Call Sign Chaos

Key Concepts

Leadership fundamentals

“My early years with my Marines taught me leadership fundamentals, summed up in the three Cs. 

“The first is competence. Be brilliant in the basics. Don’t dabble in your job; you must master it. That applies at every level as you advance. Analyze yourself. Identify weaknesses and improve yourself.” (p. 11)

“Second, caring. ...When your Marines know you care about them, then you can speak bluntly when they disappoint you. They are young, but they did volunteer for the Marines, so don’t patronize them. They know they’re not in a life insurance company. Be honest in your criticism, but blow away the bad behavior while leaving their manhood intact.” (p. 12)

“Third, conviction. This is harder and deeper than physical courage. Your peers are the first to know what you will stand for and, more important, what you won’t stand for. Your troops catch on fast. State your flat-ass rules and stick to them. They shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. At the same time, leaven your professional passion with personal humility and compassion for your troops. Remember: As an officer, you need to win only one battle—for the hearts of your troops. Win their hearts and they will win the fights.” (p. 12)

Command and Feedback

“‘Command and control,’ the phrase so commonly used to describe leadership inside and outside the military, is inaccurate. In the Corps, I was taught to use the concept of ‘command and feedback.’ You don’t control your subordinate commanders’ every move; you clearly state your intent and unleash their initiative. ...George Washington, leading a revolutionary army, followed a ‘listen, learn, and help, then lead,’ sequence. I found that what worked for George Washington worked for me.” (p. 16)

Teams need to build trust to work well together

“Strangers don’t fight well together, and it’s a precept with me not to reorganize in combat. I wanted the members of every team to know one another so well that they could predict each other’s reactions.” (p. 24)

“I don’t care how operationally brilliant you are; if you can’t create harmony—vicious harmony—on the battlefield, based on trust across different military services, foreign allied militaries, and diplomatic lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete.” (p. 85)

“Operations occur at the speed of trust. If, unlike Nelson, senior commanders don’t sufficiently train their subordinates so they can trust their initiative, then those commanders have failed before combat begins.” (p. 156)

Trust is the coin of the realm for creating the harmony, speed, and teamwork to achieve success at the lowest cost. Trusted personal relationships are the foundation for effective fighting teams, whether on the playing field, the boardroom, or the battlefield. When the spirit of your team is on the line and the stakes are high, confidence in the integrity and commitment of those around you will enable boldness and resolution; a lack of trust will see brittle, often tentative execution of even the best-laid plans. Nothing compensates for a lack of trust. Lacking trust, your unit will pay a steep price in combat. (p. 240)

One needs to prepare the team with realistic training and rehearsals

“Combat involves a level of intensity that is difficult to prepare for even with the most grueling training. How do you prepare your men for the shock of battle? For one thing, you need to make sure that your training is so hard and varied that it removes complacency and creates muscle memory—instinctive reflexes—within a mind disciplined to identify and react to the unexpected. And once your men have been trained, you need to ensure that they are in the same unit long enough to know their brothers and develop trust and confidence in one another.” (p. 27)

“Once this building block is accomplished, the next training step is rehearsal as they focus intently on the skills that will constitute their repertoire in battle. Mentally, this is a step beyond combat skills training, one that must continue during any pause in combat, whether before a patrol or before a deliberate attack. We would use any opportunity to rehearse.” (p. 27)

“I was conscious of what George Washington wrote to the Congress early in our war for independence: ‘Men who are familiarized to danger meet it without shrinking; whereas troops unused to service often apprehend danger where no danger is.’” (p. 27)

Using “focused telescopes” to make communication more efficient

“By listening over their tactical radio nets, I could gather information without interfering. But I needed more than that. Using a technique I had found in my reading, I intended to gather information that bypassed normal reporting channels by means of ‘focused telescopes.’ I copied this technique from Frederick the Great, Wellington, and Rommel, among others.” (p. 29)

“I selected three Juliets, who met with me many mornings. They knew our plan and understood what information I needed, so I wouldn’t be caught off-balance. Understanding my intent, they’d then circulate among my dispersed elements. Their sole priority was to keep me informed while also putting a human face to my intent. If you have multiple avenues of information coming to you and you’re out and about yourself, you develop an enhanced understanding.” (p. 30)

The importance of continual study

“Reading is an honor and a gift from a warrior or historian who—a decade or a thousand decades ago—set aside time to write. He distilled a lifetime of campaigning in order to have a ‘conversation’ with you. We have been fighting on this planet for ten thousand years; it would be idiotic and unethical to not take advantage of such accumulated experiences.” (p. 42)

“If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.” (p. 42)

“Any commander who claims he is ‘too busy to read’ is going to fill body bags with his troops as he learns the hard way.” (p. 42)

“To turn this broader Marine philosophy of fighting into my own authentic leadership style, I drew upon historical influences and the Vietnam veterans whose experiences imparted a healthy dose of reality. I had been shaped and sharpened by the rough whetstone of those veterans, mentored by sergeants and captains who had slogged through rice paddies and jungles, fighting a tough enemy every foot of the way. I learned then and I believe now that everyone needs a mentor or to be a mentor—and that no one needs a tyrant. At the same time, there’s no substitute for constant study to master one’s craft. 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. If you can’t be additive as a leader, you’re just like a potted plant in the corner of a hotel lobby: you look pretty, but you’re not adding substance to the organization’s mission.” (p. 237)

Centralized command undermines initiative

“Once he’s removed from direct interaction with his troops, a commander must guard most rigorously against overcontrol, compounded by the seduction of immediate communications. That is, any senior officer or staff member can dash off a query and numerous officers will hasten to respond. Digital technology—instant questions demanding instant responses—conveys to higher headquarters a sense of omniscience, an inclination to fine-tune every detail below. When you impose command via that sort of tight communications control, you create ‘Mother may I?’ timidity.” (p. 43)

“Once subordinate commanders sense that, they hesitate. The very brittleness of detailed orders that cannot possibly anticipate unknowns sucks the initiative out of them, suffocating their aggressiveness and slowing operational tempo, a problem doubled if hobbled by risk aversion. Success on the battlefield, where opportunities and dangers open and close in a few compact and intense minutes, comes from aggressive junior officers with a strong bias for action.” (p. 43)

Effective commander’s intent 

“The details you don’t give in your orders are as important as the ones you do. With all hands aligned to your goals, their cunning and initiative unleashed, you need only transparent sharing of information (What do I know? Who needs to know? Have I told them?) to orchestrate, as opposed to “control” or “synchronize,” a coordinated team.” (p. 44)

“From a leader’s perspective, intent is the starting point. “Commander’s intent” has a special meaning in the military that requires time and thought. A commander must state his relevant aim. Intent is a formal statement in which the commander puts himself or herself on the line. 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. Your moral authority as a commander is heavily dependent on the quality of this guidance and your troops’ sense of confidence in it: the expectation that they will use their initiative, aligning subordinate actions. You must unleash initiative rather than suffocate it.” (p. 238)

You have to cultivate initiative-taking and protect people when they make mistakes or voice alternative perspectives

“Instillation of personal initiative, aggressiveness, and risk-taking doesn’t spring forward spontaneously on the battlefield. It must be cultivated for years and inculcated, even rewarded, in an organization’s culture. 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.” (p. 44)

“From Slim to Fulford—both promoted to four-star general—came the same message: 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.” (p. 45)

“In the same spirit, any competitive organization must nurture its maverick thinkers. You can’t wash them out of your outfit if you want to avoid being surprised by your competition. Without mavericks, we are more likely to find ourselves at the same time dominant and irrelevant, as the enemy steals a march on us.” (p. 242)

Large staffs slow down decision-making 

“By doctrine, a deployed brigade could have a staff exceeding two hundred. For what we had in mind, we drastically cut down staff size by employing ‘skip-echelon,’ a technique I learned in discussions with a voluble English-speaking Iraqi major my battalion had captured in the 1991 Gulf War. In most military organizations, each level of command—or echelon—has staff sections with the same functions, like personnel management, intelligence gathering, operational planning, and logistics support. As the Iraqi major explained, such duplication wasted time and manpower and added no value. I wanted my staff at the top to do only what we alone could do, delegating as much authority as possible to proven Marine and Navy commanders below me.” (p. 59)

“Throughout my career, I’ve preferred to work with whoever was in place. When a new boss brings in a large team of favorites, it invites discord and the concentration of authority at higher levels. Using skip-echelon meant trusting subordinate commanders and staffs. I chose to build on cohesive teams, support them fully, and remove those who didn’t wind up measuring up.” (p. 59)

Communicating directly with troops, down to the lowest levels

“It was already my habit, at the close of staff meetings and even chance encounters, to push my Marines by insisting they put me on the spot with one hard question before we finished our conversation. I wanted to know what bothered them at night. I wanted all hands to pitch in, with the value of good ideas outweighing rank. In the infantry, I had learned early to listen to the young guys on point.” (p. 81)

“Supervision of the planning took me only an hour or two each day. The rest of my waking hours were spent coaching fighters—officers and enlisted. I spoke to the troops in groups, from thirteen-man squads to eight-hundred-man battalions. We went over our overall strategy and their unit’s scheme of maneuver. My goal was to put a human face on the mission, answer every question, and build their confidence. I followed British Field Marshal Slim’s advice that, in fairness to my troops, they had to know what their objective was and what my expectations of them were. Additionally, I needed to look the lads in the eye to get a sense of their levels of confidence and for them to directly feel the respect I had for those who would face our enemies. As Slim made clear, any general who isn’t connected spiritually to his troops is not a combat leader.” (p. 91)

“You can’t fool the troops. Our young men had to harden their hearts to kill proficiently, without allowing indifference to noncombatant suffering to form a callus on their souls. I had to understand the light and the dark competing in their hearts, because we needed lads who could do grim, violent work without becoming evil in the process, lads who could do harsh things yet not lose their humanity.” (p. 144)

“As always, I did not rely on the chain of command to bring all important issues to my attention. I let it be known that every Friday afternoon I would be at the club for happy hour. As one man explained, when asked why Robert Burns wrote his poetry in taverns, it was in those places that one could hear ‘the elemental passions, the open heart and the bold tongue, and no masks.’” (p. 156)

The importance of speed and having a faster OODA loop than the enemy

“I knew I needed an organizing principle, and to the commanders I made it clear that the success of the mission depended on speed: speed of operations and movement would be prefaced by speed of information-passing and decision-making.” (p. 86)

“Our campaign’s success was based on not giving the enemy time to react. We would turn inside the enemy’s “OODA” loop, an acronym coined by the legendary maverick Air Force Colonel John Boyd. To win a dogfight, Boyd wrote, you have to observe what is going on, orient yourself, decide what to do, and act before your opponent has completed his version of that same process, repeating and repeating this loop faster than your foe. According to Boyd, a fighter pilot didn’t win because he had faster reflexes; he won because his reflexes were connected to a brain that thought faster than his opponent’s. Success in war requires seizing and maintaining the initiative—and the Marines had adopted Boyd’s OODA loop as the intellectual framework for maneuver warfare. Used with decentralized decision-making, accelerating our OODA loops results in a cascading series of disasters confronting the enemy.” (p. 90)

“If I were to sum up the leadership techniques I constructed on the basis of the Marine Corps’s bias for action, it would be simple: once I set the tempo, the speed I prized was always built on subordinate initiative. This governing principle drove home the underlying efforts that would make speed a reality. Speed is essential, whether in sports, business, or combat, because time is the least forgiving, least recoverable factor in any competitive situation. I 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. In fact it was always subordinate initiative that got my lads out of the jams I got them into, my mistakes being my own.” (p. 238)

Communicating clearly 

“There’s nothing to be gained by speaking obliquely about important matters. Brought up in the American West, I don’t hide behind euphemisms. As the negotiations turned into a kabuki dance, I warned my interlocutors: ‘I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.’” (p. 131)

One needs to plan for adaptability 

“After reflection, I concluded that EBO had two fatal flaws. First, any planning construct that strives to provide mechanistic certainty is at odds with reality, and will lead you into a quagmire of paralysis and indecision. As economist Friedrich Hayek cautioned, ‘Adaptation is smarter than you are.’ The enemy is certain to adapt to our first move. That’s why in every battle I set out to create chaos in the enemy’s thinking, using deception and turning faster inside his decision loop, always assuming that he would adapt. War refuses any doctrine that denies its fundamentally unpredictable nature. EBO could not take into consideration enemy cunning and courage, a grievous omission. ‘Every attempt to make war easy and safe,’ General Sherman wrote, ‘will result in humiliation and disaster.’” (p. 180)

“Second, EBO required centralized command and control to amass the precise intelligence and assess in real time the precise effects of strikes. So the top-level staffs needed a continuous flow of exact battlefield data. Besides requiring uninterrupted communications, our battlefield commanders had to become reporters rather than focus on breaking the enemy’s will. This was the surest means of surrendering initiative and creating a critical vulnerability.” (p. 181)

PowerPoint is no good

“Interestingly, everything I was briefed on regarding EBO came to me on PowerPoint, reinforcing a long-standing concern. EBO played well on PowerPoint slides, but I have always urged the avoidance of ‘death by PowerPoint.’ In that, I was guided by what General George C. Marshall had written: ‘The leader must learn to cut to the heart of a situation, recognize its decisive elements and base his course of action on these. The ability to do this is not God-given, nor can it be acquired overnight; it is a process of years. He must realize that training in solving problems of all types—long practices in making clear unequivocal decisions, the habit of concentrating on the question at hand, and an elasticity of mind—are indispensable requisites for the successful practice of the art of war….It is essential that all leaders—from subaltern to commanding general—familiarize themselves with the art of clear, logical thinking.’” (p. 181)

“PowerPoint is the scourge of critical thinking. It encourages fragmented logic by the briefer and passivity in the listener. Only a verbal narrative that logically connects a succinct problem statement using rational thinking can develop sound solutions. PowerPoint is excellent when displaying data; but it makes us stupid when applied to critical thinking.” (p. 182)

The leader’s job is to serve the main task of the organization

“‘Let me be clear,’ I told my staff. ‘We back up our commanders. Whatever they ask for, we deliver immediately. Ask enough questions to clarify what the field commanders need. Then make sure they get it when they need it. That’s our role.’ I emphasized that our job was to keep the support aligned to their needs at the speed of relevance, so that it would make a difference to our troops in the fight. I didn’t want requests languishing. I consider myself the most reluctant person on earth to go to war. But once at war, our field commanders must be given what they need without delay. We could not have them fighting a two-front war, one against the enemy in the field and the other against us in the rear, extending from Tampa to Washington. A former boss, Navy Captain Dick Stratton, who was held in the Hanoi Hilton for 2,251 days as a ‘prisoner at war,’ had taught me that a call from the field is not an interruption of the daily routine; it’s the reason for the daily routine.” (p. 197)

Leaders need time for reflection 

“In our military, lack of time to reflect is the single biggest deficiency in senior decision-makers. If there was one area where I consistently fell short, that was it. Try as I would, I failed to put aside hours for sequestering myself outside the daily routine to think more broadly: What weren’t we doing that needed to be done? Where was our strategy lacking? What lay over the horizon? I had fine officers working hundreds of issues, but a leader must try to see the overarching pattern, fitting details into the larger situation. Anticipating the second- and third-order consequences of policy decisions demanded more time than I was putting aside.” (p. 200)

Quotables

“The Marines’ military excellence does not suffocate intellectual freedom or substitute regimented thinking for imaginative solutions. They know their doctrine, often derived from lessons learned in combat and written in blood, but refuse to let that turn into dogma. Woe to the unimaginative one who, in after-action reviews, takes refuge in doctrine. The critiques in the field, in the classroom, or at happy hour are blunt for good reason. Personal sensitivities are irrelevant. No effort is made to ease you through your midlife crisis when peers, seniors, or subordinates offer more cunning or historically proven options, even when out of step with doctrine.” (p. xi)

“The Vietnam veterans taught me that you don’t win firefights by being kind.” (p. 9)

“Early on, one recruiter walked into my office and said, ‘Sir, I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to work these hours.’ His words and attitude had made the rounds. One of my seasoned gunnery sergeants had told me, ‘The whole station is watching how you handle this, Major.’ I told the man, ‘You can be a quitter or you can be a Marine. But you can’t be both.’ I busted him and ended his career. (p. 18)

“From my first days, I had been taught that the Marines were satisfied only with 100 percent commitment from us and were completely dissatisfied with 99 percent. You can’t have an elite organization if you look the other way when someone craps out on you.” (p. 18)

“Fulford stressed one thing: Do not bog down once in the attack. If one thing isn’t working, change to another. Shift gears. Don’t lose momentum. Improvise. His message was simple: Do it.” (p. 25)

“To risk death willingly, to venture forth knowing that in so doing you may cease to exist, is an unnatural act. To take the life of a fellow human being or to watch your closest comrades die exacts a profound emotional toll. In Michael Shaara’s novel The Killer Angels, Robert E. Lee says, ‘To be a good soldier you must love the army. But to be a good officer you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love. This is…a very hard thing to do. No other profession requires it. That is one reason why there are so very few good officers. Although there are many good men.’” (p. 31)

“Homer described the Trojan War as wild and confused, a storm of dust and smoke, hoarse screaming and bloody swords, cacophony and irrationality. Ever since then, in their imaginations commanders have searched in vain for the orderly battlefield that unfolds according to plan. It doesn’t exist.” (p. 31)

“Then, one day, I walked into the operations office. There before the blackboard stood my operations officer, chalk in hand. Lieutenant Colonel John Toolan, with his thick Brooklyn accent and a busted nose, was still playing in the rugby scrum in his forties. He often made wry comments, accompanied by a disarming Irish smile. On the board, in capital letters, he had written: C H A O S. Curious, I asked him what he was thinking. He handed me the chalk. ‘Does,’ he asked, ‘the Colonel Have Another Outstanding Solution?’” (p. 46)

“So here I was—offered an opportunity. Biographies of executives usually stress achievement through hard work, brilliance, or dogged persistence. By contrast, many who achieve less point to hard luck and bad breaks. I believe both views are equally true.” (p. 54)

“Memo to young officers: I can appear brilliant if I fight enemy leaders dumber than a bucket of rocks.” (p. 60)

“One of my Marines from New York City summed up our frustration. ‘This is a perfect war, General,’ he said. ‘They want to die, and we want to kill them. Let’s get this on!’” (p. 68)

“When you are in command, there is always the next decision waiting to be made. You don’t have time to pace back and forth like Hamlet, zigzagging one way and the other. You do your best and live with the consequences. A commander has to compartmentalize his emotions and remain focused on the mission. You must decide, act, and move on.” (p. 72)

“At one point in Ramadi, I walked up behind a squad in a furious firefight with insurgents farther down the street. When I inanely asked, ‘Hey, guys, what’s going on?’ the squad leader dropped his rifle from his shoulder and smiled. ‘We’re taking the fun out of fundamentalism, sir!’ I laughed. When you have tightly knit squads, fire superiority, and troops keeping their sense of humor, the fight is in good hands.” (p. 127)

“As a consequence of the ‘wedding’ story, a U.S. military investigation team arrived in my zone from Baghdad to determine whether I or others should be charged with murder. A military lawyer asked me a list of questions, one of which caused a stir. ‘General, how much time did you consider before authorizing the strike?’ He knew from the record that the time from when I was awakened until I authorized a strike had been less than thirty seconds. ‘About thirty years,’ I replied. I may have sounded nonchalant or dismissive, but my point was that a thirty-second decision rested upon thirty years of experience and study. At Midway, for instance, Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance pondered for two minutes before launching his carrier aircraft at extreme range against the Japanese fleet. Two minutes to turn the tide of war in the Pacific. That’s how battles are won or lost.” (p. 141)

“Regardless of rank or occupation, I believe that all leaders should be coaches at heart. For me, ‘player-coach’ aptly describes the role of a combat leader, or any real leader.” (p. 151)

“As history teaches us, the character of warfare adapts to new circumstances. And as the saying has it, ‘Only the dead have seen the last of war.’” (p. 174)

“Early in my tenure, I visited a brigade headquarters. On the bulletin board were slogans exhorting initiative, like DECIDE THEN ACT! SEIZE THE DAY! and JUST DO IT! These sounded inspiring, reflecting an ethos that valued initiative, until a battalion commander directed my attention to his commanding general’s division-wide order. It prescribed the exact attire required for physical training that every soldier had to wear while working out—including the color of their safety belt. By prescribing such minutiae from the top down, the actual culture of the organization contradicted its own declarations and stifled any kind of real initiative. Initiative has to be practiced daily, not stifled, if it’s to become a reality inside a culture. Every institution gets the behavior it rewards. We had to reward battlefield behavior, not what in an earlier time we called garrison Mickey Mouse, or worse.” (p. 179)

“Preparing for my Senate hearing, I had written out succinct answers to anticipated questions. The discipline of writing always drove me to be more exact, even at times driving me to different conclusions than I had originally held.” (p. 191)

“At the trigonometry level of warfare, with the absence of a clear policy end state and the resources for a strategy to attain it, it was inevitable that nonstrategic exigencies would win the day.” (p. 220)

“‘Dynamite in the hands of a child,’ Winston Churchill wrote, ‘is not more dangerous than a strong policy weakly carried out.’” (p. 228)

“Mastering the art and science of war also means understanding strategy and planning. Strategy is hard, unless you’re a dilettante. You must think until your head hurts.” (p. 238)