Prioritizing perfection, or at least the absence of allowable mistakes, within the modern U.S. military has impacted leadership culture.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants military officers to take risks again – and history may be on his side.
A case in point: the day a 31-year-old U.S. Army lieutenant assigned to hunt Mexican rebel general Pancho Villa was ordered to take 10 men and two cars to buy corn.
After dutifully securing the corn in the spring of 1916, 2nd Lt. George Patton went rogue.
He followed a hunch that Villa’s second-in-command was holed up in a nearby ranch.
Three horsemen burst forth from the ranch, setting off a flurry of gunfire. The outcome? Patton fatally shot Villa’s deputy. The future general triumphantly returned to headquarters with the rebel leader’s body strapped to the hood of his car.
This was neither the first nor the last time that Patton disobeyed an order. But in that era, Gen. John Pershing promoted the young officer instead of punishing him. When Pershing crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1917 to lead the American Expeditionary Force in the grinding trench warfare of World War I, he appointed Captain Patton to lead the force’s experimental tank school. Patton wrote the Army’s tank-fighting rules and ultimately became a decisive battlefield commander during World War II.
Hegseth invoked the steel-jawed general in both image and name in his Sept. 30 speech to the military’s generals and admirals at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia.
Standing before an American flag backdrop reminiscent of the opening speech in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1970 “Patton” biopic, Hegseth denounced “fat” and “woke” generals and said he was looking for the “Stockdales, the Schwarzkopfs, and the Pattons,” referencing a stoic Vietnam-era Navy leader and a Gulf War Army general both known for their no-nonsense approach. Hegseth went on to announce an understated but crucially important set of changes aimed at empowering hard-nosed leaders – and giving them chances to learn from their failures. In military terms, Hegseth was flagging that he intended to eliminate a problem he called a “zero-defect command culture.”
Military leaders have warned for decades that minor mistakes can destroy an officer’s career and discourage risk-taking and tough leadership – both considered vital on the battlefield. Under the policies in place before Hegseth’s announcement, minor issues that civilian HR offices would resolve through informal mediation can haunt leaders when they reach career milestones such as appearing before a promotion board.
Hegseth and others argue that today’s “Woke Department” military policies would axe rough-cut, hard-charging leaders such as Patton before they have the chance to reach their potential.
Culling the military system of such safeguards could create a significant risk if executed poorly, one expert told USA TODAY.
But Hegseth’s contention is shared by many. Prioritizing perfection, or at least the absence of mistakes, has impacted military leadership culture in many ways.
The Army’s own experts have acknowledged that its leaders are conditioned to fudge metrics and lie about training to remain in good standing. U.S. military leaders responsible for training government troops in Afghanistan even submitted rosy reports about the Afghan military’s ability to stand on its own against the Taliban as well.
“A blemish-free record is what peacetime leaders covet the most, which is the worst of all incentives,” Hegseth told the generals during his speech. “We as senior leaders need to end the poisonous culture of risk aversion.”
Hegseth’s Defense Department, which he has restyled as the Department of War, is ready for its leaders to take leaps of faith when the circumstances warrant.
Mistakes, complaints and promotions
The secretary issued several policy memos concurrent with his address aimed at overhauling the inspector general and equal opportunity complaint processes as part of his push to produce more Pattons. He also directed reforms to a program that centrally tracks officers’ mistakes and summarizes them for promotion boards.
“The current adverse information policy has too often resulted in unproven allegations being considered adverse information, cumulative penalties for a single event, procedural redundancies, and unnecessary administrative burdens,” Hegseth said in the memo.
Hegseth’s crusade against zero-defect leadership culture isn’t a new idea, said Mark Cancian, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and retired Marine Corps colonel. He told USA TODAY that “the theory” behind the reforms “is sound and supported by many military officers, but the implementation will be critical.”
Military leaders have long bemoaned how savvy individuals can weaponize the Pentagon’s inspector general and equal opportunity complaint systems.
Through these channels, anonymous complaints about workplace behavior can halt a service member’s career, blocking promotions and professional development opportunities amid investigations, even after watchdogs ultimately find the charges unfounded.
The head of the Army’s law school, Brig. Gen. Terri Erisman wrote a law review article in 2020 denouncing how “these processes can be weaponized to deflect allegations of misconduct or to inflict revenge for just discipline.”
For example, a soldier awaiting punishment for poor behavior might seek phony whistleblower protections by alleging their supervisor or commander is toxic or discriminatory. Or if the punishment has already occurred, the soldier might seek revenge through a complaint.
Doug O’Connell, a Texas-based attorney and retired Army Special Forces colonel, detailed one case involving one of his clients, a flight medic decorated for combat valor, who lost a promotion due to an equal opportunity complaint one of his male soldiers made after O’Connell’s client criticized him for running slower than a female soldier during a fitness event.
Old school officers like O’Connell believe that the Army and other military branches have overzealously pushed back against “toxic leadership” in the ranks. They fear that tough leaders are getting pushed out as collateral damage in the fight against truly abusive leaders.
Hegseth has described this phenomenon as forcing leaders to “walk on eggshells.” However, he noted that his department would rigorously prosecute allegations of bona fide discrimination and misconduct by leadership.
Investigations slow, can have harsh consequences
Investigations by the inspector general, the Pentagon’s independent watchdog, can take years to resolve, such as that of now-retired Army Brig. Gen. Jonathan Howerton. The one-star general was leading the White House Military Office when a handful of employees first complained about his leadership style in January 2020.
After nearly three years, interviews with 39 current and former staffers, and reviews of 800,000-plus documents and more than 63,000 photos and screenshots, investigators dinged Howerton in December 2022 for minor infractions: cursing in the workplace, making a lewd gesture with a replica artillery round and submitting a handful of official expenses he paid for using a personal credit card rather than his government travel card.
The one-star general, who was pending promotion to major general, disputed the allegations and told investigators their report “mischaracterizes his conduct and leadership.” But the flimsy findings stood.
Howerton told USA TODAY that Army leaders gave him a verbal reprimand. But his promotion was canceled because the investigation took too long, setting him years behind his peers. Rather than competing again for promotion, Howerton opted to retire with honors in 2023 and enter the private sector.
High risk, high reward
Cancian detailed the concrete risk in the reforms Hegseth is pursuing. He highlighted Hegseth’s advocacy, during his years as a Fox News host, for war criminals such as former Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who was acquitted of allegations he fatally stabbed a wounded ISIS prisoner in Mosul, Iraq, although he was convicted of posing for photos with the man’s corpse.
“Will this protect people from excessive restrictions and allow them to do things that might be an error, but done in good faith? Or is this just a way to allow abuses?” Cancian wondered. “I worry about the latter.”
Critics of the loosening of standards also point to the ongoing Pentagon inspector general investigation into Hegseth’s alleged communication of classified information via the Signal messaging app. They argue that the Pentagon chief is trying to kneecap a key independent watchdog to avoid oversight. The watchdog’s independence could mean that Hegseth’s reforms would need to move through Congress before taking effect.
But the push against perfection could upend a system wherein an ill-timed or lukewarm performance evaluation or a minor reprimand could spell doom for an officer’s career. Cancian argued that larger military personnel systems, such as performance evaluations and promotion boards, are to blame for zero-defect culture, and Hegseth needs to go further if he wants to truly address the issue.
The scale of the military bureaucracy and the evaluation-driven promotion system fueled “this enormous arms race of making good people look like Superman,” Cancian said. Anything less is “the kiss of death” for their career, he added.
Evaluations for top performers read as hagiographies. Middling officers receive so-called velvet daggers – key phrases such as “promotes with peers” or “performs capably” – that tacitly betray their mediocrity without triggering due process rights.
Officer promotion boards across the military are a highly sanitized and industrial affair. Board members sit in front of computer screens and hurriedly review documents summarizing each candidate’s career: the medals they’ve received, their performance evaluations, and any “adverse information” contained in military databases.
Most boards consider hundreds, if not thousands, of officers for promotion, and senior enlisted troops also come before similar boards. Most candidates’ files get no more than a few minutes of review. And under those conditions, “adverse information” stands out and makes it easy to decide against promoting an officer.
Under the current talent management regime, Cancian said, “Even if you’re going to give second chances, you’re talking about someone who’s going to be given a second chance in a system where everyone else has a perfect record, and they’re going to have a hard time competing.”
Without a meaningful way to distinguish talented officers amid the faceless churn of a promotion board, it is easy to cast aside those who have made mistakes.
Hegseth is pushing to change that culture in President Donald Trump’s second administration. He tapped an ex-Marine lieutenant colonel, Stuart Scheller, to lead a comprehensive review of the military’s officer promotion, evaluation and selection programs.
Scheller was drummed out of the Corps via forced resignation after a court-martial convicted him of charges stemming from a series of social media videos in which he publicly called for accountability among senior leaders during the chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Cancian questioned whether Scheller has the credibility to lead such a crucial reform push. It’s also unclear how much influence the former lieutenant colonel holds: Hegseth’s office told USA TODAY in September that Scheller was not involved in the decision to terminate an NFL Combine-style event for evaluating and selecting Army battalion commanders that includes a fitness test and a psychological assessment.
Meanwhile, opponents of zero-defect culture question whether officers who survive in today’s system have the gumption and risk-taking instincts to win the next big war.
Such considerations have mattered in the past.
In 1908, a 23-year-old Navy officer ran the USS Decatur, a destroyer with a crew of 75 men, aground while entering a harbor in the Philippines.
The ensign, who had neglected to check the tides before entering the harbor, immediately reported his failure to his superiors, who fired him and hauled him before a court-martial. He was convicted of failing in his duties and received a formal reprimand.
But the convicted officer, Chester Nimitz, continued his career under a less punishing military system. An admiral who signed a report on the incident said Nimitz “is a good officer and will take more care in the future.”
Once forgiven, Nimitz went on to become a five-star admiral and led U.S. military forces to their greatest victories of World War II in the Pacific theater.