So have you….?

Asking for your professional-and other- experiences

I today finished Evan Thomas’s book on the end of World War II and read about Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, the polarising CNO of the early 1970s. My question to all is how much a strict, predictable career path is vital to success versus someone younger, of a different gender/age/ or race, with fresh ideas, is important for a leader as you see it?

Henry Stimson, a nineteenth century-born Secretary of War as World War II finally closed, was seen by some as too wrapped in his ethical views to be appropriate for the nuclear age and the beginning of the Cold War. Stimson died in 1950 at the age of eighty-three but had served in lofty positions for presidents back to Theodore Roosevelt. Yet St8mson raised the ethical question about nuclear weapons we still struggle to answer today—what about collateral damage to non-combatants? The question arises hourly vis-a-vis the Israel-Hamas confrontation.

Admiral Elmo ‘Bud’ Zumwalt, who I found enchanting over a thirty minute chauffeuring I did for him between Ft. Lesley J. McNair and Roslyn, Virginia, in 1998, became Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) in 1980 without having served as a commander of a numbered fleet. This meant he had a more restricted vision of the challenges confronting the Navy and the interwoven fleet we ask to engage in operations around the world on any given problem.he simply had less experience but is seen as some tone the last truly innovative CNO.

In your field, was there one single career path you believe unreasonable to developing a senior leader? Were you more impressed by a variety of experiences or a clear, predictable increase in responsibility? Did you prefer working for people who experienced your personal concerns or broader ones shared by many across the job pool? We’re/are you concerned someone cannot match your career path, thus would lack sympathy towards all of the challenges you and your co-hort face(d)?

I am genuinely interested in hearing your thoughts. My own career as a woman in the security field was peculiar yet I tried check each and every block so others could not accuse me of not feeling ‘their pain’. The effect was I believe passionately that personnel issues as a professional military education leader are vital to one’s career development yet most people prefer focusing on traditional measures of professional success like publications. You may well not see it that way I do. I think the questions are the same regardless of the field one pursues so this not purely about academic life or military experience but the progress through careers.

This is a sign I saw recently that encapsulates our contemporary world in many ways.

Thank you for reading this today. Have a superb weekend. I look forward to your thoughts.

Be well and be safe. FIN