Do We Need Leaders or Managers,Generalists or Specialists: a False Question?

By Larry Chandler, PhD, Colonel (Ret) USAF

Leaders or managers, generalists or specialists; the arguments over who should command a munitions squadron, a group, a wing or even for local, state or federal public office usually turn on these issues. However, I claim we have so ill-defined these terms that arguing which is preferable is pointless. It might be more productive to describe what we expect the person “in-charge” of a particular organization to do. I have asked quite a few squadron commanders what they do and I am usually told, “I am the commander.” So there appears to be some confusion between an officer’s job title and the specific duties the officer is expected to accomplish (i.e., who an officer is compared to what the officer does).

It is important to analyze the specific job to determine what tasks the person selected will have to perform and then determine what knowledge, skills and abilities the person will need to perform those tasks successfully. Another way to describe this phenomenon with regard to USAF munitions squadron commanders is to ask the question, “Does the commander really need to understand what the troops are doing in order to ‘lead and manage the squadron or is it sufficient for the squadron commander to be a figurehead-cheerleader without a direct impact on squadron mission accomplishment?”  There have been munitions squadron commanders who were experts and squadron commanders who were generalists. To my knowledge there have been no studies assessing whether one had more organizational success than another. However, the Air Force Senior Leader Management Office did commission RAND to study general officers with and without “complete domain knowledge” (i.e., knowledge of the organization they led). Scott, Drezner, Rue and Reyes (2007) interviewed 27 out of the total of 431 general officers and concluded that general officers with more complete domain knowledge (i.e., knowledge and experience in the organization-mission they led) performed with the following advantages:[i]

• Establishes and maintains credibility
• Serves as a template for understanding how organizations, processes and problems are structured
• Provides an experience base for recognizing when current problems are similar to past problems
• Provides a well-learned set of systematic problem-solving approaches
• Aids in identifying experts who can contribute to problem-solutions
• Results in knowledge of a network of similarly experienced professionals to help solve problems and implement solutions
• Appreciates the second and third order of consequences of alternative courses of action and therefore are able to make critical decisions more reliably, confidently and expeditiously

Admiral Rickover, father of the U.S. nuclear Navy, spoke at Columbia University (5 November, 1981) on this same issue (i.e., leadership, management, generalists and specialists).

            “The man in charge must concern himself with the details. If he does not consider them important, neither will his subordinates. Yet, the devil is in the details. It is hard and monotonous to pay attention to seemingly minor matters…Most managers would rather focus on lofty policy matters. But when the details are ignored, the project fails. No infusion of policy or lofty ideals can then correct the situation.”[ii]

Lt Col Zettler wrote in a 1986 Industrial College of the Armed Forces research paper that the Air Force needed more generalist logistics officers and this paper was quoted in a 2008 article in the Logistics Officer Association (LOA) Exceptional Release as follows: “Officers provide the leadership, the technical skills are provided by the non-commissioned officers…”.[iii]

I don’t think Lt Gen Zettler meant officers don’t need to know any of the technical details of their organizations or operations. I worked for General Zettler and I never worked for any officer who knew more of the technical details of our work than Gen Zettler. However, the constant drumbeat encouraging officers to career broaden into generalist “loggies” over a twenty-year period may have produced a much different kind of officer.  At Minot AFB, Major General Raaberg, team chief of the Air Combat Command investigation of the Minot-Barksdale nuclear weapons-related incident of 2007, described the 5^th Munitions Squadron officer leadership as disengaged from the daily maintenance activities. Raaberg further described the maintenance scheduling operation as a loose confederation of shop chiefs.[iv] Too many senior leaders at all levels  have encouraged subordinates to leave the technical details to others and focus on leadership, and continue to do so. The results may be exactly those Admiral Rickover warned about in his 1981 speech at Columbia University. Admiral Donald, appointed by the Secretary of Defense to investigate the Taiwan nuclear weapons-related incident, found this to be the case. Admiral Donald found that, “Over half of the senior commanders, colonel and above, did not have the requisite technical background and experience to lead the organizations they commanded”.[v] 

So it seems pointless to argue about which abstract terms we use to label the officer in charge (i.e., leader, manager, generalist or specialist), there are too many different definitions, all based on strongly held beliefs but little actual evidence. In the Air Force leadership is the coin of the realm and there is little interest in being a great manager but manager or leader is a false argument. Whether leader or manager, the core issue is what can he or she do if assigned as the officer in charge; whether it is a large organization (i.e., U. S. Air Force) or a small organization like the weapons maintenance branch. Perhaps we should start discussing what specific duties the officers selected to command are required to perform and what knowledge and experience would best prepare officers to lead their organizations to succeed? 

The term officer-in-charge seems pretty clear and we only encounter the generalist moniker above the rank of colonel (i.e., a general is a generalist and everyone from colonel to second lieutenant is not). I agree with Admiral Rickover, if the boss is not concerned with the details then neither will the subordinates and we know the results of that from the Minot-Barksdale and Taiwan nuclear weapons-related incidents. 

To paraphrase one of my favorite lines from the movie “Patton,” I don’t want to get any reports about what jobs an individual officer needs to better prepare him or her for “more senior logistics leadership jobs.” I want to hear reports urging the selection of an officer for command because he or she is the best officer to command the organization. Lt Col Jimmy Doolittle and Colonel Curtis LeMay were not selected to command because they needed to be developed for future “big” jobs, they were selected because their superiors believed they would get results…Doolittle and LeMay were extremely knowledgeable, skilled and passionate…driven to lead their organizations to succeed.

Bottom line at the bottom (i.e., BLAB), if you are in charge of an organization you should know more about that organization and how it accomplishes the mission than anyone else in that organization: Execute, that is why you are the commander.

Post Script: My next article will address the effects of career broadening officers concurrently at each level in the organization…over an extended period of time. If the munitions squadron commander, the operations officer and the company grade officers are on a career broadening assignment; and the MAJCOM headquarters staff division chief/officers and the headquarters Air Staff division chief/staff officers are also on career broadening assignments…is there an impact?

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[i]  Lynn Scott, Steve Drezner, Rachel Rue, Jesse Reyes, (2007). Compensating for Incomplete Domain Knowledge. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2007,

p. 21.

[ii] Admiral Hyman Rickover, “Doing a Job of Work,” Speech to Columbia University, 5 November 1981, Retrieved from:  http://govleaders.org/rickover.htm

[iii] Lieutenant Colonel Michael Zettler, (1986). Air Force logisticians: Generalist or specialist. Washington, DC: National Defense University, Industrial College of the Armed Forces, 1986, p. 14.

[iv] Air Combat Command, Director of Operations (A3), Major General Daniel Raaberg, CDI Report of Investigation: The Minot AFB ND-Barksdale AFB LA-Unauthorized Transfer of Nuclear Weapons, 2007, p. 36.

[v] Office of the Secretary of Defense, Investigation of the Taiwan Incident, Chairman: Admiral Kirkland Donald,  Report of the Investigation into the Facts and Circumstances Surrounding the Accountability For, and Shipment of, Sensitive Missile Components to Taiwan, Washington DC., 2008, p. 47.

Remember Those Old Career Colonels We Learned From?

By Larry Chandler, PhD, Colonel (Ret) USAF

On Memorial Day weekend I always find myself thinking back over my Air Force career, enlisted and officer, about the leaders who always made our organization win. What makes those memorable leaders stand so far above the average? There is something they have in common. They were all totally confident, took charge, led from the front… they all seemed to intuitively know how all the pieces should fit together.

Even though we had many more people in the Air Force when I enlisted (850,000 versus the 333,000 today), I don’t remember any meetings where 15 general officers met for half a day to discuss what should be done, but I do remember colonels who knew exactly what to do and did it. These colonels had grown up in the munitions and aircraft maintenance business and knew every aspect of their operations, they put the right people in the right places at the right time to get the mission accomplished… even when things went wrong, as they always do, these career colonels made changes on the fly and without missing a single sortie, got the job done every time.

These career colonels were not worried about being promoted to general officer because they loved the jobs they were doing.  These colonels were not on the way to a bigger job, they were in THE job! These career colonels were at wing level, numbered AF level, MAJCOM LGMs and LGWs and they were at the Air Staff and Joint Staffs and defense agencies… and at each level these colonels were growing their replacements.

Career colonels were hard and demanding but most officers under their leadership learned all there was to know about the munitions and aircraft maintenance business… you had to!  That said, nothing is as personally satisfying as being an expert in your chosen profession and there must be nothing worse than feeling like a useless hood ornament because everyone else in the unit knows more about what they are doing than you do.

So, the message on Memorial Day weekend is let us all work to be those career colonels and to teach those we are fortunate enough to serve as supervisors, everything there is to know about our business…especially the AMMO-Munitions business. When our business goes wrong people die and the mission can not be accomplished without the munitions.

Well, Sign Off My AF Form 623

By Larry Chandler, PhD, Colonel (Ret) USAF

When I enlisted in the Air Force my initial rank was Airman Basic, I had no AF Form 623 (On-the-Job Training (OJT) record); it was only after I graduated from the Munitions Maintenance Technical School at Lowry AFB that my supervisor gave me an AF Form 623. After graduating, I was classified as a 3-level (skill) in the Munitions Maintenance Career Field. The first assignment was to Tyndall AFB in Air Defense Command (ADC), and even though I was a conventional AMMO troop, I worked in the missile shop and the nuclear weapons shops doing all the storage, handling and transportation tasks. These tasks were perceived as manual labor and below the station of the much smarter Air Force Specialty Code (AFSC) 463 (now 2W2) Nuclear Weapons Maintenance Technicians and AFSC 316 (now 2W0) Missile Maintenance Technicians. However, it was a big deal as a 3-level to get each storage, safety, inspection, handling and transportation task signed off and initialed by my supervisor. There was a lot to learn and after I had been signed off as having the knowledge and skills required to perform all these tasks unsupervised, I was awarded a 5 skill level. This was a big deal! I could then work unsupervised and even train those unfortunate enough to be only 3-levels. The next sequence of assignments covered a great deal of professional AMMO jobs, Thailand, to Hill AFB (OO-ALC), to RAF Lakenheath and then back to the USA at George AFB. By this time I had been signed off on all the tasks and knowledge requirements and been working as a 7-level for a couple of years.

Then came the big day when I became the NCOIC of a Munitions Inspection Section… a shop chief! I thought this was as good as it could get, but there was still more to learn and more sign-offs to get. Managing a shop just seemed a natural thing to do, and I loved it! The biggest thrills were acing major command inspections and helping others experience the thrill of victory on a personal level like; your guys knocking the socks off the SKT and PFE tests, getting promoted, and winning special top-performer awards during MAJCOM inspections… this was just great duty and we all stayed in touch. The common thread through all these experiences, that I had never known before I joined the Air Force, was the recording of my career field progress in knowledge and skills attainment. In addition to the AF Form 623 technical training entries there was the professional military education and civilian education courses. My first supervisor and all of my subsequent supervisors encouraged me (all of us really) to take every military and civilian education course you could…never say no. That was great advice. Even after having been a munitions inspection shop chief twice, I took the USAFSE which was the first promotion test for SMSgt and scored 93%...wow, was I excited. Then before I could enjoy the spoils of my victory, my Squadron and Wing Commander both decided that I needed to attend Officer Training School (OTS). I had applied and been rejected three times already, so I was not excited at the prospect of adding yet another rejection, but my squadron had just been recognized as the “Best Munitions Maintenance Squadron (MMS) in Tactical Air Command (TAC)” for 1976 and my bosses would not accept my reluctance to try again. Strangely, I was accepted on this fourth application and went off to Officer Training School (OTS), even though I already had a Masters Degree and had scored 93% on the USAFSE?

After graduating from OTS, second in my class behind Dick Hitt who graduated #1, things began to move fast. Dick was also an AMMO troop, a friend and fellow 35^th MMS troop from George AFB (Two AMMO troops grads # 1 & 2…wow!). It seemed aircraft and munitions maintenance was a great career field to have remained in from enlisted to officer and I lived a charmed life of great assignments. After a 335^th Aircraft Maintenance Unit (AMU) at Seymour-Johnson, I went to Explosives Ordnance Disposal (EOD) School and then onto command the 7008 EOD Flight at RAF Lakenheath for three years achieving the first & only “Outstanding” Nuclear Surety Inspection (NSI) rating in the command. Then two years of USAFE NSI inspector duty, inspecting guys doing the same job I had just finished doing myself… I learned a lot in two years. Back to the states as the maintenance supervisor of the 3098 Aviation Depot Squadron for three years…my two previous years as an USAFE NSI inspector were great preparation and we did very well. The next three officer ranks came very quickly. I spent a year-in-a-tent in Saudi as the 4404^th Logistics Group Commander earning the distinction of the Best Large Logistics Group in the AF. I spent the last two years of my service as the HQ USAF Munitions, Missiles & Space Division Chief and had the distinct honor of resurrecting the Munitions Officer AFSC (it had been merged with Aircraft Maintenance in the 90’s) as the 21M Munitions and Missiles Maintenance Officer career field. It was the right thing to do, but I really hosed up by including the big missile maintenance officers; it was not a good move for them or the munitions officer career field. There are times when compromising what you know to be the right thing, just so you can get some of what you think the AF needs is a huge mistake… better to keep arguing for the absolute right thing to do. MY MISTAKE, sorry for that one! The big missile maintenance officers have more in common with aircraft maintenance officers… they maintain the missile platform, not the bombs bullets and warheads.

I retired and left the fight to the younger officers. However, the old AF Form 623 habit of always striving to get another knowledge or skill signed off never left me. Having completed all the correspondence courses, graduated from all the levels of NCO and officer PME, and having completed my B.S. (for AMMO guys we obviously got that one), an MBA/Aviation from Embry-Riddle, pilot certificate with instrument rating, FAA A&P/IA certificates while still on active duty, I was looking for something else for my AF Form 623. Since I was teaching for Embry-Riddle (ERAU) at Andrews AFB, the center director told me that I should get into the PhD program with Northcentral University, an online program, because they had a special joint program that would accept all my ERAU MBA coursework. Ok, another AF Form 623 entry, I signed up and looked forward to signing off another entry. Well that was five years ago…five years is a long time and although there were many times I thought about throwing in the towel… too many stupid requirements, revisions and arbitrary rules of format and citation management. However, finally it is over, now I have completed another AF Form 623 entry… almost all of these entries in the very same career field of aircraft and munitions maintenance and EOD. Now that I have finished, my wife Margaret and I are off on our RV for a nice long trip, but Margaret dreads hearing what she knows she will eventually hear, “well what’s next?”