Business Practice: Thoughts on the Rotation of Personnel

The military policy of rotating members is similar in its intent to that of the international business world. Organizations have come to believe that diverse experiences from team members with varied backgrounds will bring more ideas to emerging problems. While there may be some benefits and legitimacy to the practitioners of such policy, I do not believe that it is absolutely necessary to rotate personnel as frequently as the military does. Aside from the enormous expense associated with moving families and personnel great distances, employees tend to operate with an efficiency that would best befit a bell-curve. Ones effectiveness is optimized not at the beginning or end of a tour, but rather in the middle. Shorter rotation periods would seem to have the unintended consequence of abbreviating this optimized efficiency period.