Military Review English Edition January-February 2014 | Page 48

Piper Alpha oil rig in the North Sea, in July 1988
that killed 167 of the 228 crew members. To save
himself from the flames, the worker leapt into the
frigid, turbulent ocean below. As Conner described
it, “He jumped because he had no choice—the
price of staying on the platform, of maintaining
the status quo, was too high.”4 As the metaphor
goes, leaving the platform (i.e., changing one’s
way of doing things) will be painful because one
must take a dangerous plunge from a great height
into icy waters with no guarantee of survival.
The alternative? Certain incineration. In short,
no one jumps off one’s platform (the status quo
ante) unless the cost of remaining on it becomes
prohibitively expensive or deadly.
Even so, despite the seemingly irresistible logic
of the metaphor, many will still accept a fiery
demise rather than risk a leap into the unknown,
perhaps hopeful that the conflagration will somehow extinguish itself or a rescuer will materialize
to save the day.
On the face of it, the very term “burning platform” implies issues that should be stark and selfevident. In business, the quarterly report offers
a grim prognosis: earnings are down, revenue is
flat, expenses are soaring out of control, rivals are
devouring market share, shareholders are enraged,
and creditors are pounding on the door demanding
payment. In short, the firm is in a crisis, its woes on
display for the entire world to see, especially if the
company is prominent and publicly traded. In the
military realm, where things cannot be so neatly (if
not deceptively) summed up in a ledger, the wages
of failure are even harsher. One’s forces are crushed
on the field of battle, or one has reason to believe
that would be the case if it ever came down to a test
of arms. Lives are lost, treasure squandered, sacred
territory plundered, and national pride humiliated.
Yet upon closer examination, one will quickly
discover there is no consensus of what actually constitutes the burning platform. The finance office will
opine that the marketing department is not doing its
job properly. Marketing will in its turn insist that
they cannot sell the company’s product because its
designers are two steps behind the competition, and
even if they were two steps ahead, the assembly line
is spitting out unreliable junk the consumer does
not trust. The conversation with the manufacturing
department reveals that the finance department will
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not invest in new equipment to replace the current
archaic system. In frustration, the consultant turns
to make the walk back to finance to begin the cycle
of conversation anew.
This grossly oversimplified example merely
demonstrates how difficult it can be to identify
the root cause or causes of any organization’s difficulties. Militaries are no different, for all of the
same organizational challenges are present as in
a business, yet the challenges are compounded by
the fact that one never really knows how proficient
one’s fighting force is until it actually fights, and
unlike a typical business that goes about its concerns on a daily basis, wars are rather infrequent.
In the aftermath of defeat, fingers point in all
directions. Indifferent generalship, poorly trained
troops, obsolete equipment, outdated doctrines,
hostile media, and spineless political direction—a
burning platform exists, but very often, when the
entire world is ablaze, it is difficult to tell where
the flames are coming from.
Currently all anecdotal and empirical evidence
ranging from articles of personal experiences to
the formal Commander’s Unit Assessment Tool
suggests that we are failing in our goal of transferring security responsibility to a capable ANSF.
The Afghans go about their daily business with no
sense of urgency, no sense that a burning platform
exists in the form of a zealous Taliban foe coupled
with the inevitable reduction and withdrawal of
American and NATO support. Indeed, our own
American “can-do” hyperactivity may aid and abet
an Afghan delusion that change is not required.
Additionally, in our minds, the burning platform
is self-evident: the Taliban. However, in a country
permeated with ethnic, linguistic, and tribal divisions, all evidence suggests that the Taliban is just
one of many potential adversaries (or allies, for
that matter) for the numerous proto-warlords that
currently lead the battalions, brigades, and divisions of the ANSF to consider.

The Champion of Change
“The worker is not the problem. The problem is
at the top! Management!”—W. Edwards Deming
As history has demonstrated all too vividly and
repeatedly, and current events in Afghanistan are
proving anew, the presence of a burning platform
alone is insufficient to push an organization toward
January-February 2014 MILITARY REVIEW