A Passion for Leadership (11 page)

I felt strongly, though, that leaks about major budget decisions, and especially the need to cut or cap major programs, would be fatal to real reform. Any leader has to decide where the line must be drawn. In preceding decades, decisions by a secretary to cut unneeded programs had often been compromised when word got out prematurely to members of Congress or interest groups. Based on my reading of history, one of the main reasons many of Robert McNamara's efforts failed was that decisions were made with a small group of his civilian “whiz kids” and without significant participation of the senior military leaders. Feeling excluded (and opposed to the changes), the generals and admirals did not hesitate to go around McNamara to friendly members of Congress to thwart the secretary's intentions.

When I decided to aggressively winnow dozens of major defense programs that were failing or no longer affordable (or relevant to our needs), I led an intensive consultative process that involved all of the senior leadership of the military services as well as senior Pentagon civilians. I keep returning to this point of inclusion; leaders who exclude others from decision making run a high risk of failure. I asked all participants to sign a nondisclosure agreement (basically giving their word they wouldn't share our deliberations with others, even their staffs). The number of lower-level staff who had access to any information about options under consideration was dramatically reduced.

I believe that because officers had given their word and because of the transparency of the process to senior leaders—and multiple opportunities for their views to be heard in the larger group or just with me—there was not a single leak. An important reason why Congress ultimately accepted—or acquiesced in—all of the decisions was that no senior civilian or military officials went around me to complain to their supporters on the Hill. Some almost certainly did not agree with my final decisions, but they “supported” them in the Pentagon sense of the word, which meant carrying them out.

Be wary of consensus. When it comes to implementing reform, you must look very closely at any recommendation for action characterized as the consensus of a group. Does it advance your agenda? Is it as bold as you want or need?

The erudite Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban insightfully observed that a consensus means that “everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.” I cannot begin to calculate the time I have wasted in meetings—and task forces—as the person in the chair strives to get all participants to agree to a single recommendation or point of view, instead of presenting several options to their higher-up. This process inevitably yields the lowest common denominator, the most bland of initiatives, which everyone can agree to. Pap.

A leader who seeks true reform will never get bold ideas or recommendations from task forces or working groups if consensus is the priority objective. Instead, a leader must instruct her task force chairs or subordinates leading other groups that consensus will only be valued if it represents agreement on something bold. The Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. described this process graphically. He wrote that one of his Court opinions as originally written “had a tiny pair of testicles but the scruples of my brethren have caused their removal and it sings in a very soft voice now.” Recommendations that come to a leader of reform must not sing in a very soft voice.

When I was chairing the deputies committee at the White House under President George H. W. Bush, my responsibility was to clear away the bureaucratic underbrush on issues so the president would only have before him the bare-bones substantive differences of view among his principal advisers that he could weigh before making a decision. Sometimes opposition from one organization or another will, when fully exposed, be nothing more than old bureaucratic rivalries hiding behind purportedly substantive differences of opinion. It is the job of a leader at any level to choose chief lieutenants who will use a flamethrower to burn away the bureaucratic weeds so the options that remain are real and significant.

When Henry Kissinger was national security adviser, he would only half jokingly comment that every policy paper had three options: Option A was essentially to do nothing; Option C was so radical as to be automatically rejected; and thus Option B, a middling and therefore very modest course of action, was the only sensible approach—the bureaucracy's preference. In effect, it avoided the appearance of inaction or any serious opposition but accomplished little. A leader can't allow her task forces, councils, or reviews to trap her into accepting Option B. A leader must insist upon real options. If they aren't forthcoming, if the choice among them isn't difficult, she must send people back to the drawing board. The bureaucracy can't be allowed to dictate terms.

A process effective in bringing forward significant proposals for reform and their implementation, noting who is for and who is against each and why, is important. In many instances, there will be a majority opinion. The leader needs to know why the minority objected, and those objections may influence the decision or lead to adjustments, but differences of opinion must not deter decisions and implementation.

A leader implementing reform, within the confines of law and regulation, must decide how much analysis is needed before making a decision and acting. Analysis must not be an excuse for paralysis.

The man in charge must decide when further study is warranted in order to gather more information, to build support for what he wants to accomplish, or to improve the measures for implementation. When to stop studying and start acting is a judgment call, and a leader has to rely on trusted advisers as well as his own experience and political instincts in making that call.

As beneficial as inclusiveness, transparency, and patience are, they cannot turn into an excuse for putting off tough or unpopular decisions. Particularly when you are trying to pursue bold initiatives that change the status quo, there will be those who insist that not enough analysis has been done to properly evaluate the options, support a decision, or proceed with implementation; it always seems that just a little more work needs to be done. Sometimes, the concern is legitimate and intended to keep the person in charge from rushing pell-mell into hasty and ill-thought-out actions. Sometimes, complaints over insufficient analysis are born of timidity and risk aversion. But as often as not, the demand for more analysis is simply a stalling maneuver to avoid change or to wait until a more sympathetic leader takes over.

Calling for further study is an especially favorite tactic of the U.S. Congress when a senior executive branch official makes a commonsense decision based on judgment and experience. This is the usual recourse when the secretary of defense decides to take some action that will cost jobs in a representative's home district. Congress demanded copies of all the backup documentation supporting my decisions to close Joint Forces Command and to cancel a number of weapons and equipment programs. The whole point of the exercise was to allow congressional staff time to find holes in the analysis, require further study, hold hearings, and pursue other such tactics to forestall unwelcome decisions.

In another example, over the years the air force had conducted multiple “Air Mobility Studies” to determine just how many cargo aircraft the U.S. military needed. The studies repeatedly concluded that even with the Iraq and Afghan campaigns under way the military had more cargo planes than were needed. Congress's response was always to send the military back to the drawing board to study the issue one more time. Too many members had a vested interest in the cargo plane production line and in keeping open bases where they were stationed. Paralysis by analysis.

Congress is far from alone in using the need for further analysis as a way to prevent action. It happens every day at the local and state levels as interest groups of all kinds insist on yet another study to block, among other things, new highways, pipelines, or hospitals or to change school district boundaries. Environmental impact reviews, however necessary, have become an especially effective tool of delay at the state and local levels; imagine trying to build the transcontinental railroad, the Hoover Dam, or the Golden Gate Bridge today. The demand for further study can be the bane of CEOs in business as well. I have seen their frustration when subordinates ask for “just a little more time” to study an initiative.

The proliferation of investigative bodies in government, especially at the federal level, is becoming a serious impediment to managing—and changing—bureaucracies. The increasingly intrusive role of outside commissions and audit agencies such as the General Accounting Office, inspectors general, and the Congressional Budget Office and their ability to delay or overturn decisions by insisting on further analysis or study are unwelcome realities, especially if the leader has limited time in office. Indeed, I would argue that the actions of Congress, congressional staffs, and these investigative bodies—even if they are supposed to oversee bureaucracies and hold them accountable, and sometimes do—invariably embolden and strengthen bureaucratic resistance to change.

Deadlines for implementation are important in every initiative for change in every organization.

Everybody hates a deadline. The acerbic American writer Dorothy Parker was on her honeymoon when she received a telegram from her editor complaining she had missed a deadline. She wired back, “Too fucking busy and vice versa.” On the other hand, everyone knows they are necessary. Duke Ellington was quoted as saying, “I don't need time. I need a deadline.” Bureaucracies look at deadlines much as did Parker. If you want to get anything accomplished, though, Ellington is your man.

Deadlines need to be short. A distant deadline is an invitation to lethargy and delay. A leader should set realistic but short deadlines on each initiative she undertakes. Every task force or effort I commissioned while DCI had a deadline of less than three months. When I was secretary of defense, the deadlines ranged from a week to ten months. A university operates on a different time frame from virtually any other enterprise in the universe, but even at Texas A&M my deadlines were short, ranging from one to several months.

Short deadlines focus attention on an effort and signal its importance, creating momentum. They usually generate a new level of energy (or panic) and even enthusiasm; short deadlines sustain the electric charge. They also limit the time available for the opposition to coalesce and develop blocking strategies. Finally, short deadlines demonstrate a leader's seriousness of purpose: that she is determined to implement change as soon as practicable, understands the dynamics of bureaucracies, and is using time limits as a means to counter an organization's naturally cautious instincts and resistance to change. If I were limited to just one suggestion for implementing change in a bureaucracy, it would be to impose short deadlines on virtually every endeavor, deadlines that are enforced. Sometimes brief extensions are justifiable, but a leader should make them rare and make sure there is ample justification.

Implementing reform, a leader must master the available information, make decisions, assign responsibility for action, have a regular reporting mechanism that allows her to monitor progress and performance, and hold people accountable. And then she must get out of the way. “Micro-knowledge” is necessary; micromanagement is not.

A leader cannot reform a bureaucracy while flying at thirty thousand feet. Leading change is hard work. The leader must do her homework to understand what change is needed, what change will work, who is a reliable source of information and who is not, whether recommendations will lead to the changes she wants, and whether her decisions are being effectively implemented. Broad perspective is always important, but a leader must get into the weeds as well. She must pore over and understand endless briefing books, know the innermost parts of the organization, get a sense of everyday life on the job from employees at every level. She must constantly be learning, listening, and asking questions. A leader must have sufficient detailed knowledge so she can recognize when someone is bullshitting her, when people are giving her inaccurate information (and whether it's because they don't know the facts themselves or are trying to mislead or steer her), whether options or recommendations are based on sound data.

In the military and in corporate America, there is great emphasis on delegation and not being a micromanager. All things being equal, that is good advice. But subordinate managers must know the person in charge knows what she is talking about. An effective leader must master much of what others in the organization know so she can integrate it into her decisions. A leader who can say that the proposals presented to her in one briefing contradict those presented in an earlier briefing is a leader to whom attention will be paid. A leader who can point out that numbers that should have remained constant have changed from one meeting to the next is a leader to be reckoned with. (In my first meeting with the Pentagon comptroller, I pointed out that a number in one massive budget binder—I had taken home several to study over the weekend—didn't agree with what should have been the same number in another binder. In another instance, I noticed that budgetary numbers on the same matter from two different components disagreed. People quickly realized I actually read the briefing books I was provided, and they took note.) It is also important to be aware when common sense has somehow fallen by the wayside.

When a leader is aware of the nitty-gritty, it doesn't take long for people to realize they had better double-check their work and that different organizations involved in the same briefing had better cross-check with each other before marching into a meeting. Such displays of micro-knowledge also send the message that it will be very hard to bamboozle the leader and the consequences of that or trying to bluff will be unpleasant. Moreover, micro-knowledge often allows a leader to better understand what she is being told, to place it in context, ask penetrating questions, and make smarter, better-informed decisions.