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Avoiding the check-in-the-box mentality
The Marine Corps prides itself on empowering NCOs and junior officers with leadership responsibilities and the special trust and confidence necessary to drive the fight. At more than 10 to 1, the Marine Corps maintains a larger enlisted-to-officer ratio than all other Sendees, one that more than doubles the Air Force ratio. We claim our junior leaders are more motivated and more capable, and that they can be trusted to carry out demanding duties and responsibilities because we hold Marines to a higher standard. "Trust but verify," a moniker of this mindset, is a common phrase uttered to junior officers at The Basic School. However, in regards to annual training, the Marine Corps has started to trust our junior leaders less and less while seeking to verify more with quantifiable data points and online certificates. The current trend strays from tradition of empowered leadership and leans more heavily on socalled "check-in-the-box" classes and standardized predeployment training to cover down on an ever-growing list of annual training requirements. Rather than adhering to annual requirements with online training courses and mass briefings, a better way to empower leaders, improve readiness, and ensure adequate training is to use annual training requirements as a way to increase the personal interaction between junior leaders and their Marines while furthering functional knowledge of the backbone of the Corps.
Currently, according to Marine Corps Bulletin 1500for Annual Training and Education Requirements, (Washington, DC: HQMC, July 2015), there are 18 requirements every Marine must complete regardless of rank or billet with few exceptions and waivers. Some of these requirements are paramount to our identity as Marines. The rifle range separates us as the only Service to qualify from the 500-yard line. The physical fitness test sets our individual standard higher than all other Services and is the only fitness test in the DOD to include pull-ups. However, the vast majority of annual training requirements are brushed off with a 30-minute online class designed for the lowest common denominator. Even worse, Marines are ushered into a daylong brief en masse to view a series of PowerPoint presentations consecutively. Completion statistics have become markers for a commander's effectiveness on yearly Commanding General Readiness Inspections instead of a way to impart...