Choosing To Serve

Should you still do it?

I think service is good for you, primarily as a beating to your ego. To choose to put your immediate needs second to others is a useful ability and an aid to humility. Any form of service can do this, from volunteering, to sweeping the streets, to joining the military. Paid service is still service, it’s just that society benefits from your ego getting a hammering daily.

Professions that we tend to think of as ‘service professions’ like the emergency services or the military carry the risk of personal injury and death, so we’ve always treated them with slightly more reverence. There is an expectation that when everything is falling apart, people in these professions will be the ones who do not fall apart, that they will be the scaffold holding it all together when required. The public have always, even begrudgingly for some, treated them with reasonable respect for that reason.

As professions they have specific core functions and focus’s that cannot be changed. The Military must be able to take life, the Police must enforce the law without fear of favour and the Fire and Health Services must save life - obviously with the emergency services we expect some crossover. Anything that waters down the core functions makes them less effective, their people less able to be professional. Politics is cancer for these professions.

For the Police all that should matter is has the individual (or group) you’re dealing with broken the law.

For the Dr/Nurse all that should matter is treating the patient.

For the Fire Service it should be extracting people from danger and putting any fires out.

Although though directed to act via politics, for the Military all that matters is winning the fight.

This is obvious, isn’t it? And on the front line we can be sure that the vast majority of people in these professionals act completely in accordance with those core requirements. It also seems obvious though that in recent years all of those professions have grown less effective as a result of poor leadership and some selfish individuals who’ve lost sight of what makes them work. Robust leadership is vital when those you lead are responsible for decisions that result in the saving or taking of life, your direction must be as close to black and white and effectiveness focussed as you can make it. As a leader you serve those you lead by protecting them from that which makes their job harder. This means you must say ‘no’ sometimes. When professionalism and ability to fulfil the core function is threatened, you must say no. This may affect your career prospects, or be detrimental to you in some other way, but those you lead rely on you to do it, that is responsibility, it is your job.

To say no when challenged requires character and a dedication to duty. We find ourselves today in a situation where what started as a few bad apples, people who aren’t up to the job being promoted, has led to top down pressure on the rest of these professions to be focussed on distractions that are at odds with the core focus’s. Many of these distractions seem inocuous at first, but at scale become insideous .They stop good people doing their job as the public expects and pays them to. I do not care about a persons feelings, interest group affiliation, or yours - have they broken the law? To use the Police as an example. It must be that clear cut and consistent or the system eventually breaks under ‘whataboutisms’. Many of these bad apples are fully aware of their inadequacies and so once in authority seek to promote only those like them and force out those who question. It is the slow rise of the of the yes man that left untreated, is fatal.

As someone who is drawn to serve or already in one of those professions what can be done? There is no fun answer to this for those already within those systems. You must fight back, it’s that simple. It’s part of professionalism, the upholding of standards, the direction of focus to the right things. You cannot leave it to someone else, we’re all someone’s ’someone else’, all leaving it to each other. Service doesn’t always feel heroic, sometimes it’s putting your hand up in a briefing and pointing out the stupidity of what you’ve just been asked to do. Make them defend that ridiculous policy in public and under scutiny, don’t put up with ‘just because’ as an answer and be willing to suffer the consequences of their embarrassment. The public are who you serve, not your career, yes that’s harsh, but dedication to service is. We are in this situation because so few people do this, but there is safety in numbers. The yes men are yes men because they lack the character that you have, it’s time to show it. I know this from experience, I knew my rather average career had a ceiling because I had no problem being the guy who asked ‘that’ question. I accepted the consequences to protect those I was leading and the organisation who’s standards I wanted to uphold, as thousands before me had.

What if you’ve not yet chosen service as your career, should you do it? I think yes, but you have to understand what you’re getting yourself into. Understand the deal you’re making and be totally sure that it’s a trade off you’re willing to make. These professions are all suffering from what I’ve described above, are you willing to fight that extra battle to change things for the better? Are you wiling to be part of a necessary slow march back into these professions and gradually retake them from those who have endangered them? It is very long road that you may not see the end of and you will be unpopular throughout in all the right places. Those in control will smear and lash out when under threat, but the public will thank you when they see a return to the standards they pay for.

I will talk about joining the Military in particular as that’s my area of experience. You must understand that whether you are patriotic or not, that will not serve you well as a reason to join. It has always been the case that the lives of Military service men and women have been lost to causes that are less connected to direct threats to the country than politicians would have the public believe, there’s nothing new in that. But in the past 25 years, due to the free passage of information the internet has allowed, it’s become all the more obvious that this is the case. This is why I don’t believe patriotism will serve you well as a reason to choose this line of work. In my experience the ‘true believers’ who bought the public line about why we were doing what we were doing where the ones who suffered mentally down the line when they couldn’t square the circle of what actually turned out to be the truth. You may wear the uniform of the country you’re born in, but what will serve you better as motivation is a sense of adventure, the willingness to experience the light and dark humanity has to offer - often on the same day. Accept that you’re betting your life and be willing to lose it in the pursuit of experiences that the vast majority of people will never come close to. For me that was worth it and the person it made me is more useful now than the person who joined was.

The service you will experience in the military is not one to the public -although perhaps indirectly on some operations- but to the person next to you, those you lead and to your Unit history and standards. An old trope but completely true. You will see first hand what standards are for and what happens when they’re allowed to lapse. Hopefully you’ll have the strength of character to make positive change during your career by pushing back against the infection of the yes man. Perhaps this will motivate you to take that knowledge and experience with you when you leave that profession and fight to instil the required standards in another, or even show example on the everyday streets of civilian life. Service is rarely selfish, but in the world that’s coming the skills and experience you’ll gain in the military will undoubtedly serve you well.

As ever, nothing changes until good people are willing to step forward and sacrifice to do the right thing. Today the necessary sacrifice for many will more likely be of their careers than of their life if we’re to regain effectiveness in these most vital professions, but that is what service to others is and that is what must happen.