98 Shades of Grey: The Minimum Number of Regulations Every Marine Must Know, Follow, and Implement
Abstract
In 2015 retired Army officers and Drs. Leanord Wong and Stephen J. Gerras produced a brilliantly simplistic paper titled Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession. Their study, captured in their paper, illuminated a disturbing yet instantly recognizable reality for anyone who has served at the battalion level or below in the Army or Marine Corps since 2003. The reality is that the organization places more requirements on the unit than the unit has time to complete to standard. Since noncompliance is not an option, unit leaders are forced to compromise their integrity in reporting completion of the unrealistic requirements for the sake of the greater good which ranges from saving soldiers time to not risking convoys down improvised explosive laden roads for the sake of administrative requirements. In this paper I will expand on the theory above with a focus on how irresponsible tasking is producing the exact opposite effect of the purpose for which the orders and regulations were designed. Rather than unity of effort and understanding of purpose, over regulation and misapplied directives teach subordinate leaders, all the way down to the fire team level, to decide when and to what extent they are going to follow orders. Rather than instant obedience, the organization is teaching indifference to orders due to the subordinate leaders' inability to feasibly achieve all of his many Highers' intents. While not presuming to have a simple answer as to which orders should be kept, and which should be disregarded, I recommend that the organization limit its focus in training requirements as well as regulations for conduct to those regulations that apply to completion of war time requirements.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 30, 2018
- Accession Number
- AD1177192
Entities
People
- Justin M. Sharpe
Organizations
- Marine Corps University