Retrograde
Quick Fire thoughts about some previous newsletters
I recently got back from one of the Army’s premier training exercises called “Warfighter.” There is much I could say about the exercise, but I’ll need more time to think about it before I start writing. Rather than come up with a bunch of new stuff, I wanted to go back over a few of my recent newsletters and write about they relate to the exercise.
The bottom line for Warfighter: our staff absolutely crushed it. By almost any metric, we absolutely dominated the exercise. The team I am on is stacked with an insane amount of talent. How we all ended up on the same staff is beyond me. I cannot possibly say enough good things about the people with whom I serve.
Here are my thoughts:
April 11th, 2023: Coaching
This was a rant against people who bill themselves as leadership coaches who have little to no experience in the areas where they are coaching.
The Warfighter employs retired Generals to act as “Senior Mentors” to the Commanding General and his deputies. I cannot tell you how incredibly valuable they were to our staff, especially Lieutenant General (Retired) Quintas. The Senior Mentors had led at extremely high levels in the Army and had excellent insights. They were able to coach us from authority because they actually knew what the hell they were talking about.
As I pointed out in that newsletter, coaching can be great, but your coach should either have a very narrow focus on a particular aspect of something you are trying to improve like public speaking, writing, or negotiating, or they should have done what you are doing and have demonstrated success. Our division commander would have absolutely no use for a “leadership coach,” but I think he benefited enormously from having a highly successful, retired 3-star General whispering in his ear.
April 25th, 2023, Empathy
Here I talked about the importance of taking feedback and criticism during AARs. I saw a bunch of different AARs during the Warfighter, but not once did I see a senior leader stomp on a lower-ranking person just because they disagreed. Everyone, the senior leaders included, showed enormous humility and a lot of empathy. There was also a lot of ownership and self-criticism which I think speaks to the health of our organizational culture.1
During the exercise itself, before any of the AARs, a group of us were being very critical about and making fun of another staff. One of the senior leaders was partaking in the sardonic fun, but after a few minutes, he changed his tone and said, “It’s okay to have a laugh, but we need to realize that they (the other staff) see things a certain way and they are making the best judgments they can, even if we disagree. That, my dear reader, shows empathy and encourages others to do the same. Everyone knows what it’s like to have a disagreement with headquarters or a different section of the organization. Empathy means extending them grace and trying to see things from their point of view.
Or you could just make a bunch of hilarious memes about them…I’m not perfect, okay?!
I know this meme will make no sense to you, but it had us rolling on the floor laughing.
April 18th, 2023, Errors and Results (last week)
I know I keep tooting my unit’s horn, but we really are pretty amazing. Our first big training exercise as a new staff was in September 2022 at Fort Irwin, CA. Our senior leaders showed enormous restraint and sound judgment. They knew that because it was our first time on exercise as a staff that we were going to struggle. Errors were welcome and messing up was not stigmatized. At one point we had three Generals and three Colonels sit through one of the worst briefings ever. It was nothing but people not muting their microphones, talking forever, briefing the wrong material, and multiple technical errors. To their enormous credit, they just sat there and let it happen.
But that sh*t did not ever happen again. Subordinate leaders realized how bad it had gone and immediately started tightening things up. We were in a safe-to-fail environment, but we were NOT in a safe-to-continue-failing environment. The senior leaders made clear what standards were and communicated them clearly. And because subordinate leaders felt empowered to act, senior leaders never had a to bring down the hammer. We got much, much better over time. There is no Failishizing in this unit!
The pretty remarkable thing is that we’ve been able to keep this mentality going for the whole time that I’ve been here. I always feel like we can experiment, try new things, and give our opinion, but I also feel an enormous drive to deliver results.
January 24th, 2023, Focus Part One and (28 Feb) Part Two
Okay, I’ll be a little critical here. Focus, I thought, was an area that we could have done better. I thought we tried to do too much all at once and, as a result, it took much longer to see improvement in specific areas across the staff. My little work group had a funny mantra that we kept repeating whenever we felt like we were trying to do way too much, “Everything. Everywhere. All at once.2"
Things improved gradually over time, but I thought we could have improved more things faster if we had more focused senior leader energy on specific items. One of our working groups in particular needed specific focus in order to improve. But instead of just spending eight dedicated hours fixing the entire chain of the problem, we kind of motioned that way for an entire CPX and then for the entire warfighter. It wasn’t until the last day of the exercise that the working group finally produced what it should have been producing all along. And, personally, I still don’t think it’s where it needs to be. This is not any one person or one section’s fault, it’s just something that requires the integration of the entire staff which would require enormous focus.
Anyway, we crushed Warfighter, and we are all very pleased with ourselves.
As a reminder, hearing back from you all about what you think of these newsletters makes my day. Even if you disagree or have caveats, I love hearing from you. If you just hit “reply” to this email and type your response, I’ll read it and respond. You can also leave a comment.
Please feel free to share this with people who might be interested.
Have a great week!
It should be noted here that I am a lowly staff major on a very large division staff. If our staff has succeeded it is because of how well we are led and how well we work together as a team. My contributions to success have been relatively minor compared to others.
Derived from the name of a recently released movie.
An empathetic leader, who can create a “safe to fail” environment is the gold standard. But, we live in a “get it done yesterday” culture. How can we get leaders, of any industry, to realize that time spent now on expressing empathy and allowing failure, is going to save months of work picking up the crumbling pieces of the organization because they failed to provide the unseen infrastructure that humans need to be successful?