Prevention vs. Cure: A New Military Mission and a New Model for Veteran Success

Photo courtesy of Joel L. A. Peterson

Co-authored by Augusto "Gus" Giacoman

The Alarm
It was posted on Facebook.

One of the authors of this article vividly recalls the gut-kick shock he felt when learning that one of the first soldiers he'd led had committed suicide as a civilian.

That soldier had been one of the best men any officer had the privilege to lead -- a soldier who could and did excel far beyond others. He was mature, smart, and dedicated. Now, 9 years later, something had clearly failed him and he was gone. His death was -- for one of us personally and tragically, but for both of us equally -- a chilling, alarming cry for change.

Something is wrong with our military service and transition system and we need to fix it.

Troubling Data
Post 9/11 veterans commit suicide more, are homeless more, and are jobless more than their civilian counterparts. Underscoring these bleak outcomes, top policy makers have noted that the "evidence appears to be that [serving in the military] is not an advantage." Supporting this conclusion, data shows that military veterans tend to earn lower wages over time than counterparts who have not served.

These statistics are even more striking when you consider that the military is extremely selective. Only a third of the nations' young people are qualified to join, because of stringent standards around education, fitness levels, physical and mental health, and lack of criminality. And while waivers are sparingly granted for some of these factors, the overall applicant pool can be described as elite in comparison with their peers in the general population.


Photo courtesy of Gus Giacoman

The young men and women who join the military represent some of the highest quality of human capital our society offers. Further, they are honed by the skills gained in the military, creating what one would assume to be even higher human capital and potential. A service member may learn a range of technical skills in a wide variety of fields. Underlying these technical skills are the leadership, maturity, persistence, dependability, and teamwork for which service members are well known.

However, when a service member leaves the military, these statistics reverse dramatically.

Why?
The causes of veteran suicide, homelessness, college dropout rates, and joblessness are assumed to be complex with many factors deemed to be the underlying drivers of problems with the transition to civilian life, including access to further education, negative stereotyping, loss of a sense of belonging and professional as well as personal mission, and post trauma disorders.

Therefore, out of genuine care and concern, a host of programs have been created and implemented in an attempt to address each of these assumed contributing factors. Factors which individually and collectively are creating what is increasingly perceived to be an inherent veteran "problem" centered around transition.

Each is attempting to correct an assumed deficit, gap, or misperception regarding or implicit within the veteran population. In other words, there seems to be an unvoiced consensus that there are problems within each veteran -- and the veteran population as a group -- that must be solved or mitigated; that veterans are somehow broken and victims.

We disagree. We argue that there is nothing inherently "broken" in veterans, but there may be something broken in the system.

The Machine Is Broken, Not the Man
We suggest that a pervasive underlying, systemic cause may exist. And that it may be our military's antiquated personnel system. Recently called a "polaroid in the time of digital cameras," our current system has evolved by default rather than by design. It was built in an era that was pre-information age, more agrarian and manufacturing centered, where drafted men of varying ages either had a skill set before joining or, as veterans, became part of a booming economy where work was far easier to find without extensive education, during a time when a vast population of prior veterans were running that economy and its businesses.

Now, veterans face a rapidly changing, information and service oriented, technology driven, global economy which demands more educated, adaptable, and socially skilled workers with shrinkingly few who share or appreciate any of their military experience.

Not only do the jobs themselves demand more education and skills, getting a job frequently requires a network of friends and associates. The growing civilian / military divide almost guarantees that a military base will be far from a city, limiting the opportunity for a service member to develop a strong civilian network. Moreover, the demanding pace of training and deployments limits opportunities to network outside military circles.

Thus, service members are structurally disadvantaged in the civilian labor market.


Photo courtesy of Joel L. A. Peterson

The current military personnel system is limited in its intent and design to equip service members with the skills, credentials, and network necessary to thrive as a civilian. The military spends six months to one or more years training civilian recruits for their military work. A recruit then spends the remainder of his or her time in an active duty unit, with minimal time (sometimes only a few weeks) dedicated to transitioning back to being a civilian.

This is not enough; the lack of time and resources to this crucial step inadvertently results in discharging accomplished service members and too many become alienated veterans with limited support, limited civilian networks, limited opportunities, and often lacking immediately applicable skills, experience, or credentials recognized by civilian businesses and society.

It is important to emphasize that this is an inadvertent result.

Not one of our dedicated military leaders would ever intentionally set out to create the growing, existing transition issues. Unintended it may be, but it needs to be fixed.

Uncoordinated Incentives and Sub-Optimization
In business, if an enterprise creates incentives within organizational "stove-pipes" rather than across the whole, the overall optimization of the enterprise and its elements suffers. As in many organizations the world over, misaligned incentives, or incentives that do not benefit the whole, are visible across the military structure as well.

For example, recruiters are incented to hit target numbers, drill sergeants are incented to get service members through basic training, commanders are incented to keep people in their units, and out-processors are incented to ensure service members are smoothly and efficiently separated from active duty.

There is no material part of the military aimed at optimizing across the full life cycle of the service member as a human capital asset who should be optimized not just for military service, but also for success after military service.


Photo courtesy of Gus Giacoman

The Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) and many private / public partnerships, like Onward to Opportunity (O2O) and various Department of Defense (DoD) Skillbridge Groups, are focused on helping veterans. These groups are to be applauded and are making important strides. However, the VA's efforts are essentially focused on "curing" veteran problems rather than preventing them. Moreover, the few programs which actually start during active duty are highly limited; despite best efforts, less than fully coordinated amongst each; and must be "sold" to installation commanders and are often seen as disruptive to that commander's military manpower needs.

Shift to Full Life Cycle Success
Instead, we urge a new model, which could be embedded in the current structural reform of the military personnel system. The military should view a service member's potential transition as their last and most lasting mission. A possible approach could be to create "Warrior Transition Units" which are focused solely on ensuring a service member has a successful transition, not just an efficient one, and these units would be every separating service member's last duty assignment; a required, legitimate part of every service member's military career.

The main component of this duty assignment would be a civilian internship of several months. This internship would build upon the military specialty of the service member. For example, a military nurse could do an internship in a partnering civilian hospital.

The service member would not only learn the additional or differentiated skills necessary for success in the civilian world but also begin to build a civilian network and the critical social and cultural skills which differ dramatically with the military's. At the end of the internship, the service member could transition out of the service and join the civilian population, maybe even within that specific business or institution where they interned.

Alternatively, the service member may decide to stay in the military after the internship is complete. With this new model -- a full life cycle approach to the military's high value human capital -- a service member could find out before he or she leaves the service that he or she may prefer to stay in the military.

The opportunity to offer service members genuine marketability as well as insight into whether military or civilian life may better suit them, at no detriment to their military careers, is a critical one which no existing program is able to offer. Those electing to stay in the military would be more committed and would bring their broader, flexible civilian skills into their military jobs, crucial in a changing world where the military's missions have grown more complex, requiring close coordination with civilian communities, and often short of war.

Costs Can Be Mitigated
This new model would have a cost in time and money, but we suggest that it may be far less expensive than the staggering amounts of "cure" resources that are currently mobilized to solve the veteran "problem." And the costs could be mitigated.


Photo courtesy of Joel L. A. Peterson

The time lost to active military mission availability could be counter-balanced through longer enlistments as a requisite for internships and transition preparation being built into a service member's base military career. And monetary costs could be offset by requiring the appropriate provisioning of training and internships as part of defense contractor agreements and as a prerequisite for the opportunity to do business with any part of the DoD or VA.

In 2013, the DoD paid $312 billion to defense contractors. Surely requiring they provide internships to services members as well as awarding contracts partially based on numbers of and the levels at which veterans are employed by a contractor is not unreasonable.

Veteran Success as a National Resource
We firmly believe that our military's leadership is dedicated to its service members, all of whom are volunteers and represent some of the best of our society. We believe our military leaders want to see them succeed in and out of the service. Our nation is grateful to its veterans and shares this desire to see them thrive in the civilian workplace and society, contributing the high quality human potential they possess.

We want their success, not just because they represent a tremendous national resource, but mostly because they are our sons and daughters, wives and husbands, fathers and mothers -- and our neighbors and friends.

However, the reality is that too many veterans currently are not thriving and are under contributing. And too many are dying.

They are not victims, but they bear the burden and the brunt of unintended repercussions from deficits in a system that was not designed within -- or for -- the 21st Century, its economy, its increasingly complex military missions, and the current realities of transition.

Prevention vs. Cure and a New Military Mission
We suggest that a solution could be in creating a new model -- focused on prevention vs. cure -- one that retains and enhances the military's mission effectiveness, but additionally may prevent or mitigate transition issues by addressing an underlying systemic cause and treating a service member's success after the military as equally critical as any military mission.

It would be a most worthy new mission and a seminal contribution our military could offer the society it defends and serves.


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About the authors:

Gus Giacoman is a director at PWC (PriceWaterhouseCoopers). A West Point graduate, he served two combat tours in Iraq and is the co-founder of service2school.org, a non-profit that assists veterans gain admission into colleges and graduate schools.


Joel L. A. Peterson, a former naval officer and corporate executive, is founder & CEO of Student Planning Services, LLC, an education support services company that offers education success assistance to all ages and families, including veterans.

Peterson is also the national award-winning author of the novel, "Dreams of My Mothers" (Huff Publishing Associates, March, 2015).

"Compelling, candid, exceptionally well written, "Dreams Of My Mothers" is a powerful read that will linger in the mind and memory long after it is finished. Very highly recommended."
-- Midwest Book Review

-- 1st Place Winner, 2015 Readers' Favorite National Book Awards (Gold Award)

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