{"id":31311,"date":"2012-08-08T08:39:52","date_gmt":"2012-08-08T12:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=31311"},"modified":"2012-08-08T08:42:51","modified_gmt":"2012-08-08T12:42:51","slug":"mda-gets-new-director-apparently-for-good-reason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=31311","title":{"rendered":"MDA Gets New Director, Apparently For Good Reason"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rank has its privileges. To an extent, that\u2019s as it should be.<\/p>\n<p>But sometimes, those in high positions abuse their positions and their authority. To me, it\u2019s particularly galling when they do so through abusing their subordinates. And as the case of our recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=30273\">Johnson of an adulterous former Brigade Commander<\/a> shows, sometimes they get away with being abusive for a while before getting nailed for other reasons.<\/p>\n<p>However, every once and a while an abusive senior leader gets fired simply for being an asshole. And it seems that\u2019s happened at MDA.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/news\/2012\/08\/army-oreilly-replaced-syring-mda-080612\">SECDEF has announced that LTG Patrick O\u2019Reilly, Director of the Missile Defense Agency, is being replaced<\/a> and will retire. His replacement will be RADM James D. Syring, who has also been nominated for promotion to Vice Admiral.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently LTG O\u2019Reily was a . . . real piece of work. According to a recent DoD IG Report, LTG O\u2019Reily reportedly \u201cengaged in a leadership style that was inconsistent with standards of senior Army leaders and a violation of military [ethics] regulations.\u201d Examples given were<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>yelled at subordinates in public and private<\/li>\n<li>demeaning and belittling employees<\/li>\n<li>behaved so poorly that six employees quit<\/li>\n<li>loudly attacking senior staff members on a personal rather than professional level<\/li>\n<li>telling a senior official over the phone, \u201cIf I could get my hands through the phone right now, I\u2019d choke your f\u2014-ing throat.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Really classy behavior, general.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, I understand that individual leadership styles vary.\u00a0 Yeah, I understand that a leader sometimes has to be an asshole towards a few who just don&#8217;t &#8220;get it&#8221;.\u00a0 And yeah &#8211; I understand the need to &#8220;kick ass and take names&#8221; sometimes, even at very senior levels.<\/p>\n<p>But there\u2019s a right &#8211; and a wrong &#8211; way to do that. And attacking subordinates publicly, on a personal level, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">ain\u2019t<\/span> the right way to do it. What I learned was &#8220;praise in public; chew ass in private; and don&#8217;t get personal.&#8221;\u00a0 It sounds to me like O&#8217;Reily was rather out of control.\u00a0 IMO, the Army probably did the right thing in \u201cencouraging\u201d O&#8217;Reily to retire \u2013 now.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously the DoD IG &#8211; and senior DoD leadership &#8211; agrees.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe O\u2019Reily \u201ccaught the PTSD\u201d worrying about how that next BMD test would turn out. If so, maybe the VA can get him into an anger management class or two during his retirement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rank has its privileges. To an extent, that\u2019s as it should be. But sometimes, those in &hellip; <a title=\"MDA Gets New Director, Apparently For Good Reason\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=31311\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">MDA Gets New Director, Apparently For Good Reason<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}