BG HR McMaster: Allow active mistakes, but don’t tolerate errors of passivity

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on April 13, 2010.

"Commanders and senior civilian officers must be willing to underwrite mistakes," Army Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster wrote in his paper. "Mistakes of commission should be tolerated, passivity should not."

I think he is right — this distinction is something the Army needs to work on. Too often it has an incentive structure that punishes mistakes but not indecision or passivity. McMaster’s comment struck me as remarkably similar to Warren Buffett‘s statement in his latest annual report that I quoted recently, that at his company, "We would rather suffer the visible costs of a few bad decisions than incur the many invisible costs that come from decisions made too slowly — or not at all — because of a stifling bureaucracy."  

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