There is a Yiddish story that begins with Russian soldiers, in the time of the Czar, out on a recruiting mission.  They are looking for marksmen for the army.

As they enter a village, the soldiers come upon a barn that has obviously been used for target practice.  There are targets painted on the side of the barn.  And in the exact center of every target there is a bullet hole.

The soldiers are ecstatic.  This could be the marksman of their dreams.  They could receive a great bonus for bringing him in.  And so they begin asking around.

They find Menachem, a tailor, and ask about him the barn and the man who shoots there. 

"Ah," said the tailor, "That is Shepsl's barn.  You don't want him in your army. Shepsl is a little crazy."

"But we must have such a marksman!" cried the soldiers.

"You don't understand," responded the tailor, "Other marksmen draw the target, then they shoot the gun.  Shepsl shoots the gun first. Then he paints the target."

We don’t know if the soldiers took Shepsl away to the army.  If they did, he certainly wouldn't have been a good soldier. I thought about Shepsl when I read about one of the ways that today's American army is dealing with their recruiting problems.

It's no secret that Army recruiters are having trouble making their numbers.  But it seems like they've been painting new targets as a way of meeting the goals.  Some of the new targets are fairly innocuous.

The Army has raised the upper age limit for people they'll recruit from 35 to 40.  They've allowed a GED certificate to count as much as high school graduation. That all seems sensible, but other changes seem dangerous.

Actually, what I'm about to describe aren't, technically, changes in Army recruiting policies.  Those policies are still in place.  But the Army is granting more and more waivers in questionable areas.

According to a story that first appeared in the Baltimore Sun and was reprinted in the Houston Chronicle (http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3668580.html), "There was a significant increase in the number of recruits with what the Army terms 'serious criminal misconduct' in their background. That category includes aggravated assault, robbery, vehicular manslaughter, receiving stolen property and making terrorist threats."

According to the Sun, those waivers jumped by more than 50 percent.  The number of waivers for misdemeanor offenses, such as contempt of court, increased 25 percent.

Would you want your son or daughter or uncle or friend going to war and sharing living space with a thief or someone who'd made terrorist threats?  Not me.

And how about the drug thing?  The number of waivers for those testing positive for amphetamines, marijuana or cocaine during processing also climbed 15 percent last year. A waiver here means they can come back and be tested again.

Think about that.  These are people who had drugs in their system on a day they knew they were going to be tested.  They're either too much of a dope-head to be trusted with a weapon or they're too stupid. Either way I wouldn't want someone I love to serve with them.

The British used to say that the test for a Prime Minister was, "Would you go on a tiger hunt with this fellow?"  For soldiers, the test ought to be "would you go to war with this person?" 

The last time the Army lowered standards was during Viet Nam.  It took decades to recover.

If you recruit garbage, there's no way to turn it into gold.  Polishing it only makes it glisten and gleam, it doesn't make it any less garbage.

Recruit the unqualified today and they fight for you tomorrow.  Later they form the pool that you get sergeants from, and sergeants are the key to the performance of the Army.

This is true for your company, just like the army.  If you want to produce golden results you have to start with good raw material.

Take a clue from George Hart, now the retired Chief of Police for Oakland, California.  In the 1970s, he took over a department with dozens of problems.  During his tenure, the department became one of the premier law enforcement agencies of its day. 

He started by reforming recruiting.  He put top officers in the recruiting slot. 

It was a time when everyone was lowering standards to get more non-whites and women into police departments.  Chief Hart rejected that idea.

He gave his recruiters this order: "There are qualified people out there in all the groups that others are lowering standards for.  Your job is to find the qualified ones." Then, just to make sure they knew he was serious, he read every background investigation for every new police officer as long as he was Chief.

Maybe the Army could bring in Chief Hart for some help.