In my first blog post, I posted a link to my talk at the opening ceremony of the 2019 Army EOD Team of the Year Competition. I promised some people that I would follow up with some written comments, with sources, so that those who were interested could read the books and articles I mentioned. Here’s the first post that follows through on that promise.
I do some consulting for industry and academia, and I have to say, they spend a lot of time talking about culture. What is culture? Culture is the “social behavior and norms found in human societies”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture .
According to Professor Ed Schein, you can describe culture in three ways; looking at the “artifacts” such as physical space or behaviors; by surveying beliefs and values espoused by the community; or by digging deeper into the underlying assumptions behind those values ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Schein ) .
Does EOD have a unique culture? We as a group seem to have certain common behaviors. Many people outside of the EOD group have pointed this out to me. I mean it has been pointed out by many, many people. Like, a lot of people. Over and over again. Personally, I have spent hours and hours in small conference rooms talking to combat engineers, maneuver officers, and CBRN officers about EOD employment, and they all pointed out vigorously that we were “different”. My most memorable story was when I was brought in to an ongoing series of meetings as a sort of outside SME, and after 10 minutes the CBRN officer slammed down her notebook loudly ask “Why are ALL of you LIKE this?” and walked out of the room. She was not the first person to run headfirst into EOD culture.
Why is culture important? Companies like Google think it’s vital. Google has a Senior VP for culture and they are obsessed with maintaining their corporate culture. (Work Rules! by Lazlo Block, page 34). Why is that? Because as W. Edwards Deming, the famous management professor, supposedly said, “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Or, to spell it out, you have to take culture into consideration to accomplish your strategy. If your culture and strategy are not aligned, you are going to have a really, really hard time of it. Any good leader has to understand their organizational culture to achieve their objectives.
So if we follow the premise that EOD people have unique behaviors that are different from others, then it follows that these are a reflection for our values and at heart, an outcome of our underlying assumptions about the world. I first started thinking about this when I was at the Schoolhouse at Eglin. I spent a considerable amount of time watching student going through training and looking at what we were teaching them and also what they were learning that wasn’t strictly in the curriculum but was still incredibly important. Were we passing on elements of our unique culture at our schoolhouse. What were we showing the students that we valued? And what were the underlying assumptions about the world that we were instilling in them?
I’ll give some examples in my next few posts.
Your CBRN officer story is hilarious because I’ve had that EXACT same thing happen to me, both deployed and while I was at Tech Escort. They cannot wrap their heads around EOD culture because their military upbringing and mentors taught them that there’s a specific way to do everything; it’s written in a book, or a procedure, or SOP somewhere and EOD guys see them as ‘suggestions’. I think the culture does start at the schoolhouse when the instructors tell them they’re “smarter than the average bear” just by being qualified to be there in the first place. It’s furthered by being told they are being taught HOW to think, not WHAT to think. They get to their units and emulate a sense pride in being part of an organization that rewards/encourages thinking outside the box; doing things better, smarter, more efficient without all the unnecessary bureaucracy and/or formality. They can get the same or better results without the same level of lock-step instruction that other MOS’ seem to thrive on, especially CBRN. The EOD soldiers love owning a part of the outcome and being entrusted with Uncle Sam’s best fireworks as tools of the trade like a mechanic relies on a socket. I could probably write a 20 page paper on the topic, but I just wanted to weigh in and concur that yes, we do have a unique culture that stems from the freedom given to them to solve problems with a questioning attitude and imaginative liberty, and the incredibly powerful tools they possess to do the job few are willing to, or qualified to do. It takes a lot of guts to put on that demon suit and walk down on an unknown thing that ultimately was designed to kill you. Not many outside of EOD can grasp this idea, and so see us a bunch of undisciplined troublemakers that buck the system just because. Nothing could be further from the truth, although some degree of satisfaction comes from pissing people off by doing a task your own way with superior results.
Leo, this post makes me think of that lunch meeting we had when I first really met you. I think the culture you’re talking about is what helped the smooth communication there and made it a much more productive meeting. I think the push back we get comes from the way our culture responds to outsiders, especially when we see them as adversaries. “We’re team players, you’re just not on our team.”
William, A shared view of the way the world is certainly helps communication within the cultural group. You highlight one of the things we need to work on. People outside the culture are not inferior, they just have a different culture. One of my favorite leadership books is Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright. A lot of us are stuck at level 3 “I’m great and you’re not” for us to be great, others have to suck. A good organizational leader, will try to move the group to a higher level of understanding; “we’re great” instead of “I’m great”.
Leo, my former father in law was a retired E-9 EOD and since I was a new 2 LT he did not hold me in very high regard until I pinned on an EOD badge. Then I was one of the boys and accepted into the EOD family. So I too have experienced the EOD culture form both sides. And by the way we are different.
I am truly intrigued by this topic. I have often wondered what makes a good EOD tech and what could keep them engaged to serve out a career. I’m looking forward to seeing your next post.
Leo, great article. You know my background, as an EOD ECM Advisor in a previous life and still engaged in this strange world.
I’ve often started and entertained the discussion, are you mad to go into EOD? Or are you mad because you’re in EOD?
You’ll appreciate the variety of answers this always brings up, along with profanity, cussing, threats, laughing and things I can’t write about 🙂
The only genuine consensus I can establish is the answers is a bit of both!
Our EOD culture has very deep roots and the challenges our culture faces today actually sound a lot like the challenges faced for many years.
In the 70s and early 80s a handful of leaders in our community decided that culture be damned- EOD needed to engage in Army Doctrine and learn how “The Army worked “ .
In my day you had to spend two years in a line unit and could not be an E5 to get accepted into the EOD program. After 4 months as an attache to an active EOD unit I knew I did not want to go back to a line unit, this EOD culture was a deep rooted, time honored fraternity and the only way in was through Redstone and Indianhead.
We operated in 6-10 man units virtually invisible to the installation we supported with the exception of range control. Our bar was where unit business got conducted in the evening.
NCO’a had no requirements to attend career development courses other than PLC. BNOC and ANOC were optional and could be completed by correspondence. Our SGM’ took SGM academy with correspondence courses and some went to a three week finishing class.
Every senior leader had a strategy to align us with army doctrine but we had no EOD doctrine to speak of.
Desert Storm came and all the so called army training we learned in the 80s proved to mean zero as it related to theater operations- culture prevailed and every EOD unit fended for themselves- again culture prevailed, strategy for EOD was non-existent other than to get us new radios so next time we could communicate better.
Our culture back in the day allowed us to use military manpower to run the EOD ball- Our units protected by fences allowed us to control access – once again culture.
I have pontificated enough plan out or old days but I think the best example of our culture is our enduring defiance of protective gear. We had nothing until the late eighties for suits, and when we got mandated for flak vests and helmets we avoided it at all costs-“culture eats strategy”
Sure EOD guys have strong culture and a strong bond. In my agency we have 30-40 prior military EOD guys with Type a personality. But our culture makes us stand out within my agency and I often here “what is it with you guys “
It is a great honor to run an exercise that focuses on military EOD working with Public Safety- this is the heart of our culture- EOD always has a mission in peacetime unlike few others. I still see the culture in the younger EOD troops- they still do a lot of what we did- it still lives .
Enjoy your blog Leo and thanks for the air time
It goes beyond culture Leo; it cuts to the very core of what makes someone a good EOD tech or not, or even someone who is suited to the bomb disposal field in general. The data is there, conducted by many different disciplines and institutions from several different countries, over almost 50 years of research. But true to EOD culture, and I do mean culture this time, we reject such data, because we keep wanting to claim, “We’re the same…but different.”
Ed, thanks for your comment. This is kind of like the “nature vs. nurture” argument. Are EOD Soldiers like this because we self-select and then continue to select for certain traits (nature); or is it because we train the Soldiers who self-select in a common world view (nurture)? It is probably some of both, they are not mutually exclusive.
As you have pointed out in your own research and an excellent recent article in the IABTI Detonator, there is solid research identifying specific traits common to successful EOD Soldiers, but we haven’t implemented a system to use that research to select Soldiers for training. Since we don’t have an organized system, are we currently relying on sub-conscious affinity bias to determine who is a “good tech” (i.e. a tech like me)? If we are, then I think that could be a real problem.
What we have done is create a training system that inculcates certain common assumptions about the way the world works (the definition of culture that I have been using). My purpose here is to ask people to think about the importance of culture as they are making decisions about changes to training, doctrine, organizational structure, etc. Culture can be notoriously resistant to change, but it isn’t impervious. If Fortune 500 companies spend a lot of time working on culture, maybe we should too.
I’ve been out for 26 years so it may have changed, but EOD culture was “EOD Techs know everything. But if there were something they knew absolutely nothing about, they’d still have an opinion on it.” I.E.: “I don’t know what it is but it sucks.”
Dave, thanks for the comment. Check out my latest blog post: Cynicism as a Survival Strategy, where I discuss exactly the comment you make on “I don’t know what it is , but it sucks.”
In EOD School, we learned how to do things by the book, we revered the sacrifices that were made before us. In Vietnam, we did everything by the book. (Reading was optional.) No wait, the Army issued us the field safe to secure the sensitive documents, they just never sent the book. The further away from Control, the better the Unit ran.
Of course we’re mad before we go into EOD. and and even the psychologists that we were required to go to know that. I clearly remember showing up at the psych interview with my records, by myself, in a time that the only reason to go to the psych was to get a discharge. Generally with one big guy carrying your records and one on each arm. The lady looked up at me and said why are you here? Told her I was applying for EOD and it required an interview. She looked at my records for about 3 or 4 minutes and then said excuse me. About five minutes later hear she came down the hall with a full colonel and about 6 Entourage. As they got to where I could see them, he said ” anyone who wants that job is, but our job is to determine if he’s stable.” Retired 22 years and still, mostly, stable.
Thanks for the comment Joe.
In my post-Army career I worked as an Occupational Therapist in a VA hospital. My fellow Therapists were mostly not veterans and couldn’t understand the response from our patients when they found out that I had been in EOD. I finally came up with an analogy to explain EOD culture within the big Army.
EOD is the rodeo clown of the battlefield. When everyone else wants to run away from the danger we go running and skipping in. We are both serious and giggling with delight as we approach the problem. Our audience is both horrified by the danger and amused by our antics.
Joe, Thanks for the comment.
As a 30 year Navy EOD officer and senior enlisted, the permutations of culture are further complicated after having supported Fleet Forces, SEAL, SF and Ranger units.
I am former EOD and now a forensic psychologist. Although I fell head-over-heels in love with the intersection between criminology and psychology at the age of 12 (I’m now 51), I listed my EOD identity first. What’s more, I had the honor of serving in an EOD unit for only 4 years, I listed my EOD identity first. This fact that I listed EOD first is extremely telling in terms of the topic of culture. I served a measly 4 years in EOD, which is a mote compared to 39 years of being enamoured with my current profession (which I am STILL in love with, by the way). In fact, the main reason I joined the military in the first place was so my hard-working, loving, amazing single mom did not have to figure out how to help me pay for college. Yet my assimilation into the distinct and unique culture of EOD was enough to shape me such that my most enduring and primary identity … the identity I am above and beyond most proud of is not only that I am a veteran, but that I am an EOD veteran. If I had to systematically strip away all my cultural identities, the one that I would cling to most vehemently … the one I would fight to the death to maintain is EOD veteran. And that is after only 4 years. I cannot even BEGIN to imagine how powerful this pride in culture is for retired techs (like my husband) and those who served longer than my tiny drop in the bucket of time.
I recognized EOD had a unique culture before I even hit AIT. I went through Basic Training with another soon-to-be tech, and we were treated differently by the drill sergeants. They were harder on us than the other recruits, but in a reverent kind of way. They did not refer to us by rank [last name], but rather by EOD [last name]. They clearly expected us to be rebels, but also leaders. Instead of being punished for (already) thinking outside-the-box, they accepted it as a foregone conclusion and allowed it to be. They had no doubt we would be the first to head roaring into the fray, the hairier the better, and drag everyone else with us by sheer force of will. This same attitude toward us continued on into AIT. By the time we hit Redstone, we had already been well-primed for our new culture. This is the power of EOD. It is roughshod and dark and brutal, but also steadfast, tenacious, and gritty … and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Kirsten, thanks so much for your awesome comment.
I look forward to more. I have thought at length about how much I love and appreciate my comrades in EOD but how they also annoy the shit out of me. I suppose that’s a lot like when children display both positive and negative aspects of their parents… we get annoyed when others give back to us the parts we don’t like about ourselves.