[Vision2020] General Moves to Balance Soldiers' Work and Home Life

[Tom Hansen]

"As a result, officials say, the number of confirmed suicides on post has
dropped from previous years, motorcycle fatalities have fallen sharply,
more behavioral health personnel and resources have been put in place, and
lead­ers from sergeant to three-star general focus on helping relieve
stress on their soldiers."

Courtesy of the Army Times.

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III CORPS CHIEF TO HIS SOLDIERS: At ease
One general’s moves to balance soldiers’ work and home life may prove to
be a DoD role model
By Michelle Tan
mtan at militarytimes.com

FORT HOOD, Texas — Not long after he took command of III Corps here last
summer, Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch got an earful from the wife of one of his
soldiers. “[She] said ‘General, this dwell time is not working because my
husband is not home anyway. You might as well have kept him in Iraq,
because I don’t see him. He gets home after the kids have gone to bed. He
doesn’t come home on the weekends,’ ” Lynch said.

“So we fixed all that.” Now, soldiers assigned at one of the Army’s most
populous bases are expected by Lynch to be home for dinner by 6 p.m.,
leave work at 3 p.m. every Thursday to spend time with their families, and
seek Lynch’s approval for any weekend training.

Lynch and his battle buddy, Command Sgt. Maj. Neil Ciotola, have gone
beyond those measures to improve Army life for soldiers and families. They
reopened the officer and noncommissioned offi­cer clubs on post. They lead
task forces on suicide, sexual assault and domestic violence prevention.
They encourage soldiers and fami­ly members to reach out directly to them.

As a result, officials say, the number of confirmed suicides on post has
dropped from previous years, motorcycle fatalities have fallen sharply,
more behavioral health personnel and resources have been put in place, and
lead­ers from sergeant to three-star general focus on helping relieve
stress on their soldiers.

“The Army is stressed,” Lynch said. “You can’t be fighting a war for seven
years without impact, and there are all kinds of impacts. Impacts on the
soldiers, impacts on the families, so what I realized when I got back to
Fort Hood is I’ve got to do something to reduce stress.” Lynch added that
while his efforts are related to suicide pre­vention — a critical problem
the Army continues to battle — “it’s really about stress reduction.” When
soldiers are deployed, “you can get more equipment, you can get more
soldiers, you can do additional training, but the thing you can’t do is
spend time with your family,” Lynch said. “So, the theme is to have
quality family time. 
 It’s so important, because if you reduce the stress
on the families, by definition you’re going to reduce the stress on the
soldier. You’re just going to. [Otherwise] he’s likely to hurt himself or
hurt somebody or do something silly.” Nine Fort Hood soldiers killed
themselves in 2008, according to officials. So far this year, two
sol­diers have committed suicide, a decline in numbers even as reported
active-duty suicides across the Army so far this year continue to outpace
the total from the same time period in 2008. A Fort Hood report shows the
number of domestic violence calls received at the post’s victim­services
hot line fell from 255 in the second quarter of this fiscal year to 93 in
the third quarter.

The efforts at Fort Hood are a model for the rest of the Army, the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said May 27 during a meet­ing with
Army Times staff.

“[Lynch] has made that corps the ‘Family First Corps,’ “ said Adm. Mike
Mullen. “He has focused on relieving stress. He’s not focused on suicide.
He is not focused on any particular manifes­tation of stress. He’s working
hard to relieve stress.” Lynch and his leaders have enforced the policies
that give sol­diers time away from work and time with their families,
Mullen said.

“There’s something going on at Hood that I think is extraordinary that we
need to emulate until we find something better,” he said.
 Busy base for deployments

Fort Hood, in central Texas, is home to more than 52,000 soldiers and III
Corps, the 1st Cavalry Division, the 4th Infantry Division and the 3rd
Armored Cavalry Reg­iment.

The sprawling base is where sol­diers train, reset and refit between
deployments.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, more than 550,000 soldiers have deployed to Iraq or
Afghanistan from Fort Hood, said Brig. Gen. Peter Atkinson, the Canadian
officer as­signed as one of the deputy commanding gen­erals for III Corps.

At any given time, a third of the soldiers sta­tioned here are deployed,
he said.

“We have soldiers here who have done four or five tours,” Atkinson said,
adding that after a while, stress, domestic violence, suicide and
substance abuse cases began to climb.

“Those are all things that have manifested themselves with this Long War,
and, unfortunately, the long war isn’t over yet,” he said.

Leadership by example is criti­cal to III Corps’ efforts to reduce stress,
Lynch said.

So he makes it a point to be home for dinner every evening and leave by 3
p.m. on Thursdays. “Sometimes late at night, sure, I’m doing some e-mails
or reading some things or signing some docu­ments [from home] because
there’s work that needs to be done, but the leader has to lead by
example,” he said. “If they don’t see you walk out at 3 o’clock on
Thursdays, they’re going to stick around, right? Whatever the boss does is
what they’re doing.” The shorter work days have slowed down the operations
tempo and forced soldiers to better man­age their time while meeting their
mission, but it has given families the predictability they desire, Ciotola
said.

“I find myself wishing, ‘Man, I wish I had a cou­ple more hours,’ but I do
things that are impor­tant,” Ciotola said.

Soldiers are expected to work hard and effi­ciently during the duty day so
they can go home to their families on time, Ciotola said.

It basically comes down to prior­itizing and efficient time manage­ment,
Lynch and Ciotola said.

To give leaders and their spous­es lessons in efficiency, Lynch brought in
experts from the Franklin Covey Institute for Time Management.

“If you figure out how to manage your time better, you can get a lot done
between 9 and 5:30,” Lynch said. “And if a soldier needs to work late one
day, I expect the family to know that a week in advance. That’s my rule.
That’s what predictability is.” Every week, when 300 to 500 new soldiers
arrive at Fort Hood, Lynch and Ciotola conduct the welcome briefing.

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Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch watches as riders pass in review at the end of Phantom
Thunder II, an installationwide motorcycle ride that Lynch led at Fort
Hood, Texas, on June 11.

http://tinyurl.com/LtGenRickLynch

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Hoorah [pronounced "HOO-raw"], General Lynch.

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the
tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime."

-- Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.


- Unknown