O RLY?
By now, everyone at the CO/TRP level and maybe a few rebels on BN staff have read the now infamous Powerpoint Kinda Sucks article that got a reserve Colonel fired. For those of you keeping score at home, the following will get you fired from your position in the Army:
- Speaking to the press without permission
- Speaking to the press with permission, and without discretion.
The following are still safe:
- Brief your Phase IV plan using a few bullet points, and something reminiscent of a “Road to War” slide.
- Place a combat outpost in an isolated valley among hostile villages
Andrew Tilghman, for the Army Times:
“Army Reserve Col. Lawrence Sellin has no regrets about publishing a rant about the military’s overreliance on PowerPoint presentations — despite the fact it got him fired from his job at joint command headquarters in Afghanistan.
“I’m not sorry at all. I think there are a lot of people who feel this way, even on [General David] Petraeus’ own staff,” Sellin said in a telephone interview with Army Times. “There were colonels who came up to me and shook hands and said, ‘You were right.’”
Sellin, 61, who deployed previously to both Iraq and Afghanistan, lost his job with the staff supporting Petraeus, the commander of the International Security and Assistance Force, on Aug. 26, two days after his 680-word op-ed piece was published by the United Press International wire service.
In it, Sellin skewered the joint command as a bloated and bumbling bureaucracy.
“For headquarters staff, war consists largely of the endless tinkering with PowerPoint slides to conform with the idiosyncrasies of cognitively challenged generals in order to spoon-feed them information,” Sellin wrote.
Officially, the Army said he violated rules requiring coordination with public affairs officials before making statements to the media.”
So who is this Col. Sellin anyway?
“When not on active duty, Sellin lives in Finland and does defense contracting work involving C4ISR technology – command, control, communications, computing, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. He has a doctoral degree in biophysics and Army branch qualifications in Infantry, Special Forces and medical services.”
I’m just a dumb LT, but it seems to me that this COL might know a thing or two about communication, information, and warfighting. This also isn’t the first time a high ranking officer has criticized the Army’s reliance on PowerPoint.
“Long before I wrote my controversial article, I wrote a private e-mail to my supervisor,” Sellin wrote in an e-mail to Army Times. “I explained that for six weeks I had added no value to the war effort. I was having difficulty justifying to myself being at ISAF Joint Command (IJC) and being away from my employer and family.”
This, Sellin said, “was a not so subtle plea for something meaningful to do.” He got no response, he says, and “followed up that e-mail by sending him a high-level description of how business management methodologies could be applied to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of IJC.”
September 9th, 2010 at 1:28 am
I’m pretty sure Sellin is the staff equivalent BAMF of COL Stenzel… That OPED was hilarious.
Fortunately our beloved Bob Gates feels the same way about our powerhouse JFC.
I’d like to comment that the minutia of PP transcends the flag level. Now every CO-level “combat commander” needs daily briefings of everything done to similarly “update” his boss. Thus, the biggest and most redundant part of my day.
The following is also safe:
-Establishing duty hours for PT/uniforms/training in a combat zone (because the T-man only attacks between 09 and 1700)
I’d also like everyone to know that “Rojelio” has made it’s way to Afghanistan.
September 9th, 2010 at 10:57 am
Congrats on the follow from Tom Ricks!
September 9th, 2010 at 8:38 pm
“I explained that for six weeks I had added no value to the war effort. I was having difficulty justifying to myself being at ISAF Joint Command (IJC) and being away from my employer and family.”
Robert E. Lee said “Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less.” COL Sellin is another of the many mobilized Reservists who cannot make the mental transition between business and war and the difference in requirements for each.
Maybe he provided no value because he possessed no discernable skills. Arrogance is not a skillset. Plenty of folks get off the plane and provide value to IJC, COL Sellin can’t, and has a poor concept of duty. Send him home where he can wait for his USAR retirement check at age 62 with the rest of the non-deploying losers.
September 9th, 2010 at 8:58 pm
“Robert E. Lee said “Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less.”
I don’t work at IJC, but the thrust of COL Sellin’s argument wasn’t that he was doing too much, but that his work didn’t matter. And though he published the op-ed without permission, he added fuel to the growing debate over how we communicate in the Army. Is that not beneficial?
“COL Sellin is another of the many mobilized Reservists who cannot make the mental transition between business and war and the difference in requirements for each. Maybe he provided no value because he possessed no discernable skills…”
First, I doubt an officer who held qualifications in both Infantry AND Special Forces had a hard time dealing with war. I have a hard time believing that a man with such a varied and impressive background as COL Sellin is worth ignoring.
It is also rude to dismiss the contributions of our National Guard and Reserve soldiers. Having served in both the National Guard AND active component, I’ve noticed more similarities than differences.
Also, I would argue that producing materially insignificant slide presentations that provide penumbral analyses has more to do with the business world than the Army world.
The fact that someone like COL Sellin was made into a powerpoint jockey highlights an even bigger issue: misallocation of resources.
September 10th, 2010 at 4:07 am
“Having served in both the National Guard AND active component, I’ve noticed more similarities than differences.”
I’ve served in both components in the Special Forces and I do notice differences. National Guard SF soldiers stand out from their active component brethren by bringing a wealth and breadth of experience to their jobs that the active component does not possess. Most Guard SF teams have guys who have worked together for years as opposed to AC teams that are a revolving door. An AC Battalion Commander from 3d Grp once observed that he thought the Guard guys were better because “they had a life.”
As for COL Sellin, I agree the duty of the soldier in most cases is to shut up, suck it up and drive on. But at the O-6 level, an intelligent and concerned officer should have the latitude to question what he sees going around him – quietly and in consultation with his superiors.
Unfortunately, the COL’s concerns fell on deaf ears and he saw fit to publish his rant to the world. I, for one, applaud his courage and agree with his observations, if not his methods.
September 10th, 2010 at 5:56 am
He needed to go. If he really thought all the problems in Afghanistan were due to power-point, then good riddance to someone who in his own words was no value added…not a good example to Junior Officers and other Soldiers in “Respect” by calling your bosses “challenged” Perhaps those who did meet him put him in his duty position for a reason…he was worthless for anything else…but hey, he wrote an oped, he must have all the answers
November 16th, 2011 at 11:37 pm
powerpoint file…
[...]O RLY? | THE Fighting Illini[...]…
December 12th, 2011 at 5:09 pm
Sudut Pandang Hidup Uzanks…
[...]O RLY? | THE Fighting Illini[...]…
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