Want to be Innovative? Be a leader

It is my opinion, but our doctrine is at odds with our culture. We preach adapatability, but one ill advised act can/will end your career as the military currently has a zero defect mentality.
Adapatability works great in remote locations, but not so well in a linear hierarchy. I think it is common that we sometimes receive unpopular orders and as loyal subordinates we execute as if it is our own. However, sometimes we are also duty bound to inform our superiors about why it is a bad decision and they may or may not agree. However, when they don't agree we execute. A system that requires obedience of lawful orders, may have some innovation issues. I guess the innovation will come in deciding how to execute to intent, while minimizing the damage or impact. The most important leaders are first line supervisors and the further you get from the troops the more you fail to realize how well intended decisions can actually have terrible unintended consequences.

A story I like to tell involves three monkeys. They are part of an experiment with a ladder and a banana suspended from the ceiling. So a monkey climbs the ladder and grabs the banana and as a consequence all the monkeys are sprayed with a freezing hose. Repeat a few times and they will beat the crap out of a monkey going for the banana as they learned their lesson. Over time you rotate the monkeys out until eventually you have three new monkeys. Now all of them see the banana, but none of them know why they don't grab it, they just don't. This is kind of like the military, because rules and regulations say not to grab the banana, but the justification doesn't make sense to anyone.

I second CPT Gonalez's comments regarding the zero defect environment. I believe that there is a fundamental problem with a system that eliminates officers that make a mistake rather than reinforce lessons learned from it. When decisions to promote or retain on active duty are dependent on OERs & NCOERs where any statement that is less than an inflated platitude, there is little chance of honesty or retaining lessons learned. Consequently, it is a system that relies more on doctrine than experience to define leadership. This places a challenge in the path of those who would innovate.

That being said, there is plenty of opportunity to lead and the style of leadership you propose in the article is most likely to solve unique problems and develop leaders. Challenges presented by the system should not be a reason to avoid effective leadership.

A thought regarding leadership that I have developed from my years as an NCO, officer, and corporate senior manager: if you don't lose your sense of self in the act of leading, you're doing it wrong.