Audio Version:
Jan Rutherford:
I’m here with General Martin Dempsey. For those of you who don’t know who he is, he was one of Time Magazine’s most influential people. He retired from service after 41 years in October 2015. He now teaches leadership at Duke University and he’s chairman of USA basketball. He served as the 18th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which I the senior officer in the armed forces, and the military advisor to the president of the United States.
His first book was coauthored with Ori Brafman. It was called Radical Inclusion. His latest book is No Time for Spectators, The Lessons that Mattered Most from West Point to the West wing. In his book, general examines limits of loyalty, the necessity of sensible skepticism, the value of a responsible rebelliousness, and explains why we should actually sweat the small stuff. So today we’re going to talk about why the best leaders are the most adaptive following and what we should expect from those that actually have the privilege of leading.
Now, I know you spent a lot of summers in Ireland and that had to have contributed to some of the thoughts you have on character. I know one of the things on your website is a quote by Abraham Lincoln. Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. What made you put that particular quote on your website?
Gen. Dempsey:
Well, it was in my mind and part of a series of quotes that I always use to kind of center myself for a long time, long before I put it on the … I didn’t even have a website until I retired. I thought it would be cool to have a website. I don’t even know how to check if anybody knows it’s there. That’s fine. That quote is one of the things I remembered dwelling on and thinking about before I became the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because I wanted to make sure that I didn’t let … well, first of all, my mother even then would never let anything go to my head. She was always about remember where you came from, remember what’s most important about the job you have to do.
She used to say to me, most people think about when they get into a new job, they think about the what and the how. She said, you should think about the who. What she meant … She wasn’t talking about the 60s rock band. She was talking about it’s all about relationships, and you as an individual being approachable enough to have a relationship. It was great advice.
Jan Rutherford:
One of the things you wrote about in your book is a brass moral compass, an actual physical compass. On there was trust, justice, courage, patience, honor, tact, loyalty, charity and truth. I know they’re all important, but if you were sitting down with some young people today that were starting out in their careers, their lives, their professions, what would be the one that you would hone in on?
Gen. Dempsey:
Funny you ask, because I get asked that question a lot. In particular now, we have a whole cohort, if you will, of young people around the country graduating from high school and college. In our system, because we still had an agrarian cycle of academic years, we had this huge influx of energy and enthusiasm and optimism into the workforce every year. The Army takes advantage of it. Of course, that’s where we get our recruits, coming out of high school. But so too does the business world and academia, corporate America. What I tell them is, when I’m speaking about my moral compass, is that I don’t want my moral compass to be yours. I like mine. You’re welcome to actually share it, meaning those attributes.
But the important thing is you have one. You don’t have to have a little fancy brass one like I have, as long as you have one in your heart, because in the toughest decisions of life, you’ll get all the information you can, but you’ll eventually decide based on your character and that moral compass that shows you the way.
Jan Rutherford:
Do you think that really comes in when it conflicts or it helps balance our ambition or our drive? That’s one of the things I wondered about as I’ve interviewed people and hired people. Boy, it’s really hard to train drive and ambition and somebody who wants to get something done. At the same time, that drive can be a virtue and it can be a vice.
It can get in the way of pride. So do you think that’s something that you had to address throughout your career, that there’s a lesson there for young people?
Gen. Dempsey:
Oh, I absolutely do. As you know, I often speak about the trait of humility is a really important train in leaders at every level because it makes you approachable. It makes you real. But don’t get me wrong though Jan. I’m ambitious. I was ambitious when I was in the Army. I’m ambitious now. When I teach a class, I’m always eager to get back to course review and see where … I want to be number one. It’s almost like Bill Parcel often said, “As long as somebody’s keeping score, I want to win.” But here’s the key, not to sound like Aristotle here, but I think those two things held in creative tension with each other is really what you need, which is you should of course be ambitious, but the ambition should be channeled to the good of the organization, not for your own self-aggrandizement. That should come separately and later and by others, which is where the humility comes in.
Coach Mike by the way, who’s a good friend down here now, has been for some time. When I saw him working with the Olympic teams over those three or four quadrennial as we call them, he would always get them and, almost on the first day, he’d say, “Look, a lot of people have probably told you that when you come here you’ve got to leave your ego at the door.” Because people do say that.
Mike would tell them, no, don’t leave your ego at the door. Your ego is what makes you the phenomenally gifted basketball player that you are. So bring it in, but you need to make sure it’s blended with the other egos on this team so we can bring home that gold medal.
Jan Rutherford:
Interesting perspective. Maybe what we need right now is a little bit more Aristotle. Your book, No Time for Spectators, seems so apropos in the moment. Do you think it’s a call to serve, that this is what you really intended? It’s a call to serve?
Gen. Dempsey:
It’s a good question. Any good work of literature, or good song for that matter, the lyrics of the song. Once the artist and author turns them loose, let’s them leave the cradle, it does what it does. It has to interact with people on their terms. So somebody reading the book, if I get 10 people to read the book, what I hope is that I get 10 people sharing a somewhat slightly different perspective. So to your point, is it a call to serve, I think at some subliminal level, having served for 41 years, I think it probably was written from the perspective of service.
As I was writing, there were moments and I thought, am I writing this book for CEOs or grandparents. You know what I mean? The answer was, I thought it would be okay if the answer to that was yes. Now you won’t see that in the book any place, but if you allow yourself or whoever reads it allows themselves to engage with the book, and then uses their own experience, their own moral compass to kind of relate to it, you’re going to get all kinds of different answers that come.
Jan Rutherford:
As you and I have spoken about, there’s been 45 presidents. 26 of them have served in the military. 12 actually were generals. One star, two, three, four star. The last four star general to serve in the White House as president was Eisenhower. The last to run for office was Wesley Clark in 2004. Why do you think it is that there’s been such a long period, a stretch of generals and admirals not being so front and center as it was in precious years?
Gen. Dempsey:
Well, first let me suggests, that’s not a bad thing. For example, today there’s 330 million people in this country and I’d like to think we could find a good solid civilian to be both the president and secretary of defense, because I think the nation is served better when the military leader and the elected official have to form a relationship, but that there’s a clear understanding that the civilian elected leader is the dominant … is the one that actually has the decisions to make. Now, to your point, I think the reason we don’t see generals matriculating into politics at the same rate as we did 100 years ago, 150 years ago, is that being a military officer, a professional military officer in those days, was actually a path to enter kind of the elite part of society.
That path today is normally available not to military officers, but rather to successful corporate business men, and those who choose government service as a career. So I think what’s happened is it’s kind of a professionalization of politics. I don’t know what the framers intended. My instinct is they didn’t intend for a professional class of politicians to dominate, but that’s what’s happened. You do have literally people, that’s their careers, as opposed to term limits and a constant turn over. We could debate which would be better, but it is what it is. Then on the corporate side, you have very successful business men who had the wealth necessary to enter into the political arena.
I don’t think we’re better or worse off. I think we still have to make good choices of the people we elect and hopefully it’s not just on what they’ve accomplished but how. Again, back to the character part of it.
Jan Rutherford:
Now, just one more question on serving. There’s lots of ways to serve.
You can run for office, you can join the military, you can become an entrepreneur, you can start a non-profit. But one of the best mentors I ever had was somebody that asked me all the time, for whose good do you serve. What he was asking is kind of like what you asked yourself in your book, when you’re writing your book, who am I writing this for.
Or who am I doing this work for? For whose good do I serve? Is that something that you have something to say as far as encouraging people to find a way to serve in their own way, to make this country, this world better?
Gen. Dempsey:
By the way, have I told you the make it matter story?
Jan Rutherford:
Yes, but please go ahead.
Gen. Dempsey:
Well, I’ll do it briefly, but when the unit I was commanding took casualties in Iraq from 2003 to ’04, I wanted a way to keep that with me. I didn’t want to take a casualty, ship the body back home and be done with it. I wanted that … It just felt like that was wrong. So I had these cards made up for any soldier. In some cases, we had some sailors and marines with us. I carried them until I had too many to carry. Then we got this box, and I put them in the box. This box has been with me now since 2004, ’03. I don’t know if your audience can see it, but on the box is written the words make it matter. That’s a phrase that I would use in talking to the survivors of the fallen, the teammates of the fallen. The idea being you can’t bring them back. You have to go back out the gate tomorrow.
So, the way for you to think about getting through this experience, the fear and the guilt you feel about losing a teammate, is just commit yourself to make it matter. You can’t bring them back, so make it matter. Take that with you, not just while you’re in uniform, but through your life. My observation is that, if you think every day about making it matter, not just for yourself, and mostly in small ways. A note, pat on the back, a kind word, a kind gesture. In the aggregate of your life or in the accumulation of your life, you will have made it matter. Every once in a while you’re going to get a chance to make something matter in a dramatic way as I had the chance as chairman, whether it was opening up more opportunities for women.
So, every once in a while, you’re going to have a chance to do something big. Most of the time it’s small, and that’s okay.
Jan Rutherford:
You just mentioned opening up opportunities for women. In your book, you had an interesting story about meeting a West Point graduate from the class of 2013 at the Raleigh airport. She had just graduated from?
Gen. Dempsey:
From Ranger School, which by the way, the Navy had BUDS, basic underwater demolition school, which is really Seal school. Then in the Army, it’s Ranger School. It’s tough. I didn’t even try to … Honestly now, I’m not being falsely modest here. It never occurred to me to go to Ranger School. I joined the tank corps and decided I was going to ride to work. It’s tough. When we opened up combat arms, the specialties related to close combat, when we opened them up to women in 2013 … Well, we began the process in ’13. It culminated in ’16. It took a while before we had women pass that course. Now, it’s not uncommon at all for women to pass the course.
This young lady, Sara, I met in the airport. She walked up to me. I was in civilian clothes and she said, “Are you General Dempsey?” I said, “Well, I used to be.” She smiled and I said, “No, I am.” She said, “I just want to thank you.” I said, “For what?” She said, “I just graduated from Ranger School.” I said, “No, thank you, because you are validating what I believed for a very long time about the possibilities once we opened up these challenges to women.”
Jan Rutherford:
I want to move on to some specific leadership topics.
The first one being following, followership. As an executive coach, I spend a lot of time helping people manage up and sell ideas. Oftentimes they’re frustrated because what they perceive are values that aren’t aligned. That boss just doesn’t understand. They’re in the weeds, they don’t get the big picture.
They don’t share my values. In your book, you talked about limits of loyalty. So I’m wondering what advice you would have for people that are at some point in their career where they’ve got one or multiple bosses and they’re trying to influence up, and they’re frustrated. What advice would you have for them?
Gen. Dempsey:
Well, first of all, my advice would be to join the club. If somebody had suggested that this was going to be easy, they were lying to you. Leading and following are a challenge. As you’ve heard me say, Jan, it gets harder as information kind of becomes more ubiquitous and as scrutiny becomes greater. So, that’s the first thing I’d say is don’t feel like … This is not the old Christopher Columbus rule. You’re not the first one to find America, young Christopher. There’s actually people living here.
So, what I tell them is that, as they … First of all, they have to lead up. That’s especially true the more senior you become. You have to help. Leaders may not admit to you that they don’t know everything, especially if you’re a really junior leader. It’s hard to admit that when you’re a junior. It gets easier as you get senior, I think. But when it’s a two way street, that’s both communications and loyalty, and it’s just such a helpful, positive, healthy relationship. One of the obligations in leading up is you have to do at least two things. One is you have to … Three really. You have to figure out how the senior person, how they absorb information. How do they process information?
Some people love PowerPoint. I’m not a huge fan, frankly, but some people love it. That’s okay, but you’ve got to know that. The second thing you’ve got to know is you’ve got to have a real appreciation for timing because the senior leader, if they’re job is justified in the organization, probably busier than you. So you just can’t poke in there and say, look, I’ve got the idea that’s about to change the whole organization, so just sit down and bear with me here because you need to hear this right now. That’s just not the way it works. You have to pick your spots, right? It’s kind of like Ethos and Chronos in Greek. Timing and the right time.
Then the last thing seems to me to be … again, it’s motivation. I think, when senior leaders interact with junior leaders who are giving that advice, the senior leader is inevitably looking for cues on the motivation. What is motivating this young person to be telling me how I should run this company. Is it because they really have a good idea about how to run the company and they’re invested in the company and they’re invested in me, and they actually want me to be a better leader? Or are they trying to kind of get a leg up, if you will, on the next promotion?
So, I think you have to watch your motivation in doing that. If you do, they’ll listen.
Jan Rutherford:
Interesting perspective on the juniors motivation. What I find myself saying to junior leaders is it’s important to try to have that leader’s, the senior leader’s point of view. It’s almost impossible. I think you described when a president, as an example, makes a decision, they’ve got all these lenses by which they’re getting data. They’re getting all this multiple data, and oftentimes when we’re junior we have one lane.
We don’t have multiple lanes. Is that something you’ve experienced at the highest levels?
Gen. Dempsey:
Absolutely. It’s why I talk in the book about learning. Being an effective leader or follower requires you to commit to being a lifelong learner. Part of what you just said, with President Obama, I had to learn about … Then you said, frankly I never thought I’d need to learn about as a military. And that if I was going to be effective in helping him make good decisions, some of which had nothing to do with national security, but I was a member of the National Security Council. So if I’m in there, I’d rather be prepared, and if I’m prepared, I’ve got to have taken the time to learn.
So yeah, they said leaders are learners, or leaders are readers. You’ve heard that phrase too, but the art of following requires that as well.
Jan Rutherford:
I mentioned one of the things that I always recruited for was drive, because I didn’t think I could train that. The other one was curiosity. Now, when we last spoke, we talked about how very few people are creating white space in their calendar, to read, to reflect, and that it requires a certain amount of discipline and sacrifice. You also, in your book, referred to some of that as, if you aren’t curious, you’re just going to find things that reinforce what you already believe.
So is that something that you’re … Are there some lessons out there today that … and things that we can all do to make sure that we’re not just reinforcing what we already believe, that we’re looking for those multiple points of view?
Gen. Dempsey:
Boy, I sure hope so because, look, the last time we spoke, Jan, we weren’t in the middle of another crisis in the country related to race relations. So what we’ve got now in this country is, to make it current, is we’ve got three concentric crises, three concentric circles that each in their own would be a monstrously difficult problem to solve, a very, very complex problem to solve. We’ve got three of them that are intersecting and they have connections. So the pandemic and who it affects most and where. We’ve got a depressed economy that we’ve got to recover and restore, which is effecting parts of the population inequitably. Let’s face it.
Then we’ve got the issue with race relations related … well, not related to. The spark was the murder of George Floyd, but these things have been there, and truthfully we have in many cases had a blind eye to them. We can’t do that now. So the point is the instinct of leaders … Not all leaders, but the instinct of some leaders is to look for simplicity. I’ve got a really hard problem and I’m going to go find a simple answer to. I forget which one of our presidents said, “For every really hard complex problem, there’s a simple answer and it’s probably wrong.” It might have been Truman.
But that’s absolutely true today. So ironically what I’ve been telling people with whom I’m interacting, whether it’s the general managers in the NBA or college presidents, or whoever it is. You actually, it sounds counterintuitive, but you need to be out there looking for complexion. It’s counterintuitive to us to go out and try to make sure I can make this as complex as I can possibly make it. But the only way we’re going to solve these problems is if we first of all identify the complexity that exists in each of them.
Then there’s three ways to look at the problem. There’s the problem you think you have, there’s the problem you actually have, and there’s the problem you can solve. We’ve got to get to that third one. Then where there’s places where we still have issues but we can’t solve them ourselves, then you’ve got to go get help. But we’ve got to be really aggressive about learning and being curious, and being okay about the fact that this is just complex, because otherwise we’re just going to become paralyzed.
Jan Rutherford:
At the highest levels of organizations, I often say it’s not a people problem. You don’t have bad people. Oftentimes you have a design problem that you’ve got to look deeply at the cause and effect. I think that’s what you’re saying is with these complex problems. Not every … You’re a hammer and every problems a nail, and you just hammer it. But oftentimes there’s this bias to action. I think you had talked about that a little bit in saying don’t hurry in your book. That was something that you really honed in on. Do you think that’s … it’s almost like a discipline perspective that we have this bias to action that we’re not taking the time to really figure out cause and effect and figuring out those three type, looking at the problem that you think it is, the problem that it is, and the actual problem you can solve?
Gen. Dempsey:
Yes. So the chapter title is Don’t Hurry, but it’s taken from a quote by the legendary basketball coach of UCL, John Wooden, who won 11 championships … I almost said in the 60s, but that’s not possible. It was only 10 years and a decade. But anyway, he won a lot of championships, and he used to tell his players … he’d get frustrated with them. He’s say, “Come on. Be quick, but don’t hurry.” What he meant was that a team can only move at the speed that they can move together. It’s not helpful if one part of the organization is moving, is outpacing the rest in a way that they can’t manage.
So, the first thing is you’ve got to blend … Back to the earlier point, you’ve got to blend your talents into the team effort. Otherwise, you’ll make mistakes. To use another metaphor, you’ll get out over your skis. Or to stretch it out even further, you’ll outrun your headlights. We all know what happens when that happens. The second thing is, if you’re moving too quickly or if you’re hurrying … It’s okay to be quick, but if you’re hurrying, you are likely … You’re not going to be looking around for change. You just won’t be attuned to it. You’re going to be helter skelter, let’s get to the finish line.
Yet, you and I know that no plan, I don’t care how good it is, survives we call it first contact with the enemy. We’d had these exquisite plans in training and in combat. Here’s what we’re going to do. Well okay, but guess what? The enemy’s going to get a vote here and then you’re going to have to adapt and it’s he or she who adapts more quickly, who sees the change, who literally sees it first and then can adapt to it first that will prevail. I believe that’s true in the military. I believe it’s true in sports. I believe it’s true in corporate America. I believe it’s true in academia. And it’s all about being quick, but not getting in a real big hurry because you’re going to miss something.
Jan Rutherford:
Well, you used the term adapt. Gosh, in the 90s it was re-engineering and change. There’s always been some phrase of adaptation. Even West Point, your alma mater is talking about the way that they develop leaders today is to be adaptable.
Even in the business world, I’ll hear people say we need to preserve our core culture no matter what. Well, at the same time, you have to adapt. So how do you … advice for young leaders on being adaptable and being an adaptable leader, but still sticking with that moral compass. What guidance do you have for that?
Gen. Dempsey:
Well, what I try to remind myself to speak about when I’m with especially young graduates at military academies, or wherever it happens to be, is to challenge them to learn the fundamentals of their chosen profession, and whatever specialty within it they’ve gone into. So in the military for example, we talked about infantry as a specialty, artillery, armor, aviation. Those are all … We’re one big body of professionals with a professional culture, but the fundamentals break down into specialties.
One of the things that I expected of all my junior officers was, don’t be satisfied just to be okay. It’s like a commercial. It’s okay.
No, we can’t afford, especially the military. We can’t afford okay. So, what we really need of our junior leaders is they should have the opinion that, if they’re in an armor they want, they should aspire to be and work to be the best armor officer, best commander they can be, and right on down the line. Once you get the fundamentals, you can then stray from them because you know you’re straying from them. What I mean by that is let’s use the English language. People talk about Chaucer and Faulkner and E.E. Cummings as a poet. It’s not readily apparent that those authors know any damn thing about grammar and spelling. You just wouldn’t know it, or punctuation. You wouldn’t know it, but I promise you before they became that kind of poet or that kind of novelist, they mastered the fundamentals of the guide posts which are spelling and grammar and punctuation. Then they stepped away from that to make a point.
So what you have to do as a young officer, young corporate executive, is make sure you master the process, whether it’s how does the budget gets done and on what timeline, whether it’s marketing efforts are synchronized or not, how do you build relationships both inside and outside, which are the important relationships outside of your organization. Then once you get it, well then you can adapt. But don’t pass over the step of learning the fundamentals.
Jan Rutherford:
I’ve got some more questions, but before I do, I know we’ve got a question coming in from a veteran, a friend of mine, Evan Williams. He’s been on one of our crucible expeditions. He’s asking just in general, and he’s a veteran that’s transitioned nicely to the civilian world. But he’s asking for your advice on today’s transitioning veterans.
Gen. Dempsey:
Well, two things. Number one is I can tell you myself that the first question I asked myself when I was beginning my transition is, can I possibly find something that I’m as proud to do in a second career as I am proud to have been in the military? The answer is, yeah, you actually can, but you have to look. So when I was looking at different ways of spending my time as a second career, I wanted to know … My first question to organization was about their culture, their values, what do they stand for. I asked them if somebody’s looking at you from the outside and from the inside, are they seeing the same thing?
Then we would talk about a salary. But I really wanted to be walking through that airport and have somebody say to me, “What are you doing now.” I wanted to be able to say, not with demonstrations of guard, but I wanted to be proud in the way I answered the question. So that would be number one for me, especially because we spend so much time in the military building this culture that it’s really hard to walk away completely unless you find something that is at least somewhat comparable, and they’re out there.
The second thing I’ll tell you is I am really worried about these concentric circles of crisis and the way they’re going to affect veterans, because even in the economy when it was humming along, veterans had some challenges in trying to translate what they’d been doing for 20 or 30 years into something that made sense in the private sector. Of course, we’ve all been working to try to help them do that. I think it’s going to be hard to do that, in the next few years anyway until we can get the economy restored. But the point is I think we all as veterans ought to be in their corner and try to open doors for them.
Generally speaking, if you get a veteran in the door, they do pretty well. It’s just hard to get them in the door sometimes.
Jan Rutherford:
It’s always been an interesting discussion when we’re out in the wilderness. The executives will always have the insight, boy these people are really smart and worldly, and they’ve been dealing with the same problems we’re been dealing with. That’s always the aha. The veterans typically will say, geez, I didn’t think there was people out there that would have my back, that have a sense of duty to each other.
But we’re so good at turning a civilian into a soldier or a sailor, marine, airman, but boy, we’re not very good at turning them back.
Jan Rutherford:
I’m wondering your perspective. Obviously you were in for a long time. You’ve made a good healthy transition yourself…
Gen. Dempsey:
I have thought about that a lot, and I can tell you that, in the first 30 years of my career, we didn’t do a very good job of preparing veterans to leave because oftentimes we didn’t want them to leave. We had … It hasn’t always been an easy market in which to recruit. So, it was almost considered to be an afront to talk to a perfectly good staff sergeant about what they might want to do on the outside because you’re almost thinking, my God, am I encouraging them to leave? When really, I need them to stay. I can tell you that, in the last 10 years, we’ve made some strides in that regard in the sense that, from the time someone … Really, this is the right thing to do. From the time you get them as a brand new product, we ought to be preparing them to go out and do something else after the Army, or after the Navy, Air Force, because that’s going to happen sometime, and we’re doing better at that.
Again, I don’t know … This is a disruption in everything to be sharing these crises, but I hope we don’t lose sight of that.
Jan Rutherford:
Well, let me move on to teaming. I mentioned the sense of duty, and that is working with each other. One of the folks we interviewed a while ago that was most interesting was a music conductor of the Colorado Symphony, Brett Mitchel.
He made the comment that a great orchestra doesn’t just play with each other. They play for each other. I think in the military, on the elite teams and really great teams, that you have that. You have people that are working for each other. Yet, in the business world, that is a goal, a lofty goal to get people to work really with each other. You talk about responsible rebelliousness, and I’m wondering if that fits in with that, creating that shared sense of duty, that shared accountability.
Gen. Dempsey:
I think it does. Look, just so it’s clear, I’m not entirely naïve. One of the things that gets in the way in corporate America of that kind of teaming is the competition for compensation. In the military, if you want to know what a lieutenant colonel with 18 years of service makes, you just look it up online. By the way, there’s no way it makes any more than that, or she, or any less than that. That just is what it is. So the kind of fixed pay scale in some ways makes it easier for teaming because what we’re really after at that point is what’s the best thing for the organization. Again, not always, but generally.
Now, to your point about responsible rebelliousness, I do think you’re never going to see it on an organizational chart. What CEO in their right mind would encourage rebelliousness? But though you won’t see it on an organizational chart, you should be able to sense it in an organization’s culture because the leader … and it’s largely a leader’s responsibility to establish a climate in which people are not afraid to take a few chances. The leader has to kind of establish the white lines so that the organization doesn’t run itself into the ground. But having established those left and right lines or limits, lines on a highway, the employees aren’t going to be able to drive on it and find different ways of doing things if it’s for the good of the organization.
That’s the litmus paper test, by the way. On the follower side, if they’re doing things for their own self-aggrandizement, that’s not responsible rebelliousness. That’s selfishness.
But if they’re doing something to make the organization better, more effective, more efficient inside those white lines, established by a climate where, if you make a mistake, you’re not going to get crushed, then it’s responsible rebelliousness.
Jan Rutherford:
I like the phrase establish the climate. In the business world, we’ll often talk about the environment. You’re creating the right environment where the right behaviors happen. Another part of your book was sweat the small stuff.
When it comes to leading and decision making. I’m sure, as a parent, to your kids when they were growing up you said many, many times, attention to detail.
I’m just guessing you did. How does that play in these days when sometimes there’s a lazier fare approach to things? It is what it is. Sometimes people think, hey only the big things matter. Here you are saying sweat the small stuff.
Gen. Dempsey:
Yeah, because it’s generally the small stuff that … You ever heard the phrase weak signals of impending failure? I forget what book it was in, but I read a book and it really made an impression on me. I think they use the challenger disaster or something as the illustrative example of that. So I went back and looked at my career at the times when we did experience failure, whether it was an unacceptable failure rate on tank engines or whatever it was. It did come down to something small.
All of the services have a real desire to limit accidents and to promote safety in the workplace because we deal with such dangerous equipment. One of the things we’ve … a lot of corporate Americas will have safety offices and safety officers whose sole function is to do the analysis necessary to explain why things happen. I was always struck whenever I’d get one of those reports, first of all that I think … I hope I’m not exaggerating by saying that every accident I’ve ever seen a report on was preventable at some point. The other piece of that equation was it was generally something really basic and small that created that helicopter crash or whatever it was, that was catastrophic for the individuals involved and their families, and the military itself.
So, I just came away with a belief that, if all that’s true, if all that is accurate, then one of the things you ought to be impressing on the entire organization, leaders and followers is, no, no, you really should sweat the small stuff. I have an example in there about tank engines that I won’t bore you with, but a tank engine is, let’s just say $100,000. If an organization is burning through them as though money doesn’t matter, which is partly true because a tank engine is not paid for by the organization that breaks it. It’s paid for by the big Army. So we did have a bit of a problem in one of my units where we were burning through tank engines. When I peeled it back, it was something as simple as air filters. But anyway, there’s a lot of examples like that.
Jan Rutherford:
It reminds me when we take people rock climbing. The guides are always really adamant about making sure the harnesses are really tight because you want to take the friction out of the system. If you fall, you want to have as little friction as possible.
One of the phrases in your book that you really loved was take out the slack, that you got from one of your bosses.
I wonder if you could kind of explain what that means to you. Take out the slack, and what it means to our listeners.
Gen. Dempsey:
One of the things in the military that drives the military when it’s given a mission, if you were to give a military commander a mission, take that hill or cross that river, whatever it happened to be, they’re going to go into a thing we call the delivered planning process. It’s very draconian actually. There are steps to be accomplished, and it’s become draconian over time because you want to make sure that people understand that, if they’re going to skip a step, they’ve got to know what they’re skipping. This two star general in training us, just before we went to Desert Storm in 1991, was adamant about taking the slack out of the system.
What he meant by that is he would roll us out at 4:00 in the morning into a parking lot with all of our command post vehicles. He’d give us an order, and then he and his staff would literally sit there and watch us take his order and translate it into the instructions that we would be giving out to the rest of the unit. At various times in the process, he would stop and he’d say either did you accomplish this step, or if not, why not? Sometimes he’d say, why did you bother with that? Yes, it’s on the check list, but frankly it doesn’t have any applicability. What he was doing was really tightening our processes so that, when we got through Desert Storm, and things were happening at a breathtaking pace, we were able to keep up with his orders and instructions on the move over 100 miles because he had taken out as much of the slack as he could. But he had to take it out with a hammer. It just didn’t come out by itself.
Jan Rutherford:
I’ve got two more questions for you, sir, before we depart today. At the very beginning, you said, I’ve been ambitious my whole life. That’s what makes the world kind of go around is people want to get stuff done and matter. As you look to your future and writing you’ve done, the teaching you’ve done, what is it that you hope this next chapter is all about for you personally?
Gen. Dempsey:
Wow, I’m glad my doors are closed and my wife has gone out shopping because one of the things, after 31 years in the military, one of the things I’ve done is … My wife, is that she would … I used to get the calendar when I was chairman and before, and I would put all the things on it I had to do. I’d hand it to her with three little tiny spaces on the calendar for her to fit in what she felt we should do, in particular with the family. So my commitment to her was when we retired, that I would let her have the calendar first and then she’d give it to me and I’d fill it in. I’ve actually been true to that, although I am over engineering my own part of the calendar, I’ll be honest with you, especially these days.
We have a lot to talk about. I think the next chapter … I’m already involved in two charitable organizations, the tragedy assistance program for survivors and a Foundation. I think that … First of all, I hope I never stop teaching leadership. By the way, not just leadership, how to form an effective relationship among leaders and fellows. I hope I continue to have the energy and enthusiasm to do the charitable work. But that would be about it I think. I’m probably a little old to … I work at the MBA, but my chances of dunking now are really gone way down, so I’m probably not going to get drafted. But maybe they’ll still find a place for me.
Jan Rutherford:
Well, as we come to the end of our discussion today, again I want to circle back to just sort of the current events.
Again, you talked about these layers of complexity. We have an economic downturn, we have a pandemic, we have racial injustice and civil unrest.
There’s a lot that’s going on right now. Again, before we went on, we were harkening back to the 60s when it seemed like things were falling apart.
As someone that’s greatly respected in our nation and in our world as a leader, what would you say to people that really pay attention to what you have to say about how that we don’t remain as spectators, that we get involved and we become part of the solution, not just commentating and spectating? Lead us.
Gen. Dempsey:
Well, first thing. You may have heard this in our last session, Jan, but the coach had a great way of describing what he expects of his players on the San Antonia Spurs. That’s they need to be in the huddle. What he means by that is something I’ve noticed, which is people are more easily distracted today I think than maybe even we were in the 60s. Although, part of that is that the information wasn’t always available to us until late evening back in the 60s.
So, my first thing would be that I think, as a society, I think we all have to really work and help our children understand how important it is to be in the moment when you need to be in the moment. You can’t be in it all the time because we just don’t have that kind of bandwidth I don’t think. But you can tell during the course of the day when you need to be focused. If you’re not, you’re just not going to be the person that we need you to be. Secondly, leaders at every level need to embrace the fact that what all of these crises produce, each of them produce fear. It’s all about fear.
By the way, I’m afraid I’m going to catch the virus, afraid my family is going to catch it. I’m afraid for the economy. I’m just afraid that we’re going to relive the 60s again. So I’m fearful. The only anecdote to fear, literally the only one, is belonging, a sense of belonging. That’s why soldiers and marines, and sailors and airmen strap themselves into jet or go up in helicopters or walk out the gate of a forward operating base, because they feel like they belong to a team and they’ll overcome their fear with the rest of the team. If we don’t see this as an era where everyone should be trying to establish a closer degree of belonging, we’re really missing what would ultimately be what settles all of these issues.
Then the last thing I’ll tell you on the specific issue of race. When I wrote the first book, we called it Radical Inclusion. One of the inclusions that Ori Brafman and I came to was we had kind of become a little complacent, not just about racial issues, but it could have been gender, whatever it was. What we used to say in traveling around corporate America talking about the book is, diversity, which was of course the big froze of the 90s. Diversity is a payroll issue. Somebody is going to take that payroll and they’re going to score it, and then they’re going to report to the board of directors if the organization is diverse.
Inclusiveness is a culture issue. So we’ve got to get beyond diversity to inclusion. That’s not being Pollyanna. It’s just where we are. The more inclusive we are, the more we learn, because you’re going to get knowledge from people who know things you don’t know, and you’re going to get ownership. People are really going to commit. That’s what we need.
Jan Rutherford:
Thank you, sir. Again, for those of you that haven’t picked up a copy, I urge you to. This isn’t just about promoting a book. It’s about promoting a discussion and a call to listen to other points of view. Again, thank you sir for not only 41 years of military service, but continued service in charities and higher education, and authorship, and everything you’ve done for our country. It’s greatly appreciated. I also want to thank the good folks at LinkedIn that allow us to put something like this up to broadcast live. It will be recorded on YouTube. We’ve got plenty of different resources available for you on LinkedIn and some great courses out there.
LinkedIn has provided a lot of them for adversity right now and resilience and grit that are all free. With that, again, I want to thank General Dempsey for being our guest on the show and thank you all for tuning in to listen. God speed.
Gen. Dempsey:
Thanks, Jan.
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