General Godin: What the Military Can Learn from Seth’s Hierarchy of Success

First off, if you’re involved in any type of business or organizational leadership and you’re not reading Seth Godin, you are wrong. I have yet to read his books (shame on me), but I have been following his blog for about a year now and have been impressed. His posts are always short, memorable and packed with value.

Seth recently wrote a post called, “The Hierarchy of Success” where he said the following:

I think it looks like this:

1. Attitude
2. Approach
3. Goals
4. Strategy
5. Tactics
6. Execution

We spend all our time on execution. Use this word instead of that one. This web host. That color. This material or that frequency of mailing.

Big news: No one ever succeeded because of execution tactics learned from a Dummies book.

Tactics tell you what to execute. They’re important, but dwarfed by strategy. Strategy determines which tactics might work.

But what’s the point of a strategy if your goals aren’t clear, or contradict?

Which leads the first two, the two we almost never hear about.

Approach determines how you look at the project (or your career). Do you read a lot of books? Ask a lot of questions? Use science and testing or go with your hunches? Are you imperious? A lifehacker? When was the last time you admitted an error and made a dramatic course correction? Most everyone has a style, and if you pick the wrong one, then all the strategy, tactics and execution in the world won’t work nearly as well.

As far as I’m concerned, the most important of all, the top of the hierarchy is attitude. Why are you doing this at all? What’s your bias in dealing with people and problems?

As much as this is true for the business world, the military could take some cues from this hierarchy as well. Everyone loves talking tactics and execution because they’re immediate and tangible. Generals can be satisfied they’ve accomplished something as they watch a Predator feed showing a strike that they signed off on. But strategy? Goals? I don’t hear as much real conversation going on about these items and that worries me (I admit, they could be going on and just not making it all the way down the pile to little guys like me…but, I’m skeptical).

In the fog and friction of war it is very easy to become saturated in the day-to-day details and soon forget why we’re fighting in the first place, I see it ALL THE TIME. Since 4GW plays out at the moral level (a battle of ideas) understanding the reason we fight is of the utmost importance. Regarding Afghanistan, it is worrisome that, as a country, we are still unclear on the main objective(s) of a continued presence. As Andrew Exum, Abu Muqawama (of the Center for a New American Security) wrote last month,

Last week, I flew to Boston to give a talk on Afghanistan to a collection of senior-level government officials from the United States and abroad as part of the Kennedy School’s Executive Education Program. All credit goes to the excellent audience — which happily agreed to listen to a talk on strategy and operations from a 31-year old and peppered me with some great, thought-provoking questions. But without a doubt the most persistent questions I received were along the lines of “What are we doing in Afghanistan and why are we there in the first place?”

The fact that these are the questions that I am now receiving from career public servants in our nation’s departments and agencies should be a huge warning bell for the administration. And it means that Kagan is exactly right — this is now Obama’s war, and he and Stan McChrystal need to explain to the American people in non-IR-speak why we are in Afghanistan and what we are doing there. (Hint: if you cannot explain your policy to folks in the 3rd Congressional District of Tennessee in a way they can understand it, you might need to change your policy.)

Unclear goals and strategy lead to ineffective tactics and execution. It has to be goals and strategy before tactics and execution, not after….and we haven’t even touched on attitude or approach (discussions for another day).

Whether in the business world or the military Godin’s Hierarchy of Success is a great paradigm from which we can all learn a great deal. Thanks Mr. Godin!

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Related posts:

1. Hierarchy and False Information
2. What He Said – On Transforming the Military
3. Matthew Hoh’s Letter of Resignation Regarding Afghanistan
4. What I’m Reading (03.15.10)

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