Radical Inclusion: What the Post-9/11 World Should Have Taught Us About Leadership

by Martin E. Dempsey

When our organizations are presented with the issues that we are most prepared to solve, those duties for which we have long trained and prepared, for which we have documented processes and rule books and methodologies, our experience guides us toward resolution. We rely on carefully developed sets of tried and true procedures as we move forward in handling the issue. Conversely, when our organizations are faced with challenges for which we have no training or preparation, we may feel paralyzed by our lack of existing processes. It may be difficult to know even where to begin to bring the problem to its solution. Further, there are times when we feel somewhat prepared to handle an issue but are aware that gaps in our abilities and procedures could have a great and negative effect on the outcome. We can have all the preparation in the world, but regardless of the robustness of existing processes, the high level of confidence we may have in our team’s capabilities, or the assuredness we may have that a process that led to success in the past will continue to prove successful in the future—and especially if none of these are present—leaders in the new environment should begin by utilizing our third leadership principle: “Learn to imagine.”