s overall effectiveness because of neglect of major problems that are his, and his alone as commander, to solve. As an alternative, he can, as many commanders are probably doing, delegate the task of answering and solving hot-line problems to a subordinate or staff function. At that point, the very aspect of the hot line that made it effective—the promise and influence of the commander’s personal attention—has been removed, and the hot line is well on the way to becoming one more bureaucratic gimmick in the system.

There is another alternative. In some units, the hot line will be used for vital problems infrequently enough for the commander to afford the time and effort to attend to them personally. But this situation will occur only in those units where the much more numerous minor problems of most airmen will have already been solved by the man who should solve them: the airman’s NCO supervisor. Unless we act soon, such units will exist only in the memories of a few old-timers.

Captain Pember W. Rocap (M.A., Texas Technological College) before his recent assignment as Logistics Staff Officer, Hq USAF, was Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff. He has served at Aerospace Studies Institute, Hq Air Training Command, and in three tactical fighter wings in TAC and PACAF. A graduate of Squadron Officer School, he is a coeditor of US Military Strategy in the 70s, a contributor to The Nixon Doctrine and Military Strategy, and the author of a variety of other writings.

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.

Who Was Tangled in the Chain When We Threw it Out the Window?

Who Was Tangled in
the Chain When We
Threw it Out the Window?