It Worked For Me (2 page)

No one followed this guidance better than Marine Colonel Paul “Vinny” Kelly, my congressional affairs assistant when I was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Vinny’s job was to get me up on Capitol Hill as often as he could to testify, chat with members, hustle staff, and do all the other things that put you on the right side of the folks who allocate the people’s money. I understood the importance of this activity, but Vinny was always pressing me to do more. He would come into my office late in the evening, after a trying day, to press me to attend another congressional meeting I didn’t think was necessary. We would get into all kinds of arguments, which usually ended with “Vinny, get the hell out of here!” He would leave, disappointed, but accepting. The next day he would be back with new reasons why I had to go up to the Hill. These usually won me over. Vinny knew that “get the hell out” was not about him. His ego was never on his sleeve. He accepted my decision; yet he also knew that his job was to protect me, and so if he still thought he was right and I was wrong, he marshaled new arguments. He also knew Rule 1, “It will look better in the morning.” He was a treasure. When I became Secretary of State, I pulled him off his retirement golf course and made him my Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs.

4. IT CAN BE DONE.

This familiar quotation is on a desk plaque given to me by the great humorist Art Buchwald. Once again, it is more about attitude than reality. Maybe it can’t be done, but always start out believing you can get it done until facts and analysis pile up against it. Have a positive and enthusiastic approach to every task. Don’t surround yourself with instant skeptics. At the same time, don’t shut out skeptics and colleagues who give you solid counterviews. “It can be done” should not metamorphose into a blindly can-do approach, which leaves you running into brick walls. I try to be an optimist, but I try not to be stupid.

5. BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU CHOOSE: YOU MAY GET IT.

Nothing original in this one. Don’t rush into things. Yes, there are occasions when time and circumstances force you to make fast decisions. Usually there is time to examine the choices, turn them over, look at them in the light of day and the darkness of night, and think through the consequences. You will have to live with your choices. Some bad choices can be corrected. Some you’ll be stuck with.

6. DON’T LET ADVERSE FACTS STAND IN THE WAY OF A GOOD DECISION.

Superior leadership is often a matter of superb instinct. When faced with a tough decision, use the time available to gather information that will inform your instinct. Learn all you can about the situation, your opponent, your assets and liabilities, your strengths and weaknesses, the threats and risks. Select several possible courses of action, then test the information you have gathered against them and analyze one against the other. Often, the factual analysis alone will indicate the right choice. More often, your judgment will be needed to select from the best courses of action. This is the moment when you apply your instinct to smell the right answer. This is where you apply your education, experience, and knowledge of external considerations unfamiliar to your staff. This is when you look deep into your own fears, anxiety, and self-confidence. This is where you earn your pay and position. Your instinct at this point is not a wild guess or a hunch. It is an informed instinct that knows from long experience which facts are the most important and which adverse facts, however adverse, can be set aside. As the saying goes, “Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.”

On the eve of D-Day, General Eisenhower faced one of the most difficult decisions any military commander has ever had to make. The weather was dicey; launching the invasion into bad weather could doom it, but his weathermen predicted a possible opening on June 6, 1944. He had been gathering information and planning this operation for months. He knew it in his fingertips. In the loneliness that only commanders know, he made his decision. He wrote a statement taking all the blame if the invasion failed. Yet his informed instinct said, “Go!” He was right.

In the final weeks of the Civil War, General Grant’s Army of the Potomac was besieging Petersburg and slowly squeezing General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia to death. One night Grant was awakened by a staff officer. “We’ve received information that Lee’s army is on the move and massing to attack our flank,” he told Grant urgently. Grant rubbed the sleep from his eyes, thought for a moment, and said, “That’s not possible,” and went back to sleep.

Both generals could have been wrong, and history would have treated them differently. Eisenhower was a masterful staff officer and a gifted manager, but also a great leader. He knew when to trust his instinct. Grant did not make a snap judgment that night. He knew Lee, he had studied him as a man and soldier, and he knew the strengths and increasing weakness of the Army of Northern Virginia. His instinct was well informed, and it took only a minute for his instinct to conclude, “That’s not possible.”

There will be times when an adverse fact should stop you in your tracks. Never let it stop you completely until you have thought about it, challenged it, and looked for a way to get around it. And if you conclude that the gain will be great enough to overcome the consequences of that adverse fact, decide and execute.

I dare not compare myself to Eisenhower or Grant, but a similar though far smaller decision came my way in December 1989, a few months after I became JCS Chairman. On the night of December 1 there was an attempted military coup in the Philippines against President Corazon Aquino. I raced down to the command center in the Pentagon to monitor the action. President Aquino was concerned that members of the air force would join the coup and bomb the presidential palace. She called the White House and asked us to bomb the nearby air base to keep that from happening. I got instructions from the White House situation room to execute the mission. My experience told me it was an easy mission using F-4 Phantom jets from Clark Air Base. My experience also told me that there would be Filipino deaths and collateral damage to property. Regardless of how the coup turned out, Filipinos would surely criticize us for any loss of life and property damage. My instinct told me there might be a better way to accomplish the goal of the mission, which was to keep the palace from being bombed. Admiral Hunt Hardisty, our commander in the Pacific, happened to be in Washington and joined me at the command center. The alternative we came up with was to instruct the F-4 pilots to take off and buzz the Philippine air base in a manner that demonstrated “extreme hostile intent.” If a plane took to the runway anyway, shoot in front of it or crater the runway. If the plane took off, then shoot it down. The Philippine planes stayed on the ground, and the coup ended a few hours later.

If one plane had managed to get off, bomb the palace, and kill the president, my experience and instincts would have failed.

During the crisis, I wasn’t able to reach the Philippine minister of defense, Fidel Ramos. After it was all over I finally got through to him and briefed him on what we had done. He was deeply grateful that we had not bombed.

Whenever I’m faced with a difficult choice, my approach has always been to make an estimate of the situation—a familiar military process: What’s the situation? What’s the mission? What are the different courses of action? How do they compare with one another? Which looks most likely to succeed? Now, follow your informed instinct, decide, and execute forcefully; throw the mass of your forces and energy behind the choice. Then take a deep breath and hope it works, remembering that “hope is a bad supper, but makes a good breakfast.”

7. YOU CAN’T MAKE SOMEONE ELSE’S CHOICES. YOU SHOULDN’T LET SOMEONE ELSE MAKE YOURS.

We are taught in the military to take full responsibility for “everything your unit does or fails to do, and what you do or fail to do.” Since ultimate responsibility is yours, make sure the choice is yours and you are not responding to the pressure and desire of others.

That does not mean your decision has to be solitary or lonely. Seek the advice of others, but be aware that people are always around who are full of advice and sure they know how you should decide. All too often, your decision affects them and they are pushing you in a direction that’s more in their interest than yours. Never forget that your informed instinct is usually the most solid basis for making a decision.

Of course, the choice is not always yours to make. In the Army, for instance, duty will at times require acceptance of that reality.

In 1985, I was selected to be an infantry division commander in Germany. I wanted the job badly—it is the dream job of every infantry officer, and I was eager to get back to troop command. But the Army decided I should remain in the Pentagon, continuing to serve as the senior military assistant to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.

A year later, I was able to leave the Pentagon and take command of a corps in Germany, an even larger unit. I was elated, but after six months, I was called back to Washington to serve as Deputy National Security Advisor. Since it seemed that would end my military career, I resisted. If it was that important, I asked, shouldn’t the President call me? He did, and I left my corps. Eleven months later I became National Security Advisor for the remainder of President Reagan’s term.

It’s hard to fault the choices the Army made for me. Most of them turned out to be superb. But I have had more freedom to follow my own instincts and choices since I left the Army.

It’s easy to be flattered into a job. When I left the State Department, I was flattered by offers of top positions in major corporations, most of them in the financial world. The monetary rewards were stunning and the work not terribly demanding. I was told I didn’t need to know anything about banking, finance, or exotic financial instruments like hedge funds and derivatives. Experts would be present to help me. One investment bank pressed me hard, repeatedly upping the money and the title. The offers were definitely tempting.

I understood the financial and social value of these positions. But my instincts said no. Did they want me for what I could do for them? Or did they want me for the celebrity I could bring them? My instincts said I would mostly be a door opener and a dinner host. And the truth was I didn’t have any relevant experience or background in the business, nor any desire to learn it. I couldn’t care less about finance. In the end, I preferred my flexibility and independence. They were trying hard to make a choice for me, but I held out for my own choice.

One of my best friends helped me shape my instinct. Over lunch, he listened as I laid out all the offers. He replied simply, “Why would you want to wear someone else’s T-shirt? You are your own brand. Remain free and wear your own T-shirt.”

As it turned out, my instinct turned out to be not only right about my immediate choice, but also prescient. Most of the promised monetary rewards I passed up turned out to be fairy tale money. Firms that offered me top jobs either failed or came close to failure in the 2008 crash and ensuing recession. I’m glad I dodged that bullet!

These temptations pale in comparison with the choice I faced in 1995, two years after retiring from the Army. In those two years, I stayed out of the public eye, enjoyed private life, wrote my memoirs, and traveled the country speaking. But when my book was published and I went on a six-week book tour, I became more public than ever. The crowds were overwhelming. I had never imagined I’d get that kind of turnout. At every appearance the issue of running for political office arose. People were talking about me as a presidential candidate. It was incredibly flattering.

Though I’ve never had political ambitions, all the attention forced me to consider running. I debated what to do. What was best for me, my family, the nation? I reached out to friends and experts, and listened carefully to new friends who pushed me to run. A strong instinct told me that I had an obligation, a duty, to run. I had ideas about where the country should go and about how to fix what I saw was broken. But I was divided. An equally strong instinct warned that running for president would be a terrible choice for me.

The two months when I wrestled with that decision were perhaps the most difficult of my life. I was deeply conflicted, lost weight, had trouble sleeping. My family was split, which didn’t make my choice easier. My very closest friends argued against running but were willing to help if I decided to choose that course. They knew me as well as I knew myself and felt a presidential campaign was not right for me.

The decision was mine to make. What drove my final choice was the reality that I did not wake up a single morning wanting to be president or with the fire and passion needed for a successful campaign. I was not a political figure. It was not me. Once I accepted what that instinct was telling me, the choice was clear, the decision easy.

I get asked almost daily if I have any regrets. The answer is no. It was my choice, my family’s choice, and the right choice. I have no regrets and no reason to second-guess. I moved on and found other things to do to satisfy my need and my responsibility to serve the country. I disappointed many people but left others happy. It was my choice. It had to be.

8. CHECK SMALL THINGS.

We are all familiar with the old rhyme that begins, “For want of a nail . . .” It reminds us how small actions can result in large consequences.

Success ultimately rests on small things, lots of small things. Leaders have to have a feel for small things—a feel for what is going on in the depths of an organization where small things reside. The more senior you become, the more you are insulated by pomp and staff, and the harder and more necessary it becomes to know what is going on six floors down.

One way is to leave the top floor and its grand accoutrements and get down into the bowels for real. Don’t tell anyone you are coming. Avoid advance notices that produce crash cleanups, frantic preparations, and PowerPoint presentations. Yes, sometimes you need to give lots of notice so folks can prepare their homes as if they were selling them. But I always preferred to just drop in and wander around. A maintenance shop with dirty mechanics, parts strewn around, and no senior officers lurking told me more about the state of maintenance than any formal quarterly reports.