The Church Lady (and not the one from SNL)
In 2000 after leaving brigade command I went to MacDill AFB to be the CENTCOM IG. We bought a house in the Tampa area and began to enjoy life in Florida. That first summer my oldest daughter Tara came home from college for the summer. She worked for a temporary hire agency and was asked to stay on beyond her contracted period with a small construction firm. She spent the rest of the summer working for that company. This was at the height of the building boom in Florida before the bottom dropped out in 2005 when the housing bubble burst.
After Tara had been in the front office a few weeks, the woman who was the office manager and did all the invoices for customers and paid the sub-contractors, decided to take a month off for vacation. After she had only been gone for a few days the owner of the company asked Tara to find him some previous invoices and other paperwork. He had tried to find the papers himself in the filing cabinets but had been unsuccessful. Tara had been filing things for the woman in charge but was always told which specific file to put things in. Although she had been working there for a number of weeks, Tara did not understand the filing system either. It wasn’t arranged alphabetically, and it was not by subject or in numerical order.
Tara finally found the papers and gave them to the owner. He asked her if she understood the filing system and she admitted she did not. He seemed relieved and told her he couldn’t figure it out either. He asked her if she would redo the filing system, so he could find things when the office manager was not there. Tara arranged the filing system alphabetically by subject. The section on invoices for example was broken down by the sub-contractors so all their invoices were in one place in chronological order. The owner was ecstatic and very pleased with the new arrangement.
Not so the office manager when she returned. She was extremely upset and redid the files back to her “system” which was not a system at all. The owner did tell her that he had asked Tara to redo the filing system and she had not just done it on her own. Even with that, the office manager remained decidedly cool towards Tara for the rest of her employment there.
Before the office manager returned from vacation several of the sub-contractors informed the owner that if they could not get paid in a reasonable amount of time so they could pay their workers, they were quitting and looking for work elsewhere. This came as a huge shock to the owner. He asked Tara if she knew anything about the delays in payments. Tara knew that the office manager required each sub-contractor to fill out a series of forms for each invoice. The forms included somewhat inane information like how many workers on the job site each day, how many gallons of this and that were used, bags of this and that, amount of rebar and sizes if used and a whole host of other information that was busy work for the sub-contractors to fill out. She would not pay them until she was satisfied with the information, none of which had any bearing on how much they were owed; that price being fixed earlier by the owner and the sub-contractor in writing. Tara was aware that the office manager had a running feud going on with some of the sub-contractors and was refusing to pay them until they complied with her forms requirements to her satisfaction. She frequently kicked forms back for being unsatisfactory but did not specify why. Most guys don’t go into construction work because they like doing paperwork.
Tara told the owner what was going on with the office manger and the sub-contractors. He actually didn’t believe she would do such a thing and was made a believer several weeks later when some of his best sub-contractors told him they quit because they couldn’t get paid on time. They verified to the owner essentially what Tara had told him about the office manager. Tara was on her last day on the job before heading back to college when this revolt by the sub-contractors happened. The office manager had conveniently taken the day off because the sub-contractors had told her they were quitting the day before. The owner asked Tara what he should do. She told him that the office manger had not complied with his specific instructions to pay the sub-contractors, they we now quitting so the officer manger needed to go. The owner got a horrified look on this face and said, “I can’t fire her! She goes to my church!”
Hence the title I gave her, the Church Lady. But the Church Lady goes beyond that one individual and can be either gender. The one thing they have in common is they create bureaucratic systems which then empowers them well beyond that which they would normally have in their specific job. And every organization that has five or more people probably has a Church Lady somewhere in the group. They abound.
I discovered my own Church Lady two years earlier when I first took brigade command. I like to wander around my units and talk to the troops as part of my leadership style. In my first week of command I wandered around all the motor pools which are the heart and soul of a heavy mechanized brigade combat team that has over 800 vehicles; wheeled and tracked. The engineer battalion motor pool was closest to the headquarters so I started there.
I know nobody smoke or dips in the new Army because both are harmful to your health, but back then, 1996, lots of us still did those things. If you really want to get the low down on what’s going on in a unit, go to the designated smoking area and talk to the troops. Smoke them if you got them or not, but go there.
As I was smoking with some young engineer soldiers and I am asking how they’re doing, have they been before the promotion board, have they attended their mandatory schooling and so forth. One sergeant tells me it’s his last duty day in the brigade because he’s going to Korea. He’s okay with Korea because he will rotate back to Fort Carson and the brigade when he finishes his one-year tour. I ask him if he has received his end of tour award. Everybody laughs derisively, and the sergeant says, “Hell, sir. Nobody except officers and senior NCO’s in this brigade gets awards. End of tour or otherwise!” The others corroborate what he said. Nobody knew anybody who had gotten an award except the officers and senior NCO’s when they left.
I thanked all of them for their candor and went back to brigade headquarters. My first stop was the Personnel Admin Center (PAC). I asked the PSNCO (Personnel Service NCO) who the awards clerk for the brigade was and where could I find him. He took me across the hall to a separate office which was strange because nobody else in the PAC had a separate office except the PSNCO who was an E-7.
A specialist 4th class was sitting at the desk in the office and the PSNCO tells me his name and motions for the specialist to stand up which he either didn’t understand or didn’t think it necessary. Based upon the subsequent conversation I had with this young soldier, I believe the latter to be true.
I ask the specialist to explain the awards program in the brigade to me. He starts out by not standing up when he addresses me and it goes downhill from there. The very first words out of his mouth are, “Well, it’s my policy that awards have to be submitted on time…” which is as far as he got before I cut him off and said rather loudly (remember I do not have an indoor voice and had raised my voice for this occasion), “Specialist get to your goddamn feet when I address you!” He was still taking that in and not standing up when the command sergeant major (CSM) who had heard me from his office down the hall rushed in and told the specialist to come to attention when the brigade commander was speaking to him. The specialist was still slow to get the message and the CSM finally had to formally call him to attention.
Now that I had his attention, I asked my question again and he started off with the exact same words, “Well, it’s my policy that awards have to be submitted on time…”. I cut him off again and said, “Sir”. He said, “What?” I said, “You will address me as sir.” He said, “What?” again. I turned to the CSM and said, “You need to square this guy away and when he’s ready to properly talk to me I’ll be in my office.” I stomped off to my office swearing under my breath. I was already figuring out why the awards program in the brigade was defunct. It was to get worse.
After about five minutes, the CSM comes to my office and says the specialist is now ready to properly have a conversation with me. I asked him if he was sure and he said, “Oh, yes sir, I am absolutely sure he is!” Good enough for me so I went back to the awards clerk’s office.
When I entered the office, the clerk came to attention and greeted me with a “Good morning, sir!” I told him to be at ease and explain the brigade’s awards program. He again started off with, “Sir, it is my policy that awards have to be submitted on time. For a Meritorious Service Medal, it must be in 180 days in advance of the date the award is to be presented. For an Army Commendation Medal, it must be in 150 days in advance. For an Army Achievement Medal it must be 120 days in advance.”
I stopped him there, and asked if he meant it was brigade or post policy for those timelines? He said, no, it was his policy. I was frankly stunned. I said, “You don’t get to make policy in this brigade. That’s my job. In fact, I’m the only one who gets to make policy inside this brigade combat team. Is your “policy” written anywhere? I’d like to see it.”
He admitted it was not written but said all the unit awards clerk knew his policy. As I looked at his desk, there were two wooden trays. Clearly one for In and one for Out. There was a stack of manila folders about a foot and a half high in one box and about a six-inch stack in another box. I asked what the folders were. He said they were award recommendations from the units. Each recommendation was in a manila folder with three sheets of paper inside so there had to be several hundred award recommendations in those two boxes. I pointed to the big stack and asked what they were. He said they were awards that he hadn’t reviewed yet. I asked when he would be through that stack and he said several weeks. I pointed to the smaller stack and asked what they were. He said they were recommendations going back to the units for letters of lateness for failing to meet his “policy”. I then asked to see the approved awards. He said there weren’t any.
I picked up the stack in the Out box going back to units for letters of lateness. Several required a letter of lateness for the letter of lateness originally submitted, it being submitted after the suspense date the awards clerk had assigned for that action. One was on it’s sixth go around with letters of lateness, and letters of lateness for letters of lateness and so on. There was dead silence in the room while I leafed through the folders. Some of the awards had been in the awards clerk’s “policy” mill for over a year, the awardee being long gone from the unit.
I told the awards clerk to come back to the position of attention. He got that right so the CSM’s retraining was effective. I asked the clerk what the worst unit in the brigade was for late awards. He promptly answered 3d of the 29th Field Artillery Battalion. I turned to the PSNCO and the CSM and said, “Effective immediately, Specialist Whatever-His-Name-Was, is assigned to 3/29 Artillery as the awards clerk. And I mean right damn now!” I turned to the specialist and said, “Specialist, you with your “policy” have denied deserving soldiers recognition inside this brigade. I will never forgive you for that. Get out of my headquarters. If you have any personal effects in this office, they will be brought over to you. Move out!”
He hesitated, and I roared, “Get out of my goddamned headquarters now, and don’t ever come back!” He finally got the message and fled. I had not been that angry in a long while.
I told the CSM and the PSNCO to secure the two feet of folders and bring them to my office. The PSNCO asked if I wanted them kept in the separate piles they were currently in. I told him no, there is no such thing as a late award in this brigade and got a very puzzled look from both him and the CSM.
They lugged the folders to my office and deposited them on my conference table. I divided the stack into thirds and gave each of us a stack. I told them to go through their stack and find award dates that were 30 days earlier than today’s date and all awards to be presented after today’s date. About half the folders met that criteria. The ones that were thirty days earlier than today’s date were pulled out and the PSNCO went to check to see if any of those soldiers were still in the brigade and hadn’t signed out of the unit yet. About half of them were still in the brigade.
Each folder had a recommendation form, a Department of the Army Form DA-638, and Awards Board Voting sheet, and a typed proposed citation for my signature if it was an Army Commendation Medal (ARCOM) or below; I was the approving authority for those. The vast majority of the recommendations were for ARCOM’s. I asked the CSM when was the last time the Awards Board had met and who was on it? He rather sheepishly replied that he couldn’t remember the last time the board had met and said there were two boards. All the unit CSM’s were on one board and made a recommendation to the final Awards Board which was comprised of himself and the brigade commander. I nodded in response but said nothing. I asked the CSM and PSNCO to put all of the pending awards for soldiers still in the brigade in one stack and put it on my desk. I thanked them for their time and dismissed them.
I sat down at my desk and went through what was probably one hundred and fifty awards requests for ARCOM’s. I sorted the stack to have those with the shortest lead time until the soldier departed on top. I read each citation thoroughly checking spelling, punctuation, typos, grammar and substance. This was a document that a soldier would proudly hang on his wall someday, so before I put my signature on it, it had to be right. I walked down to the PSNCO’s office and told him I needed his clerks to quit working on whatever they were doing and prepare to fix award citations as I proofread them. He quickly had his guys ready and as I found citations which had errors, they took them from my outbox and did the new citation. Of note, my newly discovered Church Lady former awards clerk had clearly not read the citations based upon the numbers of errors which is abundantly more important that letters of lateness.
I signed roughly fifty citations which were short fused that afternoon by about 1300. The remainder of the awards were still on my desk in chronological order of award dates. I found the award for the young engineer sergeant who told me about the lack of awards and signed the citation and the DA-638 which generates the actual award orders in the personnel system. I threw away all Awards Board voting sheets from each file as I went through them. I also found about seven others from that sergeant’s battalion who were leaving shortly for other assignments or leaving the Army. I called the engineer battalion commander, LTC Bill Bayles, and asked him if he could round up the eight soldiers in question and meet me in his motor pool in an hour. I asked his permission to allow me to present those awards to his soldiers which he readily agreed to.
When I got to the motor pool, the engineers had done it up right. We had the eight awardees standing by, all the companies in formation and the battalion colors present. Bill called the battalion to attention as I approached and proudly reported that 4th Engineer Battalion was present and accounted for and prepared for an awards ceremony. I returned Bill’s salute and told the soldiers to be at ease.
I explained to the soldiers that a young sergeant in their ranks had the courage to tell the brigade commander that his awards system was totally broken. I pointed the sergeant out and thanked him publicly for what he did. I then told the soldiers that I had discovered that we were indeed broken up at brigade and that it is now fixed. I promised them and every soldier in the brigade that if they deserved an award for service or achievement, they would receive that award in front of their peers before they departed the unit. I stated very clearly that there is no such thing as a late award in the 3d Brigade Combat Team unless it is an award that goes to higher headquarters for approval. We will always meet whatever timeline is required if it’s going up the chain. If somebody drops the ball and a deserving solider is leaving today and his award is not done, I will personally approve it on the spot if his chain of command recommended it. We’ll get his citation done to standard and do the DA-638. It is a matter of only a few well spent minutes to take care of soldiers.
After the awards ceremony, my courageous sergeant sought me out. He started to apologize for saying anything and I told him, no, he was absolutely right to do so, and I sincerely appreciated it. If he hadn’t said anything, it might have been several months before I figured out there was a problem and what the problem was. He seemed relieved and thanked me again for his award. I told him not to thank me, he had earned it!
As the CSM and I walked back to brigade headquarters, he asked me what I meant about there is no such thing as a late award? I shared with him my philosophy for awards which I had held since the first award I ever wrote for one of my soldiers. It’s very simple.
First of all, awards are free. We should not refuse to give them out and deny them to deserving soldiers through a misguided sense of parsimony or exclusivity; particularly if it is based upon rank. Just as officers and NCO’s like to get awards acknowledging their hard work and achievements, so do lower ranking soldiers. I have been in units where certain levels of awards are tied to certain ranks. As an example, in my battalion after I left command, one of the first sergeants received an Army Commendation Medal (ARCOM) on his retirement after 24 years of service. The post policy was that Meritorious Service Medals (MSM) went to captains and above and sergeants major. First sergeants weren’t eligible. I was long gone from the battalion but if I had still been there, this would not have happened. I would have gone to the post commanding general if that’s what it took to recognize this fine NCO. I’m sure there was a Church Lady involved somewhere in the process. I’m just as sure that if I asked the commanding general about this “policy” he would be totally unaware of it. He should have been aware of a problem, however, when he pinned an ARCOM on a first sergeant for 24 years of honorable service which was entirely inappropriate.
The second point I made to the CSM is that awards have to be timely to have any real meaning. I received an ARCOM in the mail a full year after I had left a unit. It didn’t mean much to me. It had been downgraded from an MSM because a new “policy” went into effect that captains can’t get MSM’s after I left. So it had been downgraded and then took a year to process. Not a very good awards program.
I told the CSM that every separate company and battalion in the brigade would render a monthly report effective immediately on the status of awards for personnel departing in the next 120 days. If they wanted to get a soldier an MSM, we had to comply with the post policy of 90 days out. This was to be a rolling report because soldiers deciding not to reenlist and those coming down on short notice orders needed to be accounted for as the occasion arose. All the more reason why we would not have a late policy. I wanted the subordinate units to review every single departing soldier and make a decision on an award, yes or no, and if yes, what level of award. And if no award, why not which was to go in the report by name as an exception. It’s too easy sometimes to just say no and avoid the work of award preparation. I didn’t want names in the monthly report other than the “no award” folks noted above, but I did want a statement from each respective commander that all soldiers had been reviewed for an award and how many awards of what type would be requested. The how many of what type was needed to ensure we had the actual medals on hand when presentation time came around.
I told him we would also no longer have awards boards. I believe that if a battalion commander and his command sergeant major recommend a soldier for an award, I am in no position to doubt their judgment. They know the soldier and most times, since there were over 4400 soldiers in the brigade combat team, I would not know the soldier. The CSM agreed that was true. The onus on the recommending unit was to ensure that the soldier was not overweight, not barred from reenlistment for poor performance or flagged for disciplinary action.
Finally, I told the CSM and the brigade S1 that all awards would go through the CSM to see if he could spot any awards that were inappropriate or going to an undeserving soldier that he may be aware of. Each award packet would have two pieces of paper in it; the awards citation and the Department of the Army Form DA-638. There was a place for the CSM to initial that form so I knew he had reviewed it. No award was to sit on anybody’s desk overnight to include my own. They were first priority over all other paperwork. The S1 was to review the citations for quality control purposes as noted above. He could retain awards on his desk overnight that he received from the CSM but was to have them in my inbox before I arrived for duty each day. I would not go home, regardless of the hour until all awards on my desk had been approved and signed or sent back for the citation to be fixed for errors.
Napoleon Bonaparte was a master of soldier leadership. He knew how to inspire, motivate and lead soldiers. He said two things about awards:
“A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.”
“Give me enough medals and I will win you any war.”
Both are true to a degree. Relevant combat power is of course always a factor in the last comment. But the point of the importance of awards and recognition for a soldier’s good performance or valor is timeless and goes back to the Roman legions and probably even earlier.
So an epiphany for some maybe, awards are important to soldiers; all soldiers, and the awards system in a unit or even a business has to be fair, timely and meaningful.
A lesson for aspiring leaders and commanders is that upon taking charge of a new unit or organization, whether military or civilian, review your processes and look for the Church Lady. I can assure you that she or he is in there someplace to a greater or lesser degree. And it goes beyond awards. In the Army processes like the enlisted promotion system, reenlistment, repair parts, supply accountability and procedures and any and all administrative functions need to be looked at upon taking charge of anything. This is the unglamorous side of soldiering and being a good leader but it is the difference between a good unit and a great unit that does all things well.
You may have more than just one Church Lady and the motivation of this type of person is self-empowerment. It is ego driven and the underlying cause is a feeling of powerlessness in some area of their lives. They compensate by wielding power over others through the application of meaningless requirements like letters of lateness and other bureaucratic procedures that do not facilitate the end product one iota. Personally, I think they all ought to be shot, but that’s not allowed of course. So instead, find them, fix them or remove them if they cannot be fixed. Even if they go to your church.