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"Generals Fight the Wars of Their Youth".

Four star General Martin Dempsey was recently appointed by President Obama to be the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army.  I had the privilege of  teaching  with General Dempsey on the Advanced Management Program at Duke University, later I interviewed him about leadership for the Globe and Mail, Canada's National Newspaper.   One of the most interesting things he said about leadership was that "Generals Fight the Wars of Their Youth". 

To understand what he means by this we should go back to when the General was a pup Second Lieutenant just out of West Point.  Early in his career he was a tank commander in West Germany. This was in the midst of the Cold War.  As a young military officer he learned  compelling and profoundly memorable lessons about the strategy and tactics of the day.   These lessons about the nature of how to wage a war and how to lead soldiers are ones that are particularly salutary to a brand new young officer, they stay with you for life. Not that you don't learn, but certain lessons are particularly imprinted into your leadership DNA. 

The Generals that commanded during the Cold War had learned their lessons in Vietnam, as young Lieutenants or Captains back in their day.  Lessons from Vietnam were around enemies that dressed in black pajamas, shot from jungle cover and then did deep dives in well hidden tunnels.   A different war, different strategies and different tactics. 

General Dempsey's first command as a General was with the 1st Armored Division including 13 months in Iraq, in 2003 and 2004.  The strategies of the Cold War, hard won lessons indeed, were largely not relevant for the new type of war being fought in Iraq: a different enemy, different physical environment, dramatically better technology and with different era troops.  Undoubtedly, there are relatively eternal lessons about the nature of war and troops which could be seen as having a straight line from Korea, through Vietnam, the Cold War and into Desert Storm.   Things like the profound loyalty troops have for the other men and women in their unit. 

As to lessons to forget, my colleague Morgen Witzel suggested that the classic military example is the Maginot Line, where the French assumed that the next war would be fought in the same way as the last one. Only, the German Wehrmacht had changed the rules.  Taking advantage of  considerably improved aircraft and tank technologies they used the tactic of Blitzkrieg, lightning war,  to nullify the Maginot Line's value in essentially only three days.

So what does a General unlearn?  That is the question, and a tough one at that.  One thing that came up in our conversation was how hierarchy is much less relevant in today's Army than it was back in the Cold War, an important lesson to learn/unlearn,  still relevant but nowhere near as much.

Over the last month and a half I have taught several times a two day seminar on Being a Change Leader for a large Multinational. I start the course with the quote from General Dempsey.  The question for these senior managers is what do they put aside from their early days as new leaders and managers and what do they retain?  As we rethink leadership I believe that we are seeing a broad move away from what my colleague Henry Mintzberg calls Heroic Leadership to a more Engaging Style of leadership.  There is still room, on occasion, for a dramatic more hierarchal style of leading, but only in truly urgent circumstances, hopefully an unusual, if not, rare occurrence.

One European CEO pointed out to me one key way that he saw management changing, " I think that we see a reduction of management positions all over the place. Meaning, even successful enterprises with solid business growth tend to decrease management functions and expand the span of the remaining leaders. With that I believe  the role of leaders is changing to a less hierarchical style in a way that their  job is mostly about orchestrating a management team rather than retaining leadership to him as an individual. You might think of it as a transition from a head coach that works from outside the court to a captain which is spearheading the team on the field."  Of course, it depends on your industry, national cultural, firm and your own style but I think he has put his finger on something...

-Article by Karl Moore

Read full article: , May 16, 2011