When working in the U.S. Army Systems Analysis Activity I met a young Captain. He was well educated and charming. Amongst other things he was a great computer programmer and an accomplished magician. Over the course of several lunchtime discussions I learned that he had been part of the special Army team which developed the recruiting slogan “Be All You Can Be”.

I was really charmed and we had a lot of fun playing practical jokes on some of our colleagues. These practical jokes were all harmless and in fact built a kind of comradeship in our team. Of course the jokes cut both ways. The young captain and I were as often butts of the jokes as jokers.

If you are reading this blog to learn about winning, you may wonder why are we talking about this topic. There are at least three good reasons. When the Army offers a recruit a chance to be all he can be, the Army is offering:

•         a program for avoiding self recrimination

•         a program for peace of mind, and

•         a program for replacing hate with love.

Self-recrimination is the ghost that visits you every day of your life when you look back at missed opportunities. I know a young man who left the Navy after 15 years as an enlisted man, Nothing is wrong with being an enlisted man unless it  kept you from being “All You Could Be”. The question that he has to deal with now is Could he have been more if he had been an officer? It was after all a choice that he made.

You and I know people who are in emotional turmoil every day because they feel that they are not receiving all that they deserve. But if they had been in a program which had taken them to maximum personal success they would not have turmoil, they would have peace of mind.

Charlie, one of the engineers I worked with, often said “it’s a joy to be simple”. When I challenged him about making fun of retarded people he was shocked. Charlie told me that the way to be simple was to know where you’re going, to have a plan for getting there and to be working the plan: A plan to create peace of mind, A plan to “Be All You Can Be”.

All living things seek safety. Seeking safety is the first part of seeking survival. For me to be safe I need food, and shelter and income. Right now there are many Americans who do not have all of these things.

Politicians on both sides of the intellectual divide also need those things. To get them they need to get elected. Right now the most common way for them to get votes is to stir up class hatred. One side wants voters to hate those who are successful. The other side wants those who are successful to believe that their safety is threatened by large numbers of people who are less successful.

At any level of success “being all you can be” gives us peace of mind. It’s really hard to hate when you have peace of mind.

Leadership Focus: We, the tax payers, have funded the Army to train, no to demand that all who wear the uniform must “Be All That They Can Be”. In combat that is the difference between life and death for the soldier, for the squad, for the division, for the generals and for the nation.

Now it is time for each of us citizens to take back that training into our civilian lives. Demand of yourself that you “become all you can be”!  Your taxes paid for this leadership concept that has helped to create a great military power. Now benefit yourself, your family and your country by using what you paid for.

My Take: So there you have it. The Army’s recruiting slogan could change hate into love. Not into love of combat, but into self-love, peace of mind and respect for those who are “all they can be.”

Leadership, like war, is a team sport The moment a sergeant. takes over his squad he starts building leadership in each and every soldier. His tools are: Assumption of Responsibility, Delegation of Authority and Follow-Up.

Every mission has a plan. The plan and the execution of the plan are the responsibility of the leader. Leaders are not supermen, they are delegators who follow up. They are not micro managers!

Micro managers create casualties. Micro managers destroy unit morale and waste the resources of their organization. Micro managers are dangerous.

Delegating authority is very hard the first time you have to do it. In the beginning the designated leader is doing something entirely new to him and often lacks confidence in the process and in himself.

Leadership is developed in small steps. It’s like running a marathon. No one starts out running 26 miles. One starts out running a quarter-mile. As you extend the range of your training you keep track of your capability and your performance. That’s follow-up.

Follow up has many faces. Once I had a new secretary who had been selected because she had great experience and a record of excellent performance.

On a particularly busy day I asked her to ignore her other duties in order to type an important letter. I needed the letter to go out immediately. She informed me that it would take at least two hours to get the letter done properly. I sat down at the typewriter and produced the letter in about 10 minutes.

I never again had any false explanations of how long a task would take from that secretary. That was follow-up, letting the employee know that I fully understood the tasks being assigned.

But follow-up can be abused. A company that created computer analyses of military combat, employed an outstanding computer programmer. He prided himself on delivering an outstanding product on time without having the supervisor look over his shoulder. The programmer had promised to deliver code on a particular date.

Unfortunately his supervisor was a micro manager. This was during the era when codes were written on punched cards. A few days before the promised delivery date, the supervisor asked the programmer detailed questions about how the work was going.

The reaction of the programmer was to throw the whole deck of cards on the floor and tell his supervisor to check it for himself. This juvenile response showed the explosive emotionally combative feelings generated by micro management.

I saw an example of productive follow up in a small aircraft company called Scaled Composites. This is Burt Rutan’s Company, famous for building the Voyager that in 1986 set the world distance record for an airplane (24,987 miles).

Scaled Composites employed less than 30 employees at the time I visited their facility in the California desert. At the end of the last work day each week, the employees would meet together in a single room. They would discuss what things need to be completed before the start of work on Monday

Typically there would be a few things planned for completion that week that were not yet done. As a group they would decide which employees should work over the weekend to ensure a smooth start of the next week. That was not a management cram down. It was voluntary. It was a brilliant use of follow-up because each employee was doing their share of the following up!

At the end of each project the Scaled Composites employees would meet again. This time they would discuss the distribution of the profits from the last project. This would include reinvestment, paying debts, pay raises and bonuses. Brilliant!

Leader’s Focus: Every thing you do, large or small, is built on a plan. Even if that plan is just a notion in your mind. Always include follow-up as a safeguard against surprise.

My Take on Winning: For young officers, for anyone advancing to a new level of responsibility, follow-up is the life vest which will save you from drowning in a sea of unintended consequences.

To me that means that when you get promoted to more responsibility you survive by knowing how to employ follow-up.

The military tries to foresee every possible threat and to plan for it. Note that I said ” tries to”. The Army is good but not omniscient. Guess what, neither are you! Yet we all know that we will encounter shocking surprises for which we had no plan. Knowing this reality, what can we do? What can the military do?

Back in the 50’s a Harvard math lecturer using the stage name Tom Lehrer entertained in bars around Boston. He played the piano and sang lewd songs. One was “Be Prepared”. That title gives us a life plan.

To what extent are you prepared for shocking surprises? You may not think you know the answer. The way you live your life is the answer. Soldiers live life being prepared for change. You know the cliché: when the sergeant says “jump” soldiers have only two possible responses: to jump, or to ask “how high” and then jump. Why are those the only two choices?

Because if you’re a soldier, not just a recruit, the life that you have been leading prepared you to take immediate action. Usually a soldier has orders to follow. In the absence of orders, what option does he have? His only choice is to take action.

This attribute of the military life has a footprint in the jargon of the soldier. The footprint is “Do Something! Even If it’s Wrong, Do Something!” This is a personal imperative. In the absence of a specific order or plan, the action arises from life the soldier has led.

Each of us demonstrates the extent to which our life has prepared us to deal with surprise. In 1959 I was a Lieutenant at Edwards Air Force Base. On the third Saturday in May, Armed Forces Day, I had been on duty since 0-dark-30 preparing for the air show. When the show started I was in the stands. Early in the show, during a low-level flyby, an Allouette helicopter crashed 20 or 30 yards in front of the reviewing stand.

The pilot was killed. His wife and children were in the stands.

One of the spectators raced out of the stands headed for the crash. I was in the top of the bleachers next to the reviewing stand. I dropped the 12 or so feet from the back row to the tarmac. I ran out and headed him off.

In the meantime more spectators were following this guy. By stopping him I stopped a small mob. I then ran back to the reviewing stand where the wife and children of the dead pilot were sitting. I with another officer, got them transported to a place where their needs could be managed.

There was no action plan for this situation. I was both mentally and physically fit and had been living an action oriented life. My lifestyle at that point was the complete explanation for my behavior. I did Something.

When you are surprised by a threat, your possible actions are sorted by your lifestyle and by your previous thoughts and planning. A military lifestyle prepares you to take action. Even if the situation is unique and you had never thought about it in advance, you still need to take action.

America is now confronted by surprise with immense financial turmoil. Even a dictatorship would have found it difficult to be instantly responsive. In this Democratic Republic an effective response was not immediately forthcoming.

Interestingly, people with different lifestyles did respond. Both bureaucrats and politicians responded. There is a great argument about whether the responses will benefit the nation as a whole.

The administration told the American public that only radical action would save them from disastrous economic consequences. Congress fought about what to do and how much to pay for it. In the end the government followed the rule “Do Something. Even If It’s Wrong, Do Something!”

But again, the lifestyle of the government (the people who hold the power positions in government) has been set, at least in part, as a response to a post 9/11 active lifestyle.

A two-year long presidential campaign has coursed back and forth all over our country. A war against foreign terrorists has been waged for years. A war against the “war against terrorism” in the media and Congress is also raging. Everybody involved has been leading an active professional lifestyle.

So when confronted with a worldwide financial crisis, both the Administration and Congress were predisposed to take action. They Did Something. Even If It Was Wrong They Did Something!

Leader’s Focus: Military organizations provide an action oriented lifestyle. Each member is busy on duty and off, Doing Something. That something expands the talents of the individual soldier. That something is not condoned if it is nonproductive. A productive lifestyle professionally and personally is an efficient path to survival.

My Take on Winning: Management teachers say: “If You Fail To Plan, You Plan To Fail”. Military leaders call that pure bullshit! You cannot plan for every possibility! According to the logic of management teachers, failure is inevitable. Clearly not so. For the situations which are beyond planning we need to be sure that our lifestyle predisposes us for survival. A lifestyle that embraces integrity, faith and productivity ensures our success and survival. In these very turbulent times each of us would be wise to adjust our lifestyle so that in emergencies of any type we have the physical, mental, emotional and moral vigor to “Do Something. Even It’s Wrong, Do Something!”

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