Corps Values

How do you teach generic leadership? There are no rules, no checklists, no set processes that apply to any but the most rote of situations, says Lee. Instead, the Basic School tries to hone decision making the way a chess master does: through exposure to as many scenarios as possible, so that the brain learns to recognize patterns it can apply to entirely new situations. That's how Lee solved his ship-securing problem, and that, claims Lee, is how all good managers solve the toughest challenges. Sea stories are the very best way to get those scenarios across, he says. At the Basic School, nearly 300 hours over the six months are set aside for captain instructors to break off with small groups of lieutenants specifically for the purpose of sharing such stories. Call it an oral, informal case-study method, in which people's lives are staked on the outcome.

Extreme Training
"The fight's on," rumbles Colonel Thomas Moore as he surveys the cramped, rocking room. "How're y'all doin'?" The responses, and Moore's responses to the responses, vary from sounds that approximate, variously, a seal bark, a warthog growl, a foghorn, and, most frequently and rather loudly, "hoo-rah." Apparently, the meeting is in order.

We are in the bowels of the amphibious-assault ship Tarawa, where many of the marines' theories on decentralization and decision making are about to be put to the test in the time-honored tradition of a full-scale exercise. The players are the members of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable), or MEU(SOC), under Moore's command.

In direct contrast to the classic image of military organizations as rigid bureaucracies, the Marine Corps' working structure is in fact vastly more malleable than those of most businesses. Though like any military service, the marines are broken down for administrative purposes into divisions and battalions and the like, such traditional segmentations rarely seem to come up in conversations about how the marines function. Instead, the marines think in terms of more-fluid, customizable groupings. At the heart of the groupings is the Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF), a unit of no set size that draws together various marine groups into a tightly integrated force capable of carrying out a major operation, be it an invasion, an evacuation, or a relief mission. As a practical matter, the smallest MAGTF is a MEU, which generally consists of about three (of course) ships' worth of marines, jets, helicopters, weapons, and supplies. MEUs are floating crisis-reaction forces; stationed in the western Pacific and the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, they can be on the scene and in full action within hours of a summons for help. Colonel Moore's MEU is one of three (of course) 2,200-person West Coast MEUs that are constantly being reorganized using the pool of marines at Camp Pendleton and at Camp LeJeune, in North Carolina. Marines in MEUs like to call themselves "the pointy tip of the spear."

Before Moore's MEU can be deployed, it has to get through two days of evaluation exercises, during which it will have to carry out a staggering 27 missions, ranging from assaults to airlifts to humanitarian assistance. The goal is to make the exercises more demanding than anything these marines are likely to see in a real crisis. The marines know roughly what sort of tasks the exercises will address, but until the exercises begin they are clueless about the exact missions, the order in which the missions will hit, and the obstacles that will be thrown at them.

It is 8 p.m., just after the first three mission orders have been radioed to the Tarawa. One order calls for the marines to set up a humanitarian-aid operation in a poor country that has been devastated by floods, leading to starvation and disease. A second order calls for seizing a heavily guarded cache of weapons kept by terrorists, and a third directs the marines to recover a downed pilot. Each order has been parceled out to a separate, quickly thrown together "crisis action team" consisting of about 12 people. Moore, who drops in on the teams in turn, is currently visiting the humanitarian-assistance team.

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