It seems we are all in agreement on the idea that the government isn't awesome at running its business and that we would like our political leaders to focus on the core functions of government and privatize the rest. One item that stood out to me from Marc's post is that the military promotes those good at war, not good at running a business. Unfortunately there is a lot of correlation in the business community, and I'm sure Ed has seen some examples too.
It is not uncommon for businesses to promote people due to their technical skill into a role where the technical skill is no longer needed...but into a role where a whole bunch of business savvy and management is necessary.
When I got my MBA, I had a very good experience and got what I wanted out of my graduate schooling. But, I was disappointed that many of the core classes were geared towards teaching non-business people basic business skills instead of teaching a business person (me) next level skills. My program, the managers program at the University of Iowa, as opposed to the full time or executive program, may have well been called the Rockwell Collins MBA. Based in Cedar Rapids, this program catered to teaching engineers from Rockwell business skills. There were like UI MBA programs in Des Moines (aka the Maytag MBA) and the Quad Cities (aka the John Deere MBA).
At least these companies were trying to teach engineers and technical specialists the business skills they needed to be successful as managers. Does the military provide any such training, especially utilizing outside resources who know more than running a business than the military? If not, they should.
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