Daniel Pink, author of, “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future” and his latest, “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” explains why the majority of what we know about motivation is wrong.

Citing many recent studies, Pink shows that traditional carrot-and-stick approaches to management, such as pay bonuses for good work, only apply jobs that are purely mechanical.  For jobs that require even a small amount of rudimentary cognitive skill, pay incentives actually led to worse performance.

In the following video, RSA (The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturing and Commerce…whew) animates Pink’s ideas in real-time as he talks.  If it seems distracting at first, just give it a minute, the animation helps us visual learners digest Pink’s ideas and ends up adding some insight.

(definitely worth 10min of your time.)

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Once in a great many moons you open up a book and step on a mental land mine like the following,

“Does Leadership Exist?”

This question has caused me confusion, frustration, anger, enlightenment and ultimately a humble clarity and desire for further thinking in the three days since having it posed to me in “The 52nd Floor: Thinking Deeply About Leadership” by Dr.’s David Levy, James Parco and Fred Blass.

Before you cross this off as a cute little Jedi mind trick take a second to chew on it.  And while you’re at it here’s the story (my riff) the authors present to go along with it.

An elderly gentleman who once was the CEO of a Fortune 100 company is invited to give a talk on leadership to a group of senior executives.  He starts as most would expect by talking about things like vision, hiring good people, empowering employees, etc.  Then he suddenly pauses for an uncomfortably long period of time and says the following,

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I can continue this speech.  The truth is that I don’t think leadership exists.”

The execs in the room look at one another with a bit of embarrassment and sadness for an elderly gentleman who has obviously lost his way…and possibly his mind.  Before they can exhale the speaker continues,

“Believers in leadership can recite many phrases, slogans and variants of definitions regarding what they think leadership is, but it is always used to describe what happened in the past.  Actually, it’s a bit of a tautology.  Companies that have done well are said to have had great leadership.  Poorly performing companies have had poor leadership.  None can reliably tell us where it is going to be, how it will get there, and most importantly, whether it will succeed once it arrives.  I’m not saying that leaders don’t exist; I’m not that crazy, yet.  Leadership?  Damned if I have a clue?” (emphasis mine)

Here’s what I wrote in the book after thinking about the question and story for a little while,

After spending four years at an institution dedicated to “producing leaders” and reading countless books on the subject, I know all of the canned definitions of leadership, all the phrases like “influence” and “common objectives.” But, of what help this is I’m not sure. I know good leadership when I see it, but I have begun to believe that so much depends on context — the specific time, place, leader, operating environment all dictate a unique approach or paradigm. Not only that, but a great deal depends on the follower as well. All this to say, it is complex, far too complex to sum up with a few bullet points or checklists. In fact, I wonder if these formulas do more damage than good, causing us to believe we have a map in our hands and calling off the search before it has even begun. What we need may be less about learning how to lead and more about learning how to think.

Those were my initial thoughts. Now that I’ve had some more time to think, here are a few more.

The majority of books on leadership are not just a waste of time, they are a fraud. As the elderly former CEO stated, leadership always describes something that happened in the past. As Nassim Taleb pointed out in “The Black Swan” we humans have an extreme penchant for what he calls the narrative fallacy, or our desire to simplify, summarize or otherwise explain complex things that happened in the past rather than having to deal with the uncertainty that comes with not knowing.

In other words, things that we can’t explain scare us, so we invent stories (or 5-step plans) to make ourselves feel better.

Leadership on a large scale requires dealing with complex, dynamic systems that never remain the same long enough to completely control.  This requires more synthesis and less analysis, holistic thinking rather than strict reductionism, an excellent ability to OODA, build snowmobiles (see John Boyd) avoid the trap of the narrative fallacy…but here I go again, jumping down the rabbit hole of listing traits for what it means to be a great leader.  I’ll stop before I do damage.  My head hurts.

So what do you think?  Does leadership exist?  If you took it out of the dictionary would anything change?

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Last October, former Yale professor William Deresiewicz gave a brilliant speech to the freshman class at West Point — one that has caused me to come back multiple times to take in its full meaning and eagerly pass along to close friends.

What made it so special was not just its wisdom, but how different it was from the usual collection of words spouted off by the lineup of suits and brass that make their way through the military academy speaking circuit year after year.

During my four years at USAFA I was privy to hundreds of post-lunch, mandatory pep talks in Arnold Hall where the warm, stale air, soft murmur of whispering cadets and full stomachs often lent itself more to dozing and less to absorbing the wisdom of the elders.

I say this not to paint a grim or self-important picture, but simply to say that it took a very special speaker to shake the cynicism and sleep from a crowd of cadets who had heard it all already.  I wasn’t present when the Professor stood in front of the cadets, but I can imagine that this was one of those speeches.

You should definitely read it here in full, but below are a few choice segments. Thanks to Dr. Al Chase at The White Rhino Report for pointing it out.

So I began to wonder, as I taught at Yale, what leadership really consists of.  My students, like you, were energetic, accomplished, smart, and often ferociously ambitious, but was that enough to make them leaders?  Most of them, as much as I liked and even admired them, certainly didn’t seem to me like  leaders.  Does being a leader, I wondered, just mean being accomplished, being successful?  Does getting straight As make you a leader?  I didn’t think so.  Great heart surgeons or great novelists or great shortstops may be terrific at what they do, but that doesn’t mean they’re leaders.  Leadership and aptitude, leadership and achievement, leadership and even excellence have to be different things, otherwise the concept of leadership has no meaning.

————

So what I saw around me were great kids who had been trained to be world-class hoop jumpers.  Any goal you set them, they could achieve.  Any test you gave them, they could pass with flying colors.  They were, as one of them put it herself, “excellent sheep.”  I had no doubt that they would continue to jump through hoops and ace tests and go on to Harvard Business School, or Michigan Law School, or Johns Hopkins Medical School, or Goldman Sachs, or McKinsey consulting, or whatever.  And this approach would indeed take them far in life.  They would come back for their 25th reunion as a partner at White & Case, or an attending physician at Mass General, or an assistant secretary in the Department of State.

That is exactly what places like Yale mean when they talk about training leaders.  Educating people who make a big name for themselves in the world, people with impressive titles, people the university can brag about.  People who make it to the top.  People who can climb the greasy pole of whatever hierarchy they decide to attach themselves to.

But I think there’s something desperately wrong, and even dangerous, about that idea.  To explain why, I want to spend a few minutes talking about a novel that many of you may have read, Heart of Darkness….

Now everyone knows that the novel is about imperialism and colonialism and race relations and the darkness that lies in the human heart, but it became clear to me at a certain point, as I taught the novel, that it is also about bureaucracy—what I called, a minute ago, hierarchy.  The Company, after all, is just that: a company, with rules and procedures and ranks and people in power and people scrambling for power, just like any other bureaucracy… Just like—and here’s why I’m telling you all this—just like the bureaucracy you are about to join.  The word bureaucracy tends to have negative connotations, but I say this in no way as a criticism, merely a description, that the U.S. Army is a bureaucracy and one of the largest and most famously bureaucratic bureaucracies in the world.  After all, it was the Army that gave us, among other things, the indispensable bureaucratic acronym “snafu”: “situation normal: all fucked up”—or “all fouled up” in the cleaned-up version.  That comes from the U.S. Army in World War II.

————–

That’s really the great mystery about bureaucracies.  Why is it so often that the best people are stuck in the middle and the people who are running things—the leaders—are the mediocrities?  Because excellence isn’t usually what gets you up the greasy pole.  What gets you up is a talent for maneuvering.  Kissing up to the people above you, kicking down to the people below you.  Pleasing your teachers, pleasing your superiors, picking a powerful mentor and riding his coattails until it’s time to stab him in the back.  Jumping through hoops.  Getting along by going along.  Being whatever other people want you to be, so that it finally comes to seem that, like the manager of the Central Station, you have nothing inside you at all.  Not taking stupid risks like trying to change how things are done or question why they’re done.  Just keeping the routine going.

I tell you this to forewarn you, because I promise you that you will meet these people and you will find yourself in environments where what is rewarded above all is conformity.  I tell you so you can decide to be a different kind of leader.  And I tell you for one other reason.  As I thought about these things and put all these pieces together—the kind of students I had, the kind of leadership they were being trained for, the kind of leaders I saw in my own institution—I realized that this is a national problem….

We have a crisis of leadership in America because our overwhelming power and wealth, earned under earlier generations of leaders, made us complacent, and for too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going.  Who can answer questions, but don’t know how to ask them.  Who can fulfill goals, but don’t know how to set them.  Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they’re worth doing in the first place.  What we have now are the greatest technocrats the world has ever seen, people who have been trained to be incredibly good at one specific thing, but who have no interest in anything beyond their area of exper tise.  What we don’t have are leaders.

What we don’t have, in other words, are thinkers.  People who can think for themselves.  People who can formulate a new direction: for the country, for a corporation or a college, for the Army—a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things.  People, in other words, with vision.

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As I’m reading my second Boyd biography, “The Mind or War: John Boyd and American Security” by Grant T. Hammond (my first was this),  I’m trying to absorb more of the things that made him an innovator and a leader.  It’s obvious that he was incredibly intelligent, motivated and creative, but there seemed to be an underlying outlook on life and his career that carried him through the times when things got rough, but one that also put him at odds with the status quo.

This section of the book singles out a large portion of his unique perspective on life, one that made him quite a controversial figure in the halls of the Pentagon:

Along the way, he set out to implement his personal credo — philosophic and strategic — in everything he did, every job he held, and every decision he could influence.  Simply stated, it was more important to do what was right than to be promoted…On active duty, Boyd delighted in finding the very best officers the Air Force had (Air Force Academy graduates, promoted below the zone two or three times and thus several years ahead of their contemporaries) and challenging them.  They were the epitome of company men, team players who wouldn’t rock the boat and who wanted desperately to become Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

One such example was Jim Burton, then a lieutenant colonel recommended to Boyd by a colleague because he was bright…Burton would go on to occupy a critical post in Test and Evaluation and to blow the whistle on rigged tests in the Army’s procurement of the new Bradley Fighting Vehicle.  He recalls the Boyd “To Be or To Do” speech as follows:

“Jim, you are at a point in your life where you have to make a choice about what kind of person you are going to be.  There are two career paths in front of you, and you have to choose which path you will follow.  One path leads to promotions, titles, and positions of distinction.  To achieve success down that path, you have to conduct yourself a certain way.  You must go along with the system and show that you are a better team player than your competitors.  The other path leads to doing things that are truly significant for the Air Force, but the rewards will quite often be a kick in the stomach because you may have to cross swords with the party line on occasion.  You can’t go down both paths, you have to choose.  So, do you want to be a man of distinction or do you want to do things that really influence the shape of the Air Force?  To be or to do, that is the question.”

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When high ranking officials seek to find out the “truth on the ground” they often discover the task much more difficult than expected.  It is usually not because the front-line personnel don’t know what is going on, but rather, few are willing to risk speaking candidly if they know the information will be viewed negatively by leadership.

This is unfortunate as it leaves leaders with a false sense of security.  “…but they said everything’s going great.”  It is something which goes on in many organizations, but the military rank system seems to exacerbate the issue.

There is an unnatural aura around the shiny pieces of medal on people’s shoulders that seem to act as a force-shield, blocking out reality and striking fear in subordinates.  Obviously not the intended effect (at least not most of the time), but one that exists nonetheless.

Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist recently wrote an article in the Financial Times admonishing us to “Listen to the Bearers of Bad News.”  Here’s a snippet:

One of Friedrich Hayek’s obvious-once-pointed-out observations is that society is full of local knowledge, often of a subtle nature and only fleetingly exploitable.  That is one reason why decentralised market processes tend to work well.  When a hierarchy has to exist, Hayek’s insight is the reason why bosses should want to receive truthful assessments of what is going on the shop floor (they don’t) and subordinates should be happy to provide them (they aren’t).

What makes matters worse for any organisation is that the same dynamic is taking place at every level.  Each middle manager is a fresh obstacle to the flow of truth up a hierarchy of wastebaskets.  Sensible managers try to let information flow freely, but many are happy to reinforce the barricades for their own peace of mind.

The results of barriers to communication can be catastrophic.  H.R. McMaster’s influential study of decision-making during the Vietnam war, Dereliction of Duty, is packed with examples.  The joint chiefs of staff were warned by their chairman, Maxwell Taylor, that Lyndon Johnson did not like “split advice”. Johnson’s defence secretary, Robert McNamara, argued that government would be ineffective if department chiefs were to “express disagreement” with the president.  Not disobey, but “express disagreement”.  Johnson trusted McNamara implicitly and relied too heavily on the advice of a man he praised as a “can-do fellow”.   Isolating himself from dissent, the president made a series of disastrous decisions.

The new television series, Undercover Boss, has made a name for itself by finding a creative way around this barrier to truth.  CEO’s of major corporations “dress-down” as low-level employees in their own companies to uncover the truths that would otherwise be relegated to talks around the water-cooler.

I posed the question on Twitter the other day,

“wondering what would happen if Generals pulled an ‘undercover boss’ and dressed up as civilian contractors working with the military?”

I think they might be surprised how different their military looks.

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Several month ago I signed up for a free management tip of the day e-mail from Harvard Business Publishing. Many have been worthwhile, but I wanted to share today’s with you. Quoting John Baldoni, author of “Lead by Example,” and other books on leadership the post states:

Effective leaders need to be mindful not only of their accomplishments, but of their character as well. Humility is a key aspect of character. Here are three ways to step out of the limelight and let others shine:

1. Temper authority. Don’t use authority just because you have it. Encourage your people to make decisions, set their own goals, and take responsibility as often as possible.
2. Promote others often. Grooming talent is good for your organization and for you as a leader. Promote people around you, giving them opportunities to match or even surpass your success.
3. Acknowledge the accomplishments of others. If things go well, give away the credit. If things go poorly, take the fall. This humble approach will ensure your team rallies behind you.

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In every war there are specific battles we come to remember, game-changers that cause those involved to question their assumptions, tactics and strategy.  “Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda” gives us a glimpse into one of those battles.  In March of 2002, after several decisive victories over the Taliban, American forces narrowly escaped disaster in Afghanistan’s Shahikot Valley fighting a severely underestimated Al Qaida. Author Sean Naylor, a senior writer for the Army Times, goes into great detail revealing both the incredible heroism of many young soldiers, as well as, the shocking breakdowns in planning and execution among the highest levels of military leadership.

He describes a battle that showed the deadly limits of technology when operating in unfamiliar terrain, against an unconventional force, and under the watch of military commanders who had been lulled into a false sense of battlefield awareness.  As an eyewitness, Naylor’s account provides the type of scrutiny and on-the-scene reporting that makes generals queasy.  But, don’t get this confused with a sterile news story, “Not A Good Day to Die” has all the hallmarks of a, “Black Hawk Down”-style narrative with plenty of intense action.

Initially stymied by a deal struck between U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command that banned personnel from discussing Operation Anaconda with media, the author had to maneuver one bureaucratic roadblock after another, admitting in the forward that this book was not an easy one to report.

“Researching and explaining a complex and controversial operation fought by a dozen task forces was always going to be a challenge, despite the advantage I enjoyed having been present at the rehearsals for and some of the combat during Operation Anaconda. But even I, after thirteen years of covering the military, had not expected to find so many obstacles placed in my path by a handful of individuals with reputations to protect.” pg. xi

What happened in the Shahikot Valley that made leaders so unwilling to talk?  That’s exactly what Naylor sets out to explain.  First, was the huge intelligence gap that no one grasped until it was too late. Despite constant UAV coverage, hi-tech signals reconnaissance and multiple NSA resources being directed towards piecing together an accurate picture of the enemy and battlefield, the soldiers went in extremely blind to the realities of what they would be facing. The big takeaway, a glaring lack of reliable human intelligence and a terribly inefficient system to share intelligence among the various services and branches involved.

Second, the people making most of the decisions where the ones furthest away from the battlefield. Rather than trusting the men on the ground to lead the fight, generals glued to live predator feeds thousands of miles away felt qualified to direct various forces of which they had very little contact or understanding.  A centralized command structure trying to keep up with a constantly changing enemy spelled disaster from the beginning.  Take for example an episode on the eve of battle where Major General Franklin “Buster” Hagenback, 10th Mtn Division commander requested additional air strikes based on new intelligence from the field.

“General Hagenback said, ‘Hey, bomb these frickin’ things,’ recalled Mikolashek, who was also in the VTC.  This request provoked what Mikolshek described as ‘a little consternation’ on the part of CENTCOM participants in general…”Hey, you guys said you wanted this many targets bombed, and not it’s all of a sudden this many.  What are you doing?’ was how Mikolshek characterized Renuart’s response…

In the end Renuart and Central Command said they would try to arrange the additional air strikes.  But Renuart’s initial reaction suggested that Central Command was not postured to quickly adapt to changing battlefield circumstances.” pg. 187

As often happens in war, the Captains and Sergeants were called upon to not only defeat the enemy, but overcome the lackluster planning of their superiors.  And to this end they did remarkably well.  If half of this book is about the failures of those at the top, the other half is a glowing report of the courageous and cool-headed conduct of those on the front lines.

Between various Spec Ops recon teams that climbed thousands of feet into “unpassable” mountains to gain critical intel, to CIA members stationed in-country who impressed everyone with their intricate knowledge of the area, to Air Force Pararescuemen like Senior Airman Jason Cunningham who was posthumously awarded the Air Force Cross for his exemplary conduct in helping save the lives of 10 wounded soldiers, to members of the 101st Airborne and 10th Mountain Division that acted with lethal professionalism as they were flown into clouds of bullets – this book shows the best of our military as well.  It is a fitting toast to those who risk their lives on a daily basis and a story that will be told for many years to come.

Purchase Book Here

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It’s been a few weeks since we’ve taken a few more nuggets of wisdom from the 1951 publication of, “The Air Force Officer’s Guide.”  In the first two posts we looked at the attributes of conscience, leadership and unselfishness.

This week we continue on with discipline and dependability.  Stalwarts of the United States military in general, these two qualities enable military leaders to execute individual directives in support of national defense objectives.  Discipline is the ability to have self-control and execute under the hardest of circumstances.  Dependability is born of discipline and enables orders to be given with an unwritten guarantee that they will be followed, no questions.

Each of these are an everyday part of military life, but can be easily transferred to leadership in the private sector as well.  A good leader instills the values of his or her organization in the hearts of followers.  And the following are values that every organization can benefit from.

Discipline. In order to develop discipline within his organization, the leader must set the example of discipline.  Since the unit he commands is only a part of a larger organization, the leader must execute objectives or missions which reach him as orders from his own superior officers.  The United States Air Force is disciplined.  And no force which is undisciplined is worth a nickel of the taxpayer’s dollar.  The unhappy recollections of Bladensburg* and Bull Run** illustrate the point.  It would be worse than useless for it would constitute a public menace in itself.  The tradition of discipline is as deeply ingrained into the mind and heart of the successful officer as the tradition of leadership.

Dependability. When a proper officer receives a mission he attacks it determining to accomplish the end directed.  Failure to accomplish missions is the most condemning weakness an officer can dispaly.  Therefore the tradition of dependability grows as the experience of an officer expands.  He extends it to all things, great and small.  His word is taken for granted.  His written reports or statements are accepted at their face value.  He is a man to be trusted and depended upon to do his topmost best in the discharge of his responsibilities.

*Battle of Bladensburg – a battle fought during the War of 1812. The defeat of the American forces there allowed the British to capture and burn Washington, D.C. – wikipedia

**Bull Run – First major land battle of the Civil War where Union soldiers were eventually routed and forced to retreat. – wikipedia

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Continuing on in our series, we take a look at a few more sections from the classic 1951 version of, “The Air Force Officer’s Guide.”  The topic of leadership is discussed by many and understood by few.  The military relies on it everyday and trains it’s officers to lead men and women in day-to-day tasks as well as in combat.  More than any other environment, the military is the greatest leadership laboratory.  And intimately connected to leadership is it’s partner unselfishness.

Many mistakenly view leadership as an opportunity to control others and use them to serve one’s own purposes.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  True leadership is found in serving others rather than being served.  Only someone who is unselfish can grasp the true meaning and power of great leadership.

Here’s what the guide has to say on leadership and unselfishness:

Leadership.  The officers is trained to lead.  From his earliest days the tradition is ground into him.  He becomes accustomed to receive and execute missions.  This requires him to plan work, assign missions to others, and then to see that their work is done skillfully and in cooperation with others. As he grows older his training and experience broadens and increases his capabilities; this is generally accompanied by greater responsibilities. Thus the tradition of leadership deepens. Just as he is trained to lead others, he is trained to be led by others. For no military person can rise so high, or attain so great a position, that he is not responsible to another. The Chief of Staff reports and is responsible to the Secretary of the Air Force who in turn reports to the Secretary of Defense. Military leadership requires ability to develop teamwork and at the same time to be part of a team.

Unselfishness.  The officer is confronted constantly with putting someone or something ahead of his personal likes or dislikes or preferences.  When he is in command of men he must see to it that their needs are satisfied before he cares for his own comforts. If his assignment takes him east when he prefers to go west, he goes east. If he wishes a course at a service school and is sent to an obscure post on duty of small appeal, he forgoes the school. When the good of the Air Force or of his unit requires him to do or forgo doing something which he wants, the proper officer takes the action which is for the good of the service. These examples with countless others emphasize the life of unselfishness which is the life of the officer.

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During the three months my family and I spent in Altus, OK this spring, while I completed my initial C-17 training, we attended a book fair one Saturday afternoon at the local library.  As I walked into the room full of books, my attention immediately shifted to a pile of old, tattered hardcovers in the back corner.  Old books have always fascinated me.  Not that old always means better, but maybe in a world of quick gimmicks and one-hit wonders, something that has stood the test of time can offer us something we don’t normally find, wisdom.

So, you can imagine my delight when my friend, Chris Yengo, pointed out to me a copy of an tattered, blue book, straight from the 50′s entitled, “The Air Force Officer’s Guide.”  To most this might not be such a great find, but I am, in fact, an Air Force officer and was sure that there would be a few pearls of wisdom to be found in this book; this collection of lessons written in an age when it wasn’t offensive to be direct and virtue was something to be honored rather than sold in a cute children’s book.

For the next several weeks I want to present to you, taken straight from the book, some wonderful traits and traditions of Air Force officership.  Like many classics, they are universal and can easily be transferred from the life of an officer to yours, wherever you are and whatever you happen to do.  Tonight we look at conscience straight from page 325:

Conscience. A quality invariably present in fine Air Force officers is the driving force of conscience. No man other than yourself can say with assurance how hard you tried to do your job. Success is no criterion here. Many an officer has accomplished the task assigned in an excellent manner, drawing praise from his superiors and subordinates alike, but finding the taste of praise bitter because he knew he could have done better.

Conscience will not let well enough alone, it insists on the best. It is good that this is so, since none may ever know by just what minute increment of effort the tide of battle is swayed. One is reminded of an Air Force officer in Korea who, being responsible for the maintenance of aircraft in his unit, had turned out for a critical day’s operation , 90 percent of his assigned aircraft in commission for combat. No other Air Force unit in Korea had as high an in-commission status that day. Yet the officer inquestion was obviously disconsolate.Standing in the cold mud of Korea with great rings of weariness under hus eyes from inhuman working hours this officer said: “A little forethought and I could have turned them all out.”

Thus spoke the driving force of conscience, the burning dissatisfaction with any result but the best. Shakespeare noted that “conscience doth make cowards of us all.” In some respects this is true, but if an officer learns that he is answerable to his conscience, and so acts as to be able to confront it without fear, conscience will make superior officers of most and heroes of some.

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