Military Review English Edition November-December 2013 | Page 35

GROWING LEADERS

Saying It Is So Does Not Make It
So

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne
back ceaselessly into the past.” Thus F. Scott
Fitzgerald ended The Great Gatsby, hauntingly
evoking the idea that human beings can only with
difficulty escape key events of their past. The same
can be said of institutions, borne back to their past
by deep, often hidden cultural biases.
The eminent organizational theorist Edgar
Schein defines culture as “a pattern of shared basic
assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved
its problems of external adaptation and internal
integration, which has worked well enough to be
considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new
members as the correct way to perceive, think and
feel in relation to those problems.”20 Schein defines
three levels of organizational culture. The first level
consists of visible “artifacts” such as mission statements, heroic narratives, and doctrinal manuals.21
The second consists of the unwritten rules and
values that govern day-to-day behavior.22 And on
the deepest level, the third level, are the organization’s basic assumptions, its preferences for certain
solutions based on past experiences.23
Schein’s model helps us understand why organizations may say they value one thing when actually
they prefer something else. It also explains why
our Army may not be fully implementing mission
command, despite a strong doctrinal commitment
to the approach.
In a recent book, Israeli Defense Forces veteran and scholar Eitan Shamir comprehensively
addresses the effects of military culture on the practice of mission command. With regard to the U.S.
Army, he argues, forces inhibiting the practice of
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