Call Sign Chaos

by Jim Mattis

Cooperation, too, occurs at the speed of trust.

“Dynamite in the hands of a child,” Winston Churchill wrote, “is not more dangerous than a strong policy weakly carried out.”

“Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it,” Aristotle wrote.

Living in history builds your own shock absorber, because you’ll learn that there are lots of old solutions to new problems. If you haven’t read hundreds of books, learning from others who went before you, you are functionally illiterate—you can’t coach and you can’t lead. History lights the often dark path ahead; even if it’s a dim light, it’s better than none.

From a leader’s perspective, intent is the starting point.

Intent must accomplish the mission, it has to be achievable, it must be clearly understood, and at the end of the day, it has to deliver what the unit was tasked with achieving.

You must unleash initiative rather than suffocate it.

learned to prize smooth execution by cohesive teams (those that could adapt swiftly to battlefield shocks) over deliberate, methodical, and synchronized efforts that I saw squelching subordinate initiative.

when to part with doctrine, which serves only as a start point for decision-making. Like a jazzman with the ability to improvise, you need to know doctrine so that you can shift from a known point.

Clearly stating the operation’s purpose and sparsely outlining the methods we’d used, I closed my intent by explaining our desired end state.

Intangibles like will, cohesion, morale, and affection are more important than tangibles.

Trusted personal relationships are the foundation for effective fighting teams, whether on the playing field, the boardroom, or the battlefield.

Nothing compensates for a lack of trust.

Critical to the command and feedback approach is the speed of information sharing and decentralizing decision-making.

Where decisions are decentralized, subordinate-unit-leader discipline must be of a higher level than when decisions are made solely at senior levels. This is due to the need for aligning independent decisions in a concert of actions. The glue aligning these decisions is the commander’s clearly articulated intent, firmly setting the operation’s aim.

Risk aversion will damage the long-term health, even survival, of the organization, because it will undercut disciplined but unregimented thinking. Because maverick thinkers are so important to an organization’s adaptability, high-ranking leaders need to be assigned the job of guiding and even protecting them, much as one would do for any endangered species.

History is determined by choices made.

We are dividing into hostile tribes cheering against each other, fueled by emotion and a mutual disdain that jeopardizes our future, instead of rediscovering our common ground and finding solutions.