 So, I am Lenny Wong. I am a researcher at the Army War College, and what that means is they have a little group of about ten of us, and Don Snyder is one of them, that are, they don't trust us to get near the students. And so they put us off in a little institute and they tell us the right stuff and think things. And so that's my job. And so I knocked out the study a little over a year ago, but really the study started almost a decade before. And that study started back when the chief of staff of the Army came to the Army War College and he said, I'm going to give you a tasker. I need to improve innovation, everything we're talking about just a second ago, creativity. I need to develop initiative in our junior officers. And he says, I don't think our culture is supporting that. And I think a critical developmental experience where they're not developing that is company command, five to seven years into the Army when they're commanding their first large formation, 150 people, we're not allowing them to do anything. We're telling them too much to do. And he said, the way we're going to solve that is that we're going to divide what we tell them to do into two categories, mission essential and non-mission essential. So mission essential is things like the range. It's things like maintenance. Non-mission essential is things like, what? What? You have the questions and feedback occur now. Don't wait till the end. Because by the time it gets to the end, my mind is empty. I won't answer a single question. So when I ask a question, you have to answer it. Because really, I'm not going to ask. I won't ask questions at the end. Or you won't ask questions at the end. So what's non-mission essential? See, 10 years ago, if I were to ask that question, what do you think people would have said? No. In an Army audience, if I would have said, what's non-mission essential training, they would have said sexual harassment. No one says that anymore. Okay. But what else is like non-mission essential training? That is mandatory. IT. Okay. What else? Motorcycle safety. We had a new one just put on us called Constitution Day. Does anyone know what I'm talking about on that one? You don't know what I'm talking about. A mandatory training class on Constitution Day. I said, what in the world is that? We have a new one called Fido Alcohol Syndrome. Okay. Human trafficking, dangers of the USB drive. Anyone in the Army know what I'm talking about? Really? Okay. It's all that stuff. And so the chief said, I want you to take all that non-mission essential stuff, cut it in half, and give all that back to the company commanders on their training calendar. Allow them to develop, plan, resource, and execute and evaluate their own training. So we don't have to tell them what to do. So we did that. They gave me 10 more college students. Instead of writing their strategic research paper, their thesis, they took on being part of the task force. I sent them around the world to collect up every single requirement put on company commanders. They got over a big time because they didn't have to write a paper. And like I said, three of them to Korea, I said, get me every single requirement from division down to brigade level or down to battalion level. They spent a day doing that, a day golfing, a day shopping. But they got it done. Okay. And so we took all those requirements together and we said, okay, base it out of a 10 hour day in the Army. They worked 10 hour days. And so that was supposed to be a joke. But anyway. So we said 10 hour days and this is what we reported back to the chief. We said, chief, company commanders somehow have to fit 297 days of mandatory requirements into 256 available training days. Now in the RC, the reserve component, how many training days do they have? 39. And one of them is the picnic in the PT test. Okay. So they have to cram all those days into that. Okay. And so it's chief, we can't do it. And even if we cut the 36 days of non-mission essential training in half and we give them back 18, it still doesn't do anything because you can blame it all you want. Like we used to blame it on the non-mission essential stuff, all the little piddly stuff. It's not that. It's that we have this culture in our profession where we love to think of things for someone else to do. We tell them how to do it and then when they try to do it, we disrupt it with new taskings. That's our culture, chief. And so I put that out in a study over a decade ago called Stifling Innovation that we have to let up on all these requirements. So that was over a decade ago. But always in the back of my mind after I did that study was, oh, wait a minute. If it's physically impossible to do all the mandatory things that we're told to do, what do we report? Well, you know what we report because there's only one thing you're allowed to report and that is we are green. We're green. We're good to go. Okay. So then how could that be? So I said, you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to go check into that. And a colleague of mine, Steve Garris, and I decided to work on this. And I said the way I'll figure this out is I'll approach very officer-centric on this study. And so I said I'll talk to officers throughout the Army. So I started at Fort Benning, Georgia, where we have our infantry and armor captains, or O3s. And I said I'll collect them in focus groups. I went to Fort Lee, Virginia, where we have our logistics captains, talk to them in focus groups. I went to the Fort Leavenworth, where we have our majors like here, and talk to them in focus groups. I went to the Army War College, where we had former O5 commanders talk to them, former O6 commanders talk to them. And I went to the Department of the Army, where I talked to staff officers and some civilians. And I would start talking about what do you think of all the requirements we put on people? That's always a great discussion question for Army people, because you know, you just get, oh, can you believe this one? And then we got this one going on. And this is ridiculous. It's impossible to do everything. And it's really fun complaining together with Army people. And then so we really get the energy going in the discussion. And then also I'd say, so if it's impossible, like we all agree to do it all, what did you guys report? And the discussion would just drop. It would just drop absolute silence in the room. Because what I was doing was calling them liars. And you don't do that to an Army officer. Because Army officers have this identity that they see themselves as bearers of integrity, as someone who knows what honesty is. And how does that self identity come? Well, first of all, society tells us that we are above everyone else. If you look at the Harris poll, where they ask which leaders of which institutions do you trust in the United States, military leaders always rank at the top. 55% of Americans say they trust the leaders of the military institution. I used to think 55% isn't the greatest percentage, but it's the highest. But when you contrast it to Wall Street and Congress at six and 7%, we're pretty good up there. Okay, now I also say we, I'm a retired geezer, I'm really not part of the profession. But I've learned that when I talk about this topic, it sounds a lot better if I say we instead of you are a bunch of liars, I can say we are a bunch of liars too. So so I say we. Okay, so first of all, we tell ourselves society says we're above reproach, but we also tell ourselves that if you look at 93% of army officers, when they're surveyed, say that their personal values line up with the army values, the army values of loyalty, duty, respect, integrity, and all that stuff. And so so not only does society tell us what you guys, you guys are honest people, you're you're above all this, we tell ourselves that. And so when some guy from Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania walks in and says not so you guys are lying. That doesn't sit well. That doesn't sit well at all. And so I keep pushing it. And I'd get responses from things like, well, first, they'd start saying things like this, nobody was ever asked to report something as true that was not, or I've never given a false report never intentionally have I said yes, we're 100% on this when I knew we weren't. So they just pushed it right back at me saying, you know, I don't lie. But then I'd push it even more. And then I'd get comments like, well, we got creative. You got to make priorities, we met the intent. And then finally, they started using words like hand waving, massaging, checking the box or fudging. And after about 20 minutes of me hammering, someone would put their head in their hands and say, okay, fine, we lied. And then after that, we started having a different conversation. But it wasn't up until that point that that we could actually have the conversation. And so we focused on mandatory training. And we started talking about, so how do you deal with all this mandatory training? Well, a big example for a lot of officers was right before deployment, they would put everyone on block leave. And then after the block leave, they come back to have about a month before they deploy. Who's in the army? Raise your hand. Oh, man, a lot of people. Okay, if you don't know what I'm talking about, ask one of these interpreters to tell you what I'm talking about. Okay, so so right during that month period, right before deployment, they would cram in all the mandatory requirements that they have to be done as fast as that as fast as they could. And so one way of dealing with that is from an officer told me this is the way they took care of it, they would pick the smartest dude, and he would go and take it nine times for the other members of his squad. And then that way they had a certificate to prove they had completed it. So they just collect up the cacks and start cranking out the online training and do that. And so so that's just an example. Another example is before this study got published, I sent it off to an o five that I knew a friend and I said, you know, just look this over. And so he's sitting at his desk reading it. And as he's sitting at his desk, he sends this back to me in an email. He writes back to me and says, as he's sitting at his desk, his NCO I see slides a roster underneath him with a pen and just sign this sign this and slides it back. And because in the other room, what was going on? Mandatory training. And he was reading a report about lying. And he just signed it. Okay, and so he stopped his NCO and said, you're not going to believe what I'm reading, we need to have a talk. And so he thought it was really interesting that that occurred. And so so mandatory training happens like that. It happens on rosters that that are filled out by somebody else. It happens on on briefing that everyone got the suicide prevention training when you know there was someone in the hospital, you know there was someone in jail, you know there was someone on leave. But still reported 100%. The problem with talking about mandatory training, though, is that we have a tendency to focus just on mandatory training or just on this non mission essential stuff because it's easy to talk about that. The question is, does it happen in other places? Well, doesn't even happen down range. Does it happen in a war situation? Maybe this is all just the bureaucratic things of taking care of business. And so I talk about what happens down range. And so for example, a lot of officers talked about when they turned in. What is that a storyboard? That's not a real storyboard because real storyboards are secret. And so this is a fake one. Okay, storyboards. After every event that happens on a combat outpost or someplace else every on a patrol, they have to say what happened, describe it pictures PowerPoint, and to give a narrative backup so they could use it for future operations or for a picture of situational awareness. People said, you know what? Storyboards are a pain in the neck. We don't know where they go. They just disappear into the ether. We don't know. And so what they would do is they'd either fabricate them. They'd cut and paste old ones in. But they wouldn't tell the truth on storyboards. Or battalion commander says, you know, right before the elections, they told us to check security at 150 polling sites in Iraq, which is a good idea. But I can't cover 150 polling sites. But they said you have to cover 150 polling sites. Give us the Excel Excel spreadsheet on what happened. We gave them what they wanted. Okay, clearly saying. Or it could be that SERP money. You know what SERP money is? Okay. That was supposed to be going into service projects in the local village. Well, we needed hot showers. And so we use the SERP money. And so, yeah, we had to fudge a little. Okay, and so it's not just mandatory training, all the non-mission essential stuff that we talk about that we like to poke fun at. But you know what? It really goes beyond that. And it sort of surrounds us. But it's not just training requirements either. Sometimes it's the administrative things. For example, people in the army might know what this is. But does anyone in the army, not in the army know what that is? Do you guys have, this is something called trips. Okay. And what trips is, we'll see back in the old days when I used to go on leave, I turned in what form people in the army? A department of the army form 31, a leave request. And that's all I turned in. Now you have to turn in your department of the army 31 and you have to turn in your trips report. So you go on the computer and it's a travel risk planning system. Okay, and you go in there and you say, I'm going to drive to Indianapolis. It's going to take me eight hours. I'll do it by by driving straight with the radio on the window down and three monsters beside me. Okay. And that's the way I'm going to get there. And trips will say no, rejected too much risk. So then I go back and say, okay, I'll stop every two hours. I'll spend the night here and I'll drive with my mother-in-law. And then it'll say ships will say green, you're good to go. You submit that in with your form. And as an army, what we've learned is you tell trips what it wants to hear if you want to go on leave. Okay. And in addition to the trips that you have to turn in, you have to turn in vehicle inspection, a leave form, your LES, your tickets if you're going to fly someplace and some units you have to turn in a soldier covenant saying I am a good citizen. Oh yeah, med pros. Okay. Mandatory training, all that stuff. Now, all you want to do is go on leave and now I turn in all this stuff. Okay. And what you find out is there's a lot of line going on with this. Okay. So it's not just training. It's not just training. Is anyone, are we tracking? Okay. If I'm speaking a total foreign language, just if I'm speaking too fast, it's slowing me down too. Okay. So we go from mandatory training, not just the dopey stuff, but important things. We go to administrative things. But we also go to things that in the army we don't even think about. That is an officer evaluation report or a fitness report. Now, there's a lot of fiction written in fitness reports. You've got to admit, but I don't want to talk about that. What I want to talk about is how in the army we turn them in. And the army, the way we have to turn them in is that before a rating period starts, we have to sit down with a rated person and say, let's go over your objectives. That's called the initial counseling. And then what's supposed to happen after the initial counseling? Quarterly counseling. Now, a lot of people are very proud that they do the initial counseling. I can guarantee you that very, very, very few people do the quarterly counseling. But after every time one of these is due, you have to accompany your rating with this little support form that says when the counseling was done and you'll take the support form, you go to the clerk or else you go to the sergeant major and you'll say, here is the support form supporting that evaluation. And they'll look down and say, I see you did the initial counseling. Where is the quarterly counseling? And you'll say, well, I didn't do it. We're too busy. He was deployed. I wasn't or something like that. And the clerk or the sergeant major will say, I want dates in there. And you'll say, I didn't do it. And the sergeant major, the clerk will say, I want dates. So they won't accept it. Right. So they'll walk over here in the other room and they'll sit there and they will agonize. They will agonize and spend time thinking about what dates to put in. Because what don't you want to do? You don't want to put a weekend down. Because then they will know that it was a lie. Is this true? Yeah, you know it. So they'll sit over there and get, oh, what date? You can't say that. It's a Monday. A lot of people don't pick a Tuesday. Right? Some say it's got to be Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Because Fridays, all right, go ahead. Okay. Then you get out the calendars. Okay. And so everyone's putting down all these across the Army. Tens of thousands of these are filled out and people are making up fake dates and everyone knows it. But what goes right beside that fake date? Your initials. And how much thought goes into your initials? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing. But the initials, okay, but the initials, your signature, right, it's totally gone. It's totally gone. That's the culture we have. That's, when I started this study, I said, we have to have these little research meetings and we sit around and say, I think I'm going to do a study on this. And I brought this up and one of the O6s in our little institute says, I don't know what you're talking about. I said, I think we're forced to lie. He says, I've never lied my entire 28 years. And I said, well, what do you call that support form? I just, he says, that wasn't lying. That was protecting my boss. See, it's not a lie. And so that's what we have to ask ourselves. How can we convince ourselves? Not just the fact that we do that. Okay, let's put that aside. But how do we convince ourselves that even if we do that, it's still not lying? Because remember, I spent 20 minutes trying to convince people that, you know, I think you lie. No, I don't. No, I don't. How do we convince ourselves that that's not lying? Signing a roster. Putting our initials down. Well, what happens is something called ethical fading. Ethical fading is when we take that black and white of right and wrong, the ethical spotlight of this is an ethical dilemma. The fact that you got the entire profession waiting for you to say yes or no, are you going to lie? No, we don't make it that. What we do is we fade it out. We remove that spotlight. This is not an ethical dilemma. This is not a moral decision. This is business. This is trying to get the form turned in. This is trying to placate FRC. This is trying to protect my boss. It's not a moral decision anymore. So that's what we do because that allows our brains, that allows our minds to sit easy with that professional identity I was talking about and the fact that we're now putting down our initials or putting down our digital signature or putting it out of a fake roster. I just gave a talk last week at our adjunct general school at Charlottesville and we have these E9s that were in the audience and the one guy said, because I was asking for examples, and he said my first sergeant in my last unit got us all in, we had an inspection coming and we had to do all the mandatory training, get all the records ready, and so he had all the rosters laid out on the table and he said he had different colored pens and we knocked out a year's worth of training in about 15 minutes and they filled every single roster for every single piece of training in 15 minutes for the whole year, but we don't think it's lying. See that's the thing. We don't think it's lying. How does it get, how does an institution convince us, how do we convince ourselves that we're not lying? How do we ethically fade? Well one way you ethically fade is you don't use the word lie. You use the word prioritize or use the word checking the box or giving them what they want or one of the best thing is one of the best euphemisms that I heard is when I said don't you think that's lying? That's not lying. That's good leadership. Okay, so you change the words. It's not lying anymore. It's good leadership. Another thing, another way to ethically fade a moral decision on the institution's behalf is go ahead and numb us. Numb us to death, okay, by constantly asking us to comply, by constantly asking us to verify, and so for people in the army this is 1800 words and at the end of it it says I have read and understand the above requirements concerning use of army access systems. This is the information assurance thing that I think everyone in DOD has to sign. Okay, every year I would be perfectly happy if it just said I agree. Okay, but this doesn't say that. This says I have read and understand. Now have you signed that? Did you really read it? No, you didn't. Okay, unless you like to stick pencils in your head or something like that. Okay, in England they offering public Wi-Fi and they were doing a little experiment to see how to offer public Wi-Fi because it's really popular in Europe and they opened it up public Wi-Fi access except they had a splash page and you had to go to the splash page and then you had to agree to the conditions and the first condition on the public Wi-Fi was I agree to give my first born to use public Wi-Fi. How many people do you think agree to that? Every single person they had to shut the experiment down because they said we're getting out of control here. Okay, why? Because we're numb. We will willy-nilly throw our signatures down, throw our word down, throw our initials down because we've been numb to it because the institution sees that it could use it easily. Go ahead and digitally sign this. Hand me your cac. Okay, so use euphemisms. Numb it. Okay, another way to allow us to lie without calling it a lie is to increase the distance to the dishonesty. I know that if I walked up to any of you and I asked you a question you would tell me the truth looking eye to eye but if I hand you a cac. I know that oh this is almost easy. Okay, so for people in the army if you want a clear post your PCS-ing and you're leaving and the little old lady in white tennis shoes says so have you been briefed on the sponsorship program? Get out the cac, digitally sign. Of course I have. That's what they do. Okay, all you do is digitally sign that form and she gives you a pass you're allowed to leave post. You want to tell the truth? Who knows how long the sponsorship program briefing is. I've never seen anyone get briefed on the sponsorship program. All she wants to know is have you been briefed on the sponsorship program? Okay, the cac allows us some distance. We don't have to look at her in the eyes and say yes. Okay, and so also briefings and so when the briefing says suicide prevention training all it's easier for us to point to green on a slide than to look someone in the eyes and say yeah a hundred percent of my people. A hundred percent of my people got that training when everyone knows there's no way you got a hundred percent of your people in that training. Okay, but the green on a briefing slide allows us that distance to say well I'm briefing the green I'm not really briefing facts that might relate back to me. So use euphemisms, numb us, increase the distance to dishonesty, but sometimes there are decisions that we know deep down inside. There's no way around it. We're sort of telling a lie and so instead of ethical fading what we have to shift to is rationalization. We have to come up with a reason why the lie is justified and in the army the biggest reason why lies are justified is because a lot of things in the army are dumb and if it's stupid it deserves to be lied to. On this case we almost think there's justice. We are we are the champions of justice because the army comes up with so many stupid things that this one we're going to balance the weights the scales of justice and lie on this one. Okay and so for example one captain told me well you can ask anybody in this room the purpose of declaring a troops in contact a casual evacuation we definitely know why we do that stuff and why we're reporting and people jump they're timely they're accurate then he adds but some of this stuff is you need this for why? Show me in the reports guide that we use that this is actually a required report because right now it seems like you're just wasting a unit leader's time. If it's a dumb requirement it deserves to be lied to. I have some people say you know what when a green tabber that's if someone in a leadership position a commander asks me a question they'll get the truth. If the staff ask me 70% we'll try someplace around there. If it's a dumb requirement okay and we the problem is we get a lot of dumb requirements anyone sitting behind a terminal can send an email with a request for information just constantly sucking information that deserves to be lied to according to the culture we've created okay but if the requirement isn't just dumb we have to think of another reason why we might make that decision and another reason why we might make a decision to lie is we tell ourselves it wasn't for personal gain it wasn't for us it was for the mission was for the troops and so this quote comes from a marine that was in a one of those forums that I was a focus groups that I was telling you about and he pointed out here's an example of that an IED had gone off they're having a relief in place two lieutenants injured by the IED and he says I falsified the TBI report that changed the distance from the IED strike to where one person was standing so that way someone didn't come back down and stick a finger in my CEO's chest and say you need to evac that lieutenant right now if I do that I'm going to put my boys in bags because they don't have any leadership that ain't happening I owe the parents of this country more than that so he knows he told a lie but he says it wasn't for me it was for the boys in the platoon because I didn't want them to evac both lieutenants and so that's why I told the lie okay so we ethically fade or else we rationalize that's the way we deal with it but then the big question becomes so what so what who cares if this is the way the army is maybe it's always been this way I mean you hear stories about Vietnam and all the ethical problems back then maybe when you walk into the supply room and you notice all this stuff in there and you turn to the supply sergeant and you say where did all this stuff come from the answer should be what what's the typical answer when you walk in there and say where where'd all the stuff come from don't ask don't ask maybe that's that's the way it should be okay but we have to ask ourselves some questions has anything changed over time has the army changed at all well the number of requirements in the army has does it ever go down no we all we do is keep adding requirements on it's a cumulative effect okay we it's really hard we're like compulsive hoarders we just like to keep pulling them in and putting them in and someone says well what was this and we can't remember anymore but we're not getting rid of it we just keep it there we just keep adding more and more on okay the other thing is this technology has changed with the cac it's easy to reach down and say I want a hundred percent compliance in this and with the cac I can do it I asked my I got a son who's a 03 in the army and I said you know so how's he says what they do is they collect up cacs give me your cacs okay good and they just crank and then do that because I was I was going to talk about DTS and he says I've never done DTS I said well how did you go on TDY how do you or TAD whatever you call it how do you do it and he says I just hand my cac over to somebody I go oh I didn't know that's that's a new one okay but the cac allows us to get that distance and the introduction of technology allows us to send request for information to validate it to certify it so things in the army have changed but there's five reasons I want to cover why the status quo we can't let it happen why the status quo we can't let it happen the first reason is is if we leave things the way they are every individual gets to make their own decision what's right and wrong so for example when I say well I heard a lot of reports about people just making up storyboards some people sit there and say you got to be kidding me you lie on a storyboard that's intelligence I mean people's lives are at stake on a storyboard and you had people saying they lied on them where I have other people saying yeah we just made up storyboards because you know you want me spend you know 20 minutes working on a storyboard and getting ready for the next patrol every individual gets inside what's the limit where can I draw the line and so when I talk about negligent discharges some people say that's when you come back from the operation you put your rifle in the barrel and you pull the trigger and it goes off and you say whoops okay some people say well as long as it's an honest mistake the guy's not a dirt bag you don't need a giant investigation other people say that's a breach of discipline that that's a reflection of bad leadership and it needs to be taken care of okay every individual gets to make their own decision on what's right and wrong if we leave things the way they are the other reason is if we leave things the way they are everything becomes suspect what can you trust so when our chief goes gets called before congress and they say how many sexual assault response coordinators do you have in the army because you got a problem of sexual assault and he gives them a number and then he comes back and he talks to his staff and his staff says well chief you know that number really wasn't the right number because they asked for it but we only had 24 hours to get the number and so we sent the request out and people gave us all these numbers back but we just discovered the numbers really aren't the greatest well what can you trust what can you trust you see I asked everyone in the force about all this information they send upwards and I asked them how truthful it was and they said well it's really not that truthful but I also went to the department of the army and I asked them so you know here in the Pentagon all this information comes up here what do you guys think of that information do you believe it and they said no we don't believe it I said why don't you believe it and their response was what's that we've been there we used to be down there we know how impossible it is we would never let a senior decision maker make a policy based off of that stuff we know it's a good try we know they're well intended but we know it's not true so you have to sit back and say okay let's see we're all making up stuff and giving it up there they we know it's a lie they get it all they know it's a lie and yet the system keeps going we keep going on with the system and everyone just pretends so we have this mutually agreed deception going on and we all play in this facade of everything's truthful everything's green everything's fine everything's 100% wow what kind of profession is that where everything becomes suspect so everyone gets to decide on their own what's right and wrong everything becomes suspect another problem is is that it hides careerism as we downsize the army nobody wants to be left alone on the island and so we'll have a command and staff meeting and they'll say okay let's brief human trafficking A company 100% B company 100% C company is not going to tell the truth and say 78% okay and so what if we leave things the way they are nobody wants to be the one person left out and so it hides careerism because you can't tell the difference between someone lying because they're covering for their troops or it's a dumb requirement or they want to look good we can't tell the difference and so everyone who's just lying to look good they're clumped in there also but a deeper underlying problem of leaving things the way they are is that when we talk about the profession when we have classes in ethics and then when we have a culture like this all we're doing is teaching hypocrisy we learn very early in the career on how to talk the talk that people want to hear and how to act a different way and I used to think this started right after you came into the army until someone corrected me and they said no actually it started before I came in the army you see they went to a recruiter they went to the mep station and they're filling out the paperwork and one of the questions on there says have you ever smoked dope and they write yeah okay fine experiment once they hand it to the meps person and the meps person says turns it around and says you might want to think differently and so the person goes okay he wants me to say I never did that's good you're good and they take it from there he said that from that point on he learned that the army wants us to be hypocrites for me it was back when as a brand new second lieutenant they gather us all in big auditorium they have the doctors up front and have the first army physical and so they say okay block one on the form fill out write your last name so you know you all long block two first name so we do that so security number and then down block 12 is describe your physical condition block 12 right I am an excellent physical condition we all write I am an excellent physical condition for an entire career I wrote in block 12 I am an excellent physical condition because I thought that's what you're supposed to write because they don't I never gave it any thought what it means I just until which physical do you think I said my retirement physical I said I am not in perfect physical condition anymore okay but for an entire career I was content on just writing I am perfect physical condition okay we may teach us to be hypocrites from the very beginning and we teach our subordinates to be hypocrites really we do we say just no that's not you can't say that you have to say this well this is if you really want the truth no I want you to say this okay so we teach ourselves and for a profession to be hypocrites it's pretty bad okay it's pretty bad but there's another problem with leaving things the way they are the status quo is unacceptable because we are a profession and a profession like Don pointed out we're experts in something what else we earned society's trust okay but also when there's a problem in a profession what happens you please yourselves if we leave things the way they are someone else will fix it now am I being alarmist do you think someone would really jump in and say well because of this report we'll solve your problems do you think someone would ever send me an email that says something like this hi Lenny I recently read an article about the burdens of mandatory training requirements faced by the military as a current legislative staffer I figured I could actually help provide a solution to the problem at least for statutory mandatory training are you ever in Washington if not could we schedule a time to talk on the phone also do you have a list of all the units manual mandatory training requirements would love to see the entire list and possibly determine some courses of actions to eliminate some thanks a lot your friend legislative staffer would someone really send me that yes they did okay when I got that one I said holy smokes it's the worst fear for a profession because if we don't police ourselves somebody else will somebody else will and then we start walking down the path of okay forget this profession stuff if we can't tell ourselves the truth somebody else will take care of it so this study came out a little over a year ago we posted it online it wasn't ever distributed hard copy but I'm not stupid and so before it got posted online sent it to the chief of staff of the army's office extended to the office of the public affairs officer of the army and then the office of the chief of legislative liaison and what do you think they said when I sent them a copy of this what's that they got nothing back we got nothing back because who has time to read this it's only 34 pages but who has time to read it and so they got it okay it's okay and so we unveiled it on a Tuesday and then on well actually before I jump to that we have three recommendations that came out of this study three recommendations the first one is acknowledge the problem first we have to admit that we live in a system that causes us to lie we have to admit that we lie that took about 20 minutes in focus groups to do but there's one population that finds that's very very hard to acknowledge this problem what population do you think that is senior leaders now why is it would be hard for a senior leader to admit that this happens because they not only drank the Kool-Aid they made the Kool-Aid I mean really okay and so talk about a kick in the gut to say you were successful in this system and you lived in this system okay so senior leaders have a hard time listening to this why else do senior leaders have a hard time with this ooh yeah they can't fix it by themselves okay they can't fix it by themselves another reason is is when a senior leader wants to go on leave what do they do they turn their head 15 degrees to their aid and say put me on leave okay what about trips no that doesn't happen okay so so they are not caught up in the the mire that we are caught up in okay what's that hypocrisy well I wouldn't call it hypocrisy it's just the way the army is it's just structured differently I had a major in one audience he stopped me and said when you talk about bath salt training or human trafficking training what are you talking about and I said holy smokes this person's led a privileged life because that's been mandatory training for a long time and every time they had mandatory training what happened someone else signed for him someone else signed I said holy smokes what a perfect example of I mean he doesn't know what I'm talking about at least I can pretend I was there okay and so so acknowledge the problem it's really hard for a senior leader to stand here and talk about it because they have to say I cause you to lie or I lied myself that's really hard for a senior leader it's easier for peers it's easier for some civilian but it's really hard for a senior leader to say let's get a handle on this so we have to acknowledge the problem because the next thing we have to do is exercise restraint this is the army training and leader developments we call 350-1 it's a list of every single requirement it just gets bigger and bigger it's really hard to stop people we have to somehow exercise restraint what might that look like well it might look like a constituent saying you know we got a problem across our society with electronic cigarettes I think you need some kind of mandatory training in the military well maybe someone should say to them you're right we'll try to insert that in every four years or you know we'll have to look for something to take out but right now we can't cover the dangers of vaping because we have Constitution Day in there right now so we need to somehow exercise restraint at all levels it's not just at the department level if you look at every single level someone always wants to create requirements now why do they want to create requirements is because they're evil no they're well-meaning there's no see we'd like to look for our bad people doing this everyone is well-intentioned they say you know we have a problem with this and the way we could address that is mandatory training or this form or this and so it's well-intentioned but a cumulative effect someone needs exercise restraint and finally we need to lead truthfully what does that mean it means someone's got to tell the truth someone has to start telling the truth so we start telling the truth to congress we start telling the truth upward start telling the truth downward someone has to start telling the truth at the army war college just like here we have faculty that like to go to academic conferences academic conferences the gsa sort of ruined it for us by going to las vegas and having big parties and so for us to go to academic conference we had to turn in a permission slip to the j7 and so our provost who's our second in command at the war college would have to send an email to the j7 saying these two faculty members need to go to this academic conference but he'd have to say it's mission critical and he said but we just had a study come out that says we have to stop lying and he says I want to tell you these people need to go to this conference because it's professionally rewarding but it is not mission critical the army war college will continue on to survive if these people don't get to go but they need to go so i'm not going to lie to you and say it's mission critical can they go to the academic conference j7 writes back i'm a retired marine we didn't have this problem in marines that was the first quote statement and then the second one was is it mission critical which the provost responded yeah it's mission critical okay they he tried to lead truthfully it won't always work it won't always work we're caught in this culture okay but someone has to push it or we could just let things roll on we could just learn to be hypocrites okay so now i'll go on to what was the reaction it was posted on a tuesday on wednesday washington post picks it up lying in the military's common army war college study says cnn picks it up us army officers lie routinely okay army times army officers report to and defend their lying they actually had a pretty good article that described the study pretty well what's interesting about the army times is their picture and uh so um so but i also started getting lots of cards and letters in now i'm at the age now where my peers a lot of my peers are just senior people in the pentagon and uh and so they're sending me emails okay and uh you start to gauge the reaction by the emails that come in and so here's an email that came in from a a friend who says uh headquarters department of the army and the the subject line is war college study published research has concluded that lying in the army is common and he writes back to me he says Lenny really and then he says oh man just how twisted is the media take on your research okay now what does that if i that's all that was in the email but that email is actually pretty revealing what does it say about the senior leader take on the study he didn't read it he didn't read it what did he read he read the headlines okay and so the first reaction I got from senior leaders was the headlines of someone trying to make a name for themselves by poking the army and just saying the army's full of liars that's that was his reaction okay that reaction continues on for anyone who hasn't read the study and just thinks well he's some guy just trying to make a name for himself by calling everyone in the army liars there anyone can do that it's another one of these disgruntled people wishes we make another rank but uh okay and so I'd go in front of general officers and I'd we'd do a briefing or not really briefing more of a discussion on this topic and I'd have comments like well I got a question your methodology and I'm like what methodology I talk to people I mean it's not like I did anything scientifically like rigorous on this and then or you know this isn't really a good time for the study to come out well when is a good time for a study to come out that says we lie to ourselves okay um and so so that was the reaction that we get a lot of anger a lot of you are attacking my profession I am a steward of the profession as a senior leader and you're putting down the profession we don't air dirty laundry okay we don't air dirty laundry and so that's what the reaction but then I also saw the study being examined in places like this this is doctrine man people in the army I'm not sure if other services look at it but it's a it's the offline forums okay and in the offline forum I see comments like this in other news water is wet okay so what is this person saying what is this person saying he's saying you pay this guy a salary to do this report are you kidding me it's an open secret everyone knows this happens so here imagine I'm sitting at my desk getting emails saying how could you how dare you and this saying do you have a job okay are you kidding me so what I saw was if you looked at our the force what I saw was really I saw a split and I saw the split happened right after oh six command who am I pointing this at at the screen she told me to point it that direction okay you you wait till you wait till slide 27 to tell me that okay so I see a split after oh six command I saw one attitude this way and everyone else has this attitude and for these guys I saw we live this you didn't tell us anything new we already knew that on this hand is not so fast let's not let's not be so quick to jump to conclusions let's study it let's keep looking at it and so I saw anger and denial but no kidding as the first phase of the reaction the second phase of the reaction I started seeing that the bureaucracy started responding I could see little indications that oh they're actually listening okay and so one of the things that happens I got an email from department of the army G3 asking me that study you did over a decade ago how did you collect up all those requirements and could you show us your methodology there I think they were thinking where do you come up that 297 days did you just make it up and I just happened to save in excel all the lists of requirements and how we came up with that I shipped that off to them and I think it blew his mind because it was a giant file of things that I'm sure he was shocked that I saved over a decade ago but I also saw things like this email was sent to me by a major at San Antonio who said I think you might find this funny and don't put my name on this email though and he says but he sends this and he says you can see when it was sent March 4th and it's here's the task by March 5th identify mandatory training and non-training responsibility that's this is a direct quote out of the study and this came from the Department of the Army G3 an email we got at the war college too saying give me every single requirement we put on company commanders I did a study and it took me I justified my salary for a year doing a study like that and how long do they want a day and the study just happens to say is if you give us a dumb requirement what will we do we'll lie to you we'll lie right back to you okay so this major who sent this email to me says I think someone read your study but they didn't understand it okay but I could see the bureaucracy was bending okay I could see the bureaucracy bending and then more recently about three weeks ago the army put out an executive order 2-16 where they said you know what we have to change things you know all these mandatory requirements we're going to make it so that a two star can eliminate in their command a two star can eliminate some requirements and then they said we're also going to try to protect company commanders and battalions a certain date and we're going to pull some requirements out of mandatory training and not make it mandatory training but now put it under command responsibility for example human trafficking you no longer have to train on it for an hour every year but now you just have to be responsible for it what do you think it's a start in the right direction it's a start in the right direction but when I brief this I get a lot of people saying you got to be kidding me that's it or I had one oh three say wait a minute back when I briefed them they said it's been six months since the study came out and I haven't seen anything change I haven't seen anything change and so that's where phase three starts kicking in as I see the bureaucracy bending but phase three people are starting to say so where's where's the big change the study's been out over a year now when you walk out those doors it's still there you're going to have to make your subordinates lie to you you have to lie upward we still live in the same environment so I gave this talk once and I got a response back like this after the talk that you I got they sent me the feedback after the talk and they said one of the biggest problems with our army was presented to the senior leaders of the core consider the conscience of the army and then we thank Dr. Wang and continued on our way without addressing the elephant in the room what can we do to change a culture of self-deceit so I can talk all I want in here but nothing has changed and so you have a choice as soon as you walk out to say so how do we live do we continue on with it because we're trapped do I try to make changes who makes the changes do the senior leaders do it or does the force do it but what's the answer to that it's both what I'd really like to see is like a little mini rebellion of people saying we're going to tell the truth we're going to tell the truth we're going to tell the truth do you want me to lie to you okay or commanders before they go in to talk to the big commander saying okay let's talk tell the truth about this this and this there's no way we can tell the truth about this okay we'll lie to one about that but all the others why don't we all why don't we all tell the truth okay that's the only way it's got to be so after the study came out you could see the reaction is that now we're into this we continue to live with this we continue to live in the environment that I just described for upper let us continue to work on it but these people are getting impatient they're getting impatient so I had to ask myself so what is the genesis of all this at first I blamed it on mandatory training it's really not mandatory training that's the that's the cause of all this we like to blame the mandatory training where this really comes from is that back when I was younger and I all I turned in was a department of the army form 31 a leave request to go on leave back in those days when a soldier didn't come back off of leave we didn't go to his trips and say well he said he was supposed to stop in this place or when there's a suicide in the unit we didn't say did he sign the roster or if a person's killed in an m-wrap roll over we didn't say did he get m-wrap roll over training we didn't go to the paperwork we didn't go to this giant system we've created where did we go where did we go to say hey wait a minute what happened here we went to a leader and so what we've done in the army is that we've said you know what leaders are humans and that scares me because it's hard to trust someone who's imperfect back in the old days if someone didn't come back off a leave we went to the leader and said where is smith did you check his flights did he have enough leave did you check his vehicle but we don't like to live with that because we know that's imperfect and so instead of going to bed at night wondering if the leader did their job wondering if maybe he messed up on this one we replaced the leader with a form with a checklist and even though we know the checklist is a lie we feel better about it we know it's a lie but it makes us sleep better at night because it's better than trusting a human we need to get back where we put the burden on leaders a lot of people say well personal responsibility it's a yeah society needs personal responsibility but in the military we have this thing called leadership we don't expect people to be responsible for themselves we expect leaders to be responsible for people we can't replace leadership with a system we can't replace leadership with check marks a leader is where it should fall and that requires trust we have to start building that trust back so how much does martin cook pay me to come talk to you he pays me nothing so hopefully you got your money's worth any questions