Thursday, September 15, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Military News: Marine Dakota Meyer To Receive The Medal Of Honor
Outstanding news and I am glad to see Dakota be recognized for his actions. I was also interested in his statement about what he has been up to since he has left the Marines. In this video below, he mentioned that he was contracting? Very cool and I certainly hope that whatever company he is working for, is doing a good job at taking care of him and his co-workers? Because if said company has been poorly treating this Marine and his co-workers, you are soon to get a whole bunch of negative attention and press placed on how poorly you treated a national hero. Not that this is the case, but I figured I would mention this just as a reminder of why ‘taking care of your people’ is one of the best business practices out there. Semper Fi. –Matt
Edit: Hey, thanks to Federico on FB for sending me this link. I guess Dakota works at Ausgar Technologies.
Meyer took a job with Ausgar Technologies, a military contractor based in San Diego. He travels from Kentucky to bases across the U.S., spending most of his time training snipers on optics.
Meyer said he sometimes thinks about re-enlisting, but thinks better of it because he has a supportive girlfriend who has read all the investigative reports and saw “the aftermath” of his deployment.
“I don’t know if I’d want to do that to her,” he said. “It’s hard to find a girlfriend who can put up with waking up in the middle of the night the way I do sometimes.”
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Media News: Sergeant Moore’s Social Coup
This is actually pretty interesting if you take a step back and see what has really happened here. The back story is that a Marine named Sgt. Moore originally posted a youtube video to ask actress Mila Kunis to be his date for the Marine Corps Ball. This ball is a celebration of the Marine Corps Birthday that is held every year, and she accepted! Good for Sgt. Moore and Semper Fi.
Now how is this a ‘social coup d’etat’? In reality, Mila Kunis and this Marine would never purposely seek one another out, just because of the vastly different social circumstances of each party. Mila is a celebrity in Hollywood, and Sgt. Moore is serving in Afghanistan. Actresses typically do not go to Afghanistan to specifically date military men. They might go there for a USO tour, but not to find dates. And socially and even economically, both the celebrity and soldier live in some very different worlds. Now of course this date does not mean that they are now connected at the hip and actually interested in one another. But they both are certainly going to be hanging out for one night together at this ball, and that is pretty cool. I could even see Hollywood making some show about the whole thing. Who knows?….
But it is this collision of two very different worlds that grabs my interest, and it is cool to check out the dynamics of how it happened and snowballed. Youtube is a tool that anyone can use, and the potential for a video to go viral or be passed around and seen by a lot of people, is open to anyone with a good idea. I first learned about this video on Facebook, because someone watched it, and passed it around on FB. Guess what, I passed it around as well. The thought of a celebrity going to the Marine Ball with this Marine, was a cool idea and everyone was very supportive of this Marine’s gumption to post such a thing. It is that image of a actress and Marine, going to the ball together, which has created the viral effect of the idea itself.
Once this idea came out, and people agreed with it and celebrated the idea, then guess what? People support what they help to create, and Facebook/Twitter/blogs etc. all allows people to pass around the idea and show their support for it. They also know that the more people they pass around this idea too, will equate to them being rewarded with a ‘thanks’ and a ‘like’ out there in the world of cyber democracies. Passing around a good idea, makes you a ‘good idea’ within your online community. That is the incentive, and everyone wants to be the purveyor of good ideas within their social networks. That is why I passed it around on my Facebook account, and that is why my friends passed it around as well.
It get’s better, because now you have this massive viral video explosion going on in the social networks of the world, and meanwhile, little ol’ Mila Kunis has no idea what is about to hit her. When you watch the video where she found out about this video and invitation, she was shocked and had no idea how to respond until her co-host Justin Timberlake clued into the big picture and said ‘this needs to happen’ wink, wink. She said she would go, and that is what sealed it.
I am sure afterwards she was contacting her PR guy and trying to figure out what happened. They have also clued into the fact that if she does not go, that it would be extremely negative publicity for her. But the main point here is that Sgt. Moore performed a social coup, and was able to get this celebrity elite to go on a date with him to the Marine Ball! A celebrity that would have never had connected with this Marine within the normal societal rules and structures we live in today. Hell, for all we know, Kunis might be an anti-war, thumb her nose at soldiers, Hollywood liberal. But that doesn’t matter if true, because she will be the bad guy now if she doesn’t go.
Finally, this little incident has inspired others (mimicry strategy), because another female Marine named Corporal De Santis has asked Justin Timberlake to accompany her on a date via youtube to the Marine Ball. lol I speculate that he will go, just because if he doesn’t, he will look like a hypocrite for telling Kunis to go and not going himself. Plus, it is all good PR for the movie that Kunis and Timberlake are promoting called Friends With Benefits. The Marines benefit from this PR as well. Stuff like this makes Hollywood happy too if these leads to more revenue and an increase in star power for these two actors. The power of viral videos and social media, continues to amaze me. –Matt
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Industry Talk: Boredom And Contractors–The Good And The Bad
Military boredom has been studied since World War II by a variety of researchers. A common conclusion is that boredom leads to alienation and then resentment and anger.
The findings of the current study take on added significance given the “non-kinetic” nature of much of the Marines’ counter-insurgency mission in Afghanistan.
Few troops will see active combat. But nearly all will be assigned tasks — standing post, providing security for convoys, repairing vehicles or other equipment, manning communication gear, handling administrative chores — that, while important, are not the kind of activities that attract young men and women to enlist in the Marine Corps.
The challenge, the researchers said, is for commanders to maintain the morale of their troops by emphasizing the importance of the mission. Highfill-McRoy is a specialist in the methodology of health research; Booth-Kewley is a psychologist.
How am I choosing to use boredom? Recent research reveals that our brains need a certain amount of downtime, that is, boredom, in order to be productive. Those moments when our minds wander are the moments that give us breakthrough thinking, insight and innovation. Reaching for the Blackberry when you’re stuck in a line-up, or processing e-mail during tedious meetings: these activities displace the former vacancies from which aha! moments once emerged. This is the year to commit to a minimum RDA of boredom, to foster habits that keep you from filling every moment with productive or engaging activity.
Now this is interesting. I have found two schools of thought in regards to boredom and I think they both have application to this industry.
The first connection I wanted to make was how some of today’s veterans that seek work as security contractors in this industry expect to be involved in the same kind of combat or kinetic operations that they were in in the military. The truth of the matter is is that most security contracting is exactly what would be classified as boring to the Marines in the study mentioned in the quote up top. “Standing post, providing security for convoys, repairing vehicles or other equipment, manning communication gear, handling administrative chores” are exactly the kinds of jobs that contractors are hired to perform.
The industry also seeks out individuals with extensive combat histories and highly specialized backgrounds, and yet they are only required to stand guard at some FOB or remote site, be a shift leader for TCN or LN guard forces, or perform basic convoy operations. For some guys, this is a nice break from their prior deployments in the military, but for others, you can just tell that security contracting is not for them. lol
Another group of contractors you might see would be former military folks or non-military with very little to no combat history, or they might be one of those types similar to the Marines mentioned in this first article. Because they were so aggravated in the military or past job by their non-kinetic operations (or their extremely boring post), that they come to the security contracting industry expecting something different with more action. When they see that it is actually more boring than they experienced in their prior deployments in the military or whatever job, you can only imagine what kinds of behavior you might expect with that kind of combination. Some learn to adjust, but others fail.
So does this mix of personalities and low-kinetic environments in war zones lead to possible incidents within our industry? Maybe. It is an interesting thought, and it would be interesting to do a similar study about the current wartime security contracting industry. Because this might explain why we continue to see embarrassing incidents arise from time to time due to contractors behaving badly out there. It could also explain some of the issues contractors have at the home front. (divorces, money issues, etc.)
Now for the good part of boredom. Often times out in the field, guys will fill the down time with activity on their computers. But they still have to be out on post or on a convoy for their duties, far from access to a computer. Plus their attention needs to be focused on some gate or the road or whatever. These are the mindless activities that require discipline, vigilance and focus, and yet lead to some serious boredom. Just staring out into the desert or ocean, or at some gate or warehouse for hours on end….. Pure boredom.
What is good about this boredom though is that guys are able to have those ‘a ha’ moments, because that duty actually allows them to have the “breakthrough thinking, insight and innovation”. It is really cool for those of us that are constantly online reading, researching, writing a blog, gaming, or doing online classes. You can really keep busy if you are immersed in all that technology. Having a break can be nice and it can allow you to think.
For this blog I often come up with all sorts of things when I have down time or doing some kind of boring activity. I think of stuff while on post, driving, running, you name it. But like the quote mentioned, you have to make time for boredom if you want your brain to process. At home or even overseas, that can be tough when you have a smart phone in your pocket, or a computer in your bag that you can always browse with or play games with.
So for those contractors out there reading this, the time spent on your lonely post or doing road work, could actually be a good thing if you are able to look at in a ‘glass half full’ kind of way. You are not only focused on providing security or driving, but you are also allowing your brain to ‘incubate, illuminate‘. Because the ‘saturation’ phase might have happened the night before or whenever.
In other words, that non-kinetic security contractor job that might seem boring, could actually be a perfect opportunity for you to innovate, create, and come up with some amazing solutions to complex problems. Or you can let the boredom of your job get to you, and you do something stupid on the job or act out aggressively in order to alleviate that boredom or lack of action on your contract. Stuff to think about and as Sun Tzu says “know yourself“. –Matt
War zone boredom for Marines can lead to misbehavior when they return home, study finds
Social Medai in 2011: Six Choices You Need to Make
War zone boredom for Marines can lead to misbehavior when they return home, study finds
By Tony Perry
May 21, 2010
It’s long been assumed — correctly — that a Marine who experiences the psychological trauma of combat in Iraq or Afghanistan has an increased chance of getting into trouble when he comes home.
But two researchers at the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego have found another deployment experience that can be an even greater precursor of future bad behavior: boredom.
A survey of 1,543 Marines at Camp Pendleton, Twentynine Palms and the Marine base in Okinawa, Japan, found that the Marine most likely to disobey orders, get into physical confrontations, neglect his family or run afoul of the police is the one who reports that his war zone deployment was marked by boredom.
Dr. Stephanie Booth-Kewley and Robyn Highfill-McRoy, of the research center’s behavioral sciences and epidemiology department, reported on their study to the Navy and Marine Corps Combat & Operational Stress Conference this week in San Diego. Their findings may later be published in the journal Aggressive Behavior.