As a student at Caltech I was a member of the Air Force ROTC.  Back in the day, some of us cadets were flown to The Firepower Demonstration at Eglin Air Force Base.  In the plane we sat on canvas seats and bare aluminum structure.  Backpack parachutes were stacked in the corner, so to say.  All of us cadets were uncomfortable sitting in the canvas seats.  He pulled out a parachute backpack and lay down on it.

The crew chief, a grizzled Master Sergeant, jerked the parachute pack out from under the cadet.  The sergeant gave us all a lecture that I shall never forget.  It was physiology and physics and survival all rolled up in one.

The sergeant told us about another flight with young cadets.  On that flight, a cadet had also taken a nap on his parachute backpack.  When something went wrong with the airplane the cadets had to put on their chutes and bail out.  They all landed safely except for the cadet who had been taking a nap on his parachute.  His chute ripped when it opened.  The cadet was killed.

The sergeant reminded us that everyone sweats.  He even quoted the amount of sweat produced by a normal weight male in an hour.  The cadet had been sleeping on his parachute for about three hours.  In doing so, the cadet had soaked his chute with sweat.

The Sergeant said that when you bail out of a plane at high altitude the outside air temperature can instantly freeze water (30 degrees below Zero at 25,000 feet).  He told us that when parachute fabric has ice in it, the fabric loses its flexibility.  And when it loses its flexibility it rips.  That young cadet had traded temporary comfort for his life!

Maybe this story really happened.  Maybe it was just a mythical training aid.  Either way it trained me.  Over the years I have at times chosen comfort over the right thing to do.  I am overweight.  Look around to see how many other Americans are also overweight.  Comfort food endangered their lives, as it has mine.

Some decisions pit comfort against survival.  When the alarm wakes you in the morning you may decide to hit the snooze button.  That is a decision to be comfortable. Most days, that will work out all right.  Some days, that that decision will lead to disaster.

• If choosing to be comfortable causes you to fail the team, will you survive?
• If you fail to face your health problems as directed by the doctor, will you get well?
• If you are the family breadwinner, will you budget your family’s money carefully or spend big bucks “keeping up with the Jones”?

Leadership focus: Anytime you choose to be comfortable instead of facing a problem, be suspicious! Your decisions define your character.  The old saying, “The coward dies 1000 deaths, the hero only one” should inform all your decisions.

My Take: I don’t know your life.

• I don’t know what the biggest threat to your survival is.
• I do know there are threats out there.
• I do know that meeting them is not comfortable.
• I do know that the consistent winner faces the threats head on!

You must decide whether to be comfortable or to survive.  It is up to you!

We live in a complex world.  Gone are the days of the rugged individualists.  Almost everything we do depends on the team or some support element.  That support depends on knowledge, action, and integrity.  If your support comes from a Bart Simpson outlook: “so what, who cares, what is in it for me”, then you are in a lot of trouble!

How will you survive? No, you cannot pack your own parachute the way the early skydivers did.  But you can create quality support before you start a mission.

When I was a graduate student at Caltech, Frank Borman was a fellow student.  Frank is best remembered as the Commander of Apollo 8, the first mission to fly around the moon.  We were both Air Force officers and had a professional connection.

Later, before the Apollo 8 mission, I saw him at NASA.  He had two stacks of photographs on his desk.  One stack had signed messages on them.  Each photo was different.  Each photo showed Frank with people who worked on the production line of the Saturn V rocket.

I asked Frank what he was doing.  He told me that he took every opportunity to go to the Saturn V production lines.  There he would thank the workers for doing a good job.  He took a photographer with him.  As he walked through the production facility getting pictures taken he talked with everybody working on that Saturn V booster, he made notes of the conversations.

When the photo prints came back to him he used his notes to guide what he wrote to each of the workers. Each individual worker got a personalized signed photo.  This was a long time habit for Frank.

Frank Was Packing His Own Parachute!

You encounter many people every day.  Show respect as you deal with them.  Thank the young man who delivers your mail.  Are the servers in the company cafeteria glad that you were there?  What about the security guards?  What about the janitor?  Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, you are also packing your parachute. Pack it respectfully and then the parachute will work when you need it.

Leadership Focus: Winning is an intimate mixture of many events which cascade to success.

My Take: To be a winner, be a leader.  To be a leader, put the troops first!

A goal has no value unless it can be measured.  The measure of a winning career in flying is: that for each takeoff there is a safe landing.  Success and planning is a matched pair.

As a young flight test engineer, I was really eager to impress my boss.  My boss was a hero fighter pilot from World War II.  When I was given the chance to make my first flight test plan, I wanted to know, “How are we going to measure whether or not the flight was a success?”  The boss’s answer was, “If the pilot walks away from the landing, the flight was a success.”

Of course that was a gut level answer.  The pilot is more valuable than the mission.  The mission is more valuable than the airplane.  But what about the mission: the flight test; the data?

It took me quite a while to know that basic issues are the measure of success.  In engineering it is a product made on time, within budget and specs.  In problem solving it is what was assumed.  In flying it is pre-flight check.

In a previous post I said that the first priority in being a team leader is the health of individuals and even more, the health of the team.  I also said that care of equipment before action is a must.  The focus of my other posts is that preparedness is the basis for winning action.

But in those posts, I did not say how we measure preparedness.  We measure preparedness by checking every part of the plan, human and material, before we start a mission.

In aircraft, you pre-flight check vital indicators in every system. Before any other kind of mission you do the same thing.  You check every system and every critical components of the system.  You do not stop with just the most obvious components.

When flying, members of military aircrews wear boots.  Why?  Because they may have to bailout of the aircraft.  If they are wearing oxfords or loafers, the shock of parachute opening will leave them barefoot, as I well know!  If you thought before you took off, “I don’t need boots sitting in the cockpit of a jet plane,” and then the failure to preflight check your footwear may leave you in grave danger.

Whether you are in combat or launching the sale of a new product, there will be little time to check the fine details in the middle of the action.  Do it first!

Leadership Focus. Set an example for your people by being mindful of the fine details before you start anything.

My Take. When you are an expert or the boss is easy to pass over the details.  It is not that you neglect them; it is just that they are not at the front of your mind.  As a Tai Chi Master once told me “that is the fiery path to the Devil’s tent!”

One of the criteria used in designing ammunition is lethality.  But sometimes munitions designs which will wound rather than kill are more devastating to the enemy.  Why?  Because caring for the wounded is a logistic burden.  Not only is a soldier who is wounded less capable of fighting, but he also is a burden on others who must care for him rather than fight.  Wounded soldiers burden their team.

Ever hear the expression “he shot himself in the foot”?  Rough translation: The individual’s own action defeated him.  If you are a foot soldier, blisters on your feet may be just as bad for your performance and your team as a combat inflicted wound.

• If you do not look out for your own health you are a burden to your team.
• As a member of the military team, you must prevent self-inflicted injury. You must use the timeouts to care for health. Wash and dry your feet. Put on a clean pair of socks.

We have previously mentioned that you must care for your weapons.   Survival requires that you maintain yourself as well.  Sometimes this means taking time to rest.  And sometimes this means making sure that you are in a physical condition to be effective in action.

During World War II, my cousin Benny was in the Navy.  While serving on an aircraft carrier he saw a fellow sailor fall overboard.  Benny kicked off his shoes and dived in after him.  Fortunately, the aircraft carrier was docked at the time.  It was possible for Benny to save the other sailor from drowning.  Benny did not get a medal.  Benny got a court-martial!

Why?  Because of the probability of serious injury for Benny.  Benny dove from 60 feet above the water.  Benny hit the water at about 30 miles an hour.  Water is 1000 times denser than air.  Hitting the water at that speed could have caused serious injury.  Benny had been lucky.  He was not injured.  But, by risking his own safety, he risked the effectiveness of his team. The impact of an injured sailor on the workload of the crew would have been worse than simply being one sailor short.

It was the responsibility of the sailor to not fall overboard.  It was Benny’s responsibility to make sure that he was ready for duty when his shift time started.  Benny’s concern for the sailor who fell was in conflict with his duty to his team and his ship mates.

War, like nature, is harsh.  But as members of the team, it is our duty to survive.  For me as a retired person the survival of my team is the survival of my immediate family.  I must maintain my health to ensure the stability of my family.

My wife works as a ballet teacher. Her ability to teach her classes is important for the survival of the school.  In addition to her responsibilities to our family, she has responsibilities to the school.  And indeed she is careful of her feet.  She maintains her health so that her teaching and the school can survive.

Leadership Focus: Evolution has spent eons building the best possible tool.  You are that tool.  Your team and its home depend upon you to maintain that tool.  If first things come first, then your health must be your first priority.

My Take: Caring for your health is not selfishness.  It is self-awareness.  Without self-awareness you cannot be a part of the team.

Bart Simpson says, “So what?  Who cares?  What’s in it for me?”

SO WHAT? We dealt with that in the last blog post where you learned that the road to becoming a effective leader is paved with focused, intensive nurturing of change.

WHO CARES? On October 30, 2008 I told you how my commanding general made it very, very clear that an officers’ first duty is to make sure that their soldiers are properly cared for.  THE COMMANDING GENERAL CARED, he made sure that I cared too.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME? By now you know that winning is what is in it for you.  In the military winning is survival.  Institutionally, in business, in government or any other organization winning is the road to promotion.

To know the value of winning, you must also know the consequence of losing.  In 1937 at age 5, I began to learn about losing.  I lost my father.  My family and I lost a middle-class lifestyle.  My mother had to support us.  From then on I did not see much of her (another loss).  In 1937 women were poorly paid for their work so my two brothers had to go to work too.  More loss!

It was from many examples set by my family that I learned about losing and about winning.  Like the day when my oldest brother got pretty badly beaten by another boy right in front of me.  I broke down crying. I said “You lost the fight!”  He said “The fight’s not over!”  The next day he met the other boy and beat the heck out of him.  He looked at me and said “Now the fight is over!”

I grew rapidly as a child.  By the time I reached the fifth grade I was 5 foot 8.  When you grow that fast, you have the psychomotor coordination of a rock.  So, I became the kid that all the athletic boys could bully.  More loss and humiliation!

The place where I could compete with these other kids was in the classroom.  I learned to study.  In spite of the fact that I was partially dyslexic, I was able to excel in the classroom.  In the classroom I could drive those bullies into the corner with my mind and with my ability to learn.  They made a fool of me on the playground once or twice.  I made fools of them in the classroom for the rest of my life.

This was where I first learned that every time I rested I needed to clean my weapons.  Of course, I learned by example.  My mother, who had been a nurse, sharpened her weapons by reacquiring her RN license.  My two brothers, who were in high school, sharpened their weapons by finding work after school.

What was in it for me? I learned that to survive I needed well oiled tools.  For the soldier those tools are weapons.  For me, my mind is my weapon and my tool.

Ultimately, I entered a prestigious technical University with honors at entrance, graduated with honors and later received three more degrees including a PhD.  All of this because: whenever I rested, I cleaned my weapons.

Leader’s Focus: By now you know we cannot win without a team.  You should also know that your support comes not only from your team, but from well-maintained weapons.  In every field of endeavor, your weapons are your specific professional skills.

My Take on Winning: your weapons are your body, your mind, you will, your spirit and your objectives.  Every time you rest, take time to clean at least one of them.

The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.–Confucius

It was the fourth day in boot camp.  The drill instructor flipped on the lights and thundered, “Drop Your Cocks and Grab Your Socks.”  All of the recruits were between 18 and 20 years of age.  It did not matter that they were ROTC recruits.  Building soldiers or building officers, the military applies the same rules and methods.  We had 22 minutes to shower, shave, relieve ourselves and be in formation ready for morning exercise.

Was that crude wake up call just for intimidation?  Or was it something more?  Almost everything the DI says is a tool used to teach, to sensitize, to nurture, and to build structure.  The structure being built is a winning team of winning warriors.  The DI teaches each and every soldier to survive efficiently.  Efficiency is a logistics issue.  Efficiency is not wasting anything, whether it is energy, equipment, motivation or focus.  Efficiency is nurtured in the training of a young recruit.

Healthy young men often wake up in the morning with “Morning wood”. The proper term for this phenomenon is Nocturnal Penile Tumescence!  And most of them are acutely embarrassed to have anybody else notice.  The DI’s heavy handed greeting stresses those who are embarrassed.  Stress is an emotional exclamation mark.  Stress focuses the mind of the recruit. Recruits will become soldiers.  Soldiers are efficient team players.  Efficiency implies an understanding of the boundaries between essential functions and personal wants.  In this situation, the young recruit is learning that his focus must be on team function not irrelevant personal gratification.

As Bart Simpson says, “So what?”  The efficient transformation of a group of easy-going young men into a team of survivable warriors is the job of the DI.  Every word and every action of the DI is focused on nurturing change.  There is no time for the recruit to ask why.  There is no time for the recruit to say I do not understand.  There is only time to nurture the strengths that nature has brought forth in the individual.  These strengths in modern society may take years to become reliable.  In effect, the boot camp is a kind of hothouse in which the recruits are forced to bloom in minimum time.

Leader’s Focus: It is said that nothing sharpens the mind so much as the threat of death.  The military uses artificial stress to sharpen the minds and bodies of young recruits so that they may live.  Whatever the nature of an organization, training under stress accelerates the learning process and nurtures the individual’s abilities.

My Take on Winning: America has grown from a nearly primitive society to one which can afford comfort for most.  Most of us provide comfort for our children.  If we do not also nurture them with stress, there will be some point, where they will meet a stress test which may be too much for them.  The outside world sees America as soft because we are affluent.  Throughout our history the economic trend has been upward.  That could not have happened if we had not been nurtured through stressful experience.

Polished Shoes Save Lives was my posting for 11^th of February.  I will continue that theme with several more posts exploring the lifestyle structure which leads to winning.

Darwin told us how capability defines mission.

Darwin’s observations and conclusions about change are a fundamental baseline from which to measure how much change we can bring about in ourselves.  Change is limited to refining through use, what we have and who we are.

We are born with certain personal attributes; nurturing makes those attributes useful.

Boot camp is about nurturing: nurturing self-knowledge, nurturing skill, nurturing the use of standards.  In boot camp old habits die and new habits are born. After boot camp, we must continue to nurture our strengths or suffer lost capability. We nurture strength of body, mind and soul through The Daily Dozen particularized to each of these aspects.

Lifestyle Equals Capability

In boot camp you fire up your competitive spirit:  Physical demand after physical demand… you become strong and agile. Mental demand after mental demand… mental reactions become quicker.  Challenge after challenge… you refuse to give in.  You gain a new lifestyle: The style of a winner! The style of leadership!

Many people who have never been in the military have created a winning lifestyle.  They did it without a military boot camp, but they had their own boot camp, their own physical, mental and situational challenge.  Winners succeed in life by using their own “Daily Dozen” to keep their edge.

Roger C. Parker, author and publishing coach, offers clients a daily dozen approach.  He expects them to commit at least one half hour each day to writing and promoting their book.

Wolf Kohn is a brilliant graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the president and the owner of a software corporation.  I asked him how he maintains his ability to solve complex mathematical problems.  He has his own version of The Daily Dozen.  He never goes to bed until he has worked at least one mathematical problem each day.  Clearly, Wolf knows how to maintain the successful edge that he gained at MIT.

Many others like me moved on from serious technical educations into management without continuing the MIT daily dozen.  That is, without continuing to work technical problems every day.  Many like me who were once extraordinarily physically fit have lost that capability.  We lost the nurturing of serious physical activity each day.  We are not being “All We Can Be”.

Slogans Guide Us

Darel Rutherford, author and life coach, teaches that in order to have anything you must first BE the person who would naturally have that thing.  The Army trains its soldiers in order to achieve that state of ownership.  Their slogan is Be Know Do… strong support for The Daily Dozen.

In the military, tradition plays a powerful role.  Tradition communicates through symbols, insignia, etiquette and loyalty. We think of tradition, as “my father did it this way, I do it this way and my son will do it this way.”  The Daily Dozen collapses tradition’s multigenerational timescale into one lifetime.  Routines keep your life in order.

The Daily Dozen depends on these principles:

• Strength is technique.
• Grease the groove.
• High tension

Strength Is Technique

All athletes win their events long before the day of competition.  They practice every move in their specialty, over and over. They all use technique to minimize the difficulty of their specialty.  Any professional athlete will tell you that smooth as fast.  That is technique.  That comes from the athlete’s use of his or her Daily Dozen.

Grease the Groove

Getting in the groove is like getting in the zone.  It is achieving a state in which mind and body function without thought or will.  Repetition is the grease for this groove.  The Daily Dozen regimen is exercises today, tomorrow and on the day after that.

High Tension

Muscles do not build strength through aerobic exercise.  Muscles need to be stressed in order to build strength.  The brain needs to be stressed in order to develop analytical strength.  The competitive spirit needs to be stressed if you plan to win. You need to be winner if you plan to lead.

Leader’s Focus: To Be All You Can Be, continue refining through use, what you have and who you are. Do The Daily Dozen.

My Take on Winning: Boot Camp nurtures the most fundamental nature of the human being.

These are the United States Marine Corps’ “daily dozen:” From: http://ask.metafilter.com/42174/What-are-the-Marine-Corps-Daily-Dozen
1. Side straddle hops (jumping jacks)
2. Marine Corps Push-ups
3. Cherry pickers
4. Rowing Exercise
5. Side Benders
6. Flutter Kicks
7. Toe Touches
8. Crunches
9. Trunk Twisters
10. In-Place Double Time
11. Standing Leg Lifts
12. “Six Inches” (Lying leg-lifts)

In boot camp old habits die and new habits are born. It’s common for civilians to believe that boot camp is all about squashing initiative. In fact boot camp is about building initiative. Initiative is built on a foundation of self-knowledge. Nature provides us with certain attributes and nurturing makes those attributes useful. Don’t choke on that! Believe it or not boot camp is about nurturing: nurturing self-knowledge, nurturing skill, nurturing an appreciation of standards.

Yes, in boot camp you learn to polish shoes. Why? Because in a good polish job there are no shortcuts.  If you cannot learn to stay with a simple task until the job is perfect, then you have little chance of surviving in combat. For that matter there’s little chance of your surviving in the business world either. Survival and victory are composed of having perfectly executed many small tasks.  We use the words PERFECTLY EXECUTED to mean that the job was done right.  We do not mean nit picking over every detail.

When soldiers are lined up for inspection, a quick look down the line tells you if all the shoes are polished. If they are, you know that these troops know how to do the little things the right way. When recruits have learned to do the little things perfectly, then they are prepared to learn tasks that sooner or later will save their lives.

Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf is quoted as saying “Polished Shoes Save Lives.” As an Army brat he may have known this before he could read or write. He grew up in an Army family, went to high school at Valley Forge Military Academy and then graduated from The United States Military Academy at West Point.

In Vietnam Schwarzkopf showed that great courage under fire is part of the perfectly executed job. When some of his men were caught in a minefield and one had been wounded, he crawled into the minefield to save his men. He proved that “Polished Shoes Save Lives.”

On December 26, 1943 Marines under the command of Lewis W. Walt (later to become Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps) went ashore at Cape Gloucester in New Guinea. They left their landing crafts in chest deep water. In the time between joining the Marine Corps and stepping off those landing crafts most of them had learned to do little things perfectly.

Step into That Picture. Will you survive, or as some did that day, die? Someday, somewhere you will be confronted with the tests of how well you do all the little things. Did you go to the right boot camp?

Leader’s Focus: winning is a nonlinear function of a lot of small jobs done perfectly.

My Take on Winning: Go to Boot Camp. It will save your life.

The Rock In My ShoeWe all have training wheels provided us by the evolution of the species. One-trial-learning, which I refer to as training wheels, helps us survive in new situations. Unfortunately, it is also the root cause of prejudice.

One-trial-learning is hardwired into our species so we quickly learn that some things are dangerous. The hot stove and the child learning not to touch it the second time cliché is an example.

This hardwiring also works the other way. When we’re very successful at a particular tactic we come to believe that it will always work. This is especially true in naive leaders. Charismatic young men learn that followers believe them without thinking.

But there are situations in which the training wheels come off before the rider has mastered the bicycle. That leads to bruises and nasty scrapes.

For George W. Bush the belief in his good-old-boy charm gave him confidence that he could count on the loyalty of people who had served his father. In fact their loyalty always was divided. In the end they served him badly.

Now we see a truly charismatic President Obama building his staff with people whose primary loyalty is to the former President Clinton.

I fear President Obama will be even more poorly served by his team than was President Bush.

One-trial-learning is hardwired in us all. It is our first survival tool. As such it is the true basis for loyalty. Secondary learning never overwrites or replaces the results of one trial learning.

I believe President Obama may find that he has sad results from choosing a staff whose members have divided loyalty.

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.