When someone decides to go into either the military or law enforcement they commit themselves to a field that offers little in the way of options for a lateral career moves. People join the military for however many years they choose to serve and, once they separate from active duty, there aren’t any options for them to come back. There is no option to spend five years in the Marines, leave the service to spend time working in another field, and then return to active duty. Yes, there are the reserves, but that isn’t the same as being a full time member of the military and isn’t really what I’m talking about here. A Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) in the logistics field cannot go work for FedEx for a few years, learning new skills and new ways to do his job, and then come back into the military and bring those outside influences in. From what I understand about careers in law enforcement, the same dynamic exists, that once a police officer decides to leave the force, only very rarely are they able to come back in.
There are, of course, options for moves within a police department, or to a different unit within one of the military branches, but this is much different than the options that civilians have available to them. A marketing analyst for an auto manufacturer has the ability to take a similar job for a technology company, expanding upon their experiences and becoming well rounded in the process. The marketing analyst benefits from learning to apply what they know in a different industry and the technology company benefits by having an outsider bring new ideas to the table. This leads to a cross-pollination of ideas that can only come from the presence of outside influences. The fact that this doesn’t exist for the military and law enforcement worlds inherently limits their ability to learn, grow and adapt as fast as our enemies who are not restricted to a single profession.
This has been on my mind recently as I had the opportunity to look back and reflect on what I have learned in the eighteen months since leaving a career in the Marines. It was during a conversation with a friend that I realized that the experiences I have gained starting a business would have changed the way I dealt with many of the responsibilities that I had while deployed overseas. There are four general topics that come to mind that I would handle differently now:
– Meeting with village elders while trying to build rapport and collect information about insurgents operating in the area.
– Negotiations that I had with local contractors to complete a construction project and hopefully stimulate the local economy.
– Collaborating with partnered Iraqi Security Forces, training them, working with them on patrol, and empowering them to take control of the villages in our area.
– Even smaller tasks, such as talking with residents of these villages, attempting to build trusting relationships and collect information.
These four areas are similar to what many members of the military deal with when fighting an insurgency and there is a lot that goes into starting a business that would improve the way Marines deal with these challenges. Influencing a local population is very similar to creating and executing marketing plans that influence customers to buy. Identifying qualified sales leads and negotiating contracts is no different than winning over key members of a village or finding potential sources of information. Building strategic partnerships with other companies in order to grow relates directly to partnering with a local security force and developing their abilities. As I look at the requirements necessary to effectively fight an insurgency, there is no doubt that the experiences in non-military related fields would significantly improve our nation’s ability to win these types of wars. The question is simply how do people who have had to learn these skills get connected with the units who need them the most?
The quick and easy answer to the question of how usually comes down to civilian or government aid organization and contractors. While I was deployed, my unit worked with both of these groups, which in theory should have added this “civilian” or “business” capability, but it wasn’t very effective and too sporadic to work well. It usually ended up being a waste of time. To be truly effective, this business related experience must be resident inside of a military unit at the lowest levels.
While I’m not saying that I want to go back onto active duty, I’m saying that there is no possible opportunity for me to do that. I can’t take the two years of immersive learning that I have gone through and decide to go back onto active duty, becoming a more capable and well-rounded infantryman. And even though the example so far has been military-based, I don’t see any difference in the law enforcement community.
This isn’t something that can be accomplished by simply moving people within a police department or within the military from one unit to another. Those types of career moves, while they get closer to the point of this article, don’t completely solve the problem because you have never left your peer group. Moving from an infantry battalion to a training unit never changes the background of who is around you. In the Marines, the officers you are with all started at The Basic School, and the senior enlisted started at one of the two basic training facilities and received their continuing education through the existing PME courses. This process never provides the outside influence that sparks innovation and process improvement.
If the security industry wants to become capable of learning and adapting at a pace that our enemies can’t keep up with, I believe there needs to be a system in place that allows active duty military and law enforcement to leave their jobs, gain experience in other fields, and then come back. In addition to improving the security apparatus as a whole, this would also help the individual solider, Marine and police officer. Many common reasons that people choose to leave the service is because they become burned out and need a change. Being able to move in and out of these fields would help prevent that burnout from having a serious impact on overall operational effectiveness. Many of us have seen what happens when leadership “doesn’t have their head in the game” and are clearly emotionally and physically drained after eight, ten, twelve or fifteen years in the service. Many of these leaders were great assets earlier in their career and truly committed to serving, but knew that if they made the choice to step away, there wasn’t the possibility of coming back.
I am asking for feedback. I know that many of the readers here have transitioned out of either the military or law enforcement, and I would like to ask whether you would have ever considered going back into that field if the option was available to you? What are the issues with allowing people to transition in and out that would prevent this from being a reality (other than the actual policies) or that would be considered drawbacks. Do the cons outweigh the gains, or is this a policy that can spark change and improvement within the ranks of our security system?