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over the course of my career, every time I made a mistake—and I made many—the Marines promoted me. They recognized that those mistakes were part of my tuition and a necessary bridge to learning how to do things right. Year in and year out, the Marines had trained me in skills they knew I needed, while educating me to deal with the unexpected.
Institutions get the behaviors they reward.
When you have to give up personnel, the tendency is to hang on to your best. Nick’s example stuck with me: When tasked with supporting other units, select those you most hate to give up. Never advantage yourself at the expense of your comrades.
If a commander expects subordinates to seize fleeting opportunities under stress, his organization must reward this behavior in all facets of training, promoting, and commending. More important, he must be tolerant of mistakes. If the risk takers are punished, then you will retain in your ranks only the risk averse.
at the executive level, your job is to reward initiative in your junior officers and NCOs and facilitate their success. When they make mistakes while doing their best to carry out your intent, stand by them. Examine your coaching and how well you articulate your intent. Remember the bottom line: imbue in them a strong bias for action.
History gives us ample precedents for making decisions at the speed of relevance.
Memo to young officers: I can appear brilliant if I fight enemy leaders dumber than a bucket of rocks.
When you are engaged at the tactical level, you grasp your own reality so clearly it’s tempting to assume that everyone above you sees it in the same light. Wrong.
Digital technologies do not dissipate confusion; the fog of war can actually thicken when misinformation is instantly amplified.
Great nations don’t get angry; military action should be undertaken only to achieve specific strategic effects.
As Churchill noted, “A lie gets halfway around the world before truth gets its pants on.” In our age, a lie can get a thousand times around the world before the truth gets its pants on.
My command challenge was to convey to my troops a seemingly contradictory message: “Be polite, be professional—but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.”
History is compelling; nations with allies thrive; those without them die.
I recommended that France take over the post, because of my confidence in the strategic thinking of that nation’s officers and its demonstrated political willingness to intervene militarily to protect its own interests. And since the French at the political level had frequently been the most difficult to persuade to make necessary changes to the NATO command structure, I thought it best if their generals dealt with the transformation issue.
In my judgment, NATO cannot hold together if the burden-sharing continues to be so unequal. Europeans cannot expect Americans to care more about their future than they do. Without adequate resources, even the most brilliant European plan for transformation to meet very real threats will remain a mirage. And if Europe’s moral voice is not backed up by a capable military, their geopolitical and moral leadership will become nothing more than empty words on a piece of paper.
War refuses any doctrine that denies its fundamentally unpredictable nature.
If a democracy does not trust its troops, then it shouldn’t go to war.
The other necessary condition is the education and training of the subordinate leaders to ensure they have the skills necessary to take intelligent initiative. Various techniques for mental imaging proved enormously useful to ensuring that my intent was widely comprehended. After all, subordinate leaders are as likely as senior officers to make bad calls if they are not properly prepared for the increased responsibility. Training to enable “brilliance in the basics” and educating junior leaders to make sense out of the unexpected (as friction, uncertainty, and ambiguity are war’s elementals
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What do I know? Who needs to know? Have I told them?
Leaders at all ranks, but especially at high ranks, must keep in their inner circle people who will unhesitatingly point out when a leader’s personal behavior or decisions are not appropriate.
You have to go a long way to find a country more willing to admit its mistakes, listen to its friends, and correct its ways.
