I spent much of my life in the military. The leadership I saw there is light years ahead of what I've seen in the civilian economy. In the military there is a clear reason for its’ existence, the consequences for failure are immediate and catastrophic, success and failure effect everyone and are easily determined. Administrative demands, political correctness and politics tend to be forgotten when bullets are flying. At the unit level priorities are starkly clear and the bean counters take a back seat. Even in peacetime, the knowledge that you may, with little or no warning, be thrust into battle requires leaders to plan for that eventuality and commit their resources toward that end.

Far too many companies forget what they are there to do and how to do it. When political correctness, or short term goals that have no effect on long term achievement, are given the highest priority the organization suffers. Short term thinking often conflicts with long term success. There are two really good examples.

Lee Iacocca was a Ford executive before he went to Chrysler. He is often credited with setting up the financing packages that allowed the Big 3 auto companies to greatly increase their prices while keeping monthly payments relatively low. GMAC. Ford Motor Credit, Chrysler Credit, etc allowed them to avoid labor strife by rolling over for every union demand and then just include it in the price of the car. Today everyone at the Big 3 are paying for the decisions made then.

Kaiser Shipyards were forbidden to offer higher wages to their prospective employees during WWII. Instead they offered free healthcare since it did not fall under the federal wage rules in effect during WWII. It proved popular and effective in recruiting employees, especially since the cost could just be rolled into the government contracts. Prior to this time medicine was almost completely private, costs were controlled by peoples ability to pay and charity took care of those who could not. In the years following this, costs increasingly lost any accountability to the market and true charities became business entities. Now we have a system that has limited control of costs and lots of people think having it run by the same kind of bureaucrats who run the DMV and the Post Office will be an improvement.

We all like to think of ourselves as rugged individualists. But when push comes to shove most of us are sheep who do what we are told. Worst of all, a lot of us become unpaid agents of whoever is controlling the agenda by enforcing the current dogma on the few rugged individualists who actually exist.