May 13, 2015
Alexandra Wolfe, had a lengthy interview which she chronicled in this weekend’s (May 9/10) Wall Street Journal, with now retired, General Stanley McChrystal. The former “commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, and of the Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq and Afghanistan, oversaw the units that captured former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and tracked down and killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.” Then, in 2010, Gen. McChrystal “was dismissed as commander of the Afghan war, and resigned from the U.S. military — after an article in Rolling Stone Magazine reported he reportedly made disparaging comments about POTUS Obama and members of his White House staff.”
“These days,” Ms. Wolfe writes, “Gen. McChrystal, as co-founder of the McChrystal Group, focuses on the civilian world, working with companies to advise them on leadership, management, and adaptability. With a staff of 90 people, the McChrystal Group consults for a range of organizations, including Scotts Miracle-Gro, Intuit, and Segate Technology.”
General McChrytal’s new book, Team of Teams: New Rules Of Engagement For A Complex World,”,just released by Portfolio, 290 pages, “describes how he and his staff remade the Joint Special Operations Command Task Force (JSOC) in the Middle East — to fight a new, decentralized, tech-savvy enemy. (The book is co-written by Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell). Ms. Wolfe writes that “the General remade the Task Force, in-part, by using technology such as daily video teleconferences to create something he calls “shared consciousness.” “The goal,” she writes, “was to empower subordinate units to make decisions far more quickly; and, with greater precision than a traditional hierarchy could. It wasn’t easy.” “In some ways, the military has sort of invented bureaucracy,” says Gen. McChrystal, sitting in his New York hotel room before a speaking event at Goldman Sachs.”
Some highlights from Ms. Wolfe’s interview with Gen. McChrystal: “Gen. McChrystal doesn’t think the Islamic State will endure. “They can last several years; but, they’re one of these things that’s burning too hot, so they’ll sort of burn out. The problem is, when they burn out, if the basic structure isn’t fixed, something else comes and manifests itself…so when we talk about a strategy against ISIS, my response is [that] we need to develop a strategy to stabilize that region of the world, and it’s not going to be done entirely by the countries in the region.”
Regarding his infamous interview with Matthew Cooper of Rolling Stone, “Runaway General,”Gen. McChrystal told Ms. Wolfe that “the article depicted me, and people I admired, in a manner that felt as unfamiliar as it was unfair. No matter how good you think you are, — you often fail. Sometimes you swing and miss; sometimes the ball hits you in the head. Either way….it hurts.” “More generally,” Ms. Wolfe concludes, Gen. McChrystal “advises against trying to contain bad news, or bad publicity, whatever the situation. Instead, he says, it is better “to try and make reality of what you do; and what you are as good as it can be….because if you live double and triple lives, it comes home to haunt you.”
The View From The Top: Howard Schultz Reviews Gen. McChrystal’s New Book – “Team Of Teams: New Rules Of Engagement For A Complex World”
“When the U.S. military was battling terrorist insurgents in Iraq in 2004,” Mr. Schultz writes in the May 13, 2015, Wall Street Journal,, “Gen. Stanley McChrystal observed that the task force, newly [established] under his command — had more in common with “a Fortune 500 company, trying to fight off a swarm of start-ups” than with the Allied command battling Nazi Germany in WWII. The insurgents, mainly al Qaeda, were succeeding not because their superbly trained, or brilliant tacticians; but because, their non-hierarchical structures embodied a fundamentally different manner of waging a war.” Mr. Schulrz is the Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer for Starbucks Coffee Company, headquartered in Seattle, Washington.
“What Gen. McChrystal did in response — how he transformed an elite U.S. military organization from a traditional command-and-control setup — to a distributed, collaborative operation,” Mr. Schultz notes — which is one of the key takeaways from his new book, Team of Teams: New Rules Of Engagement For A Complex World.”
Mr. Schultz writes that Gen. McChrystal’s new book, “combines a compelling war story with insights from history, and lessons from the military’s transformation under Gen. McChrystal’s,” stewardship. Mr. Schultz opines that “Gen. McChrystal’s book, “shows how civilian organizations, from hospitals to corporations can benefit,” from Gen. McChrystal’s recommendations. “How for example,” Mr. Schultz asks, “should leaders today adapt their thinking for our “information-rich, densely interconnected” world.? Any executive with a smartphone knows that mobile devices, digital technologies, and social networks have shifted power from the few — to the many. Today, 140 characters tweeted from someone’s living room…can ignite a revolution,eviscerate a stranger’s reputation, or hijack a company’s well-intended message.”
“For leaders,” Mr. Schultz argues, “this means a shift in focus. We must, for one, become more comfortable sharing information, and thus…”sharing power,” with our own people, with our customers, and even our critics. Gen. McChrystal’s effort to “normalize sharing” among people used to secrets — his daily video conferences reached hundreds of military personnel — made our troops more informed so they could….”connect the dots on the fly,” and make life-saving decisions.”
“Leaders must also get comfortable with the unknown,” although, there is nothing new about that axiom.
As I read the two articles above, I was reminded that life is full of set-backs and failure. Last weekend, I attended the graduation of my ‘God-Daughter” from the University of North Carolina (UNC). The commencement speaker, Jason Kilar, UNC class of 1993; and, Founding CEO of Hulu — did a masterful job of telling the new graduates that just because they were about to receive a diploma from “the best public university in America,” — life will throw many curves and set-backs their way. Mr. Kilar had never publicly spoken about the fact that three days after graduating from UNC, his forty-seven year-old father, and his hero – committed suicide. And, Mr. Kilar’s first interview; and, a job he dearly wanted, went terribly bad. I also thought of Winston Churchill, who was basically a “dead man walking,” in British politics, after his stewardship of the Allied landing at Gallipoli in WWI ended in disaster and failure, Churchill was finished politically, by even the most optimistic of his supporters — yet, he rose to the occasion and led the West’s clarion call to confront Hitler and the Third Reich.
Gen. McChrystal’s observation about “no matter how good you think you are, you often fail,” is so true; but, as Churchill, Gen. McChrystal, and Jason Kilar have displayed — failure can have its blessings. Failure forces us to confront our own shortcomings; and, either makes us stronger — or, can lead us down a dark path that often ends in sorrow and tragedy. Failure doesn’t build character — it reveals it. How we bounce back from what seems as a terminal, downward spiral, can — as Churchill and Mr. Kilar have shown — lead to greatness, and fulfillment. And, even in failure — there can be victory. What is remembered from the Last Stand of The Three Hundred at Thermopylae — is not that Leonidas and his 300 Spartans and 7,000 or so Greeks lost to Xerxes and his Persian army; but, how these brave 300 stood up to hundreds of thousands — inspiring generations, and ultimately set the stage for Alexander the Great’s triumphs.
Gen. McChrystal’s observation that ISIS is “burning too hot,” and will likely be replaced by some other militant extremist group — as long as “the structure isn’t fixed,” is probably correct; but, I am less optimistic that anything can really fix the Middle East; and, especially this virulent, militant Islamic strain infecting the region — without a reformation in the ‘Islamic Church.’
If author David Kilkullen is right, in the not too distant future — “we will be moving away from the remote and rural terrain on which guerrilla warfare has often been fought” — to conflict which is likely to occur in a densely populated, urban ghetto, concentrated along coastlines, with an adversary that is digitally networked, and decentralized — employing “swarms’ of drones, and autonomous systems, employing cyber warfare techniques that will attempt to make us “deaf, dumb, and blind,”
But, having said all that, I come back to Gen. McChrystal’s observation about no matter how good we think we are — we will fail. But, how we confront failure — is the coin of the realm. As someone once wrote long ago: “We Cannot Chose Our Battlefields….God Does That For Us…..But, We Can Plant A Standard, Where A Standard Never Flew.” Churchill, Mr. Kilar, and gen. McChrystal — show us that it can be done. V/R, RCP
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