Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Jason
Speaker 1: Kelly and I'm Carol Masser. Welcome to the Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week Extra. It's our weekly podcast bringing you an in
Speaker 1: depth interview you will not hear anywhere else. And this
Speaker 1: week we've got retired four star General Stanley McCrystal. He
Speaker 1: talked about so many different things. Talked about the world
Speaker 1: that we currently live in, but he also talked about
Speaker 1: technology and not letting it get in the way of relationships.
Speaker 1: He also talked about crises, his own personal crisis, and
Speaker 1: how basically his life as he knew it changed in
Speaker 1: about twenty four hours. So I want to ask you, Um,
Speaker 1: did you work out this morning? I did runner or
Speaker 1: another thing. Today was a gym day, so I went
Speaker 1: to the gym. Does the gym or run every day? Um?
Speaker 1: Used to sleep four hours? To sleep more? Now, right,
Speaker 1: I do? I say as much I can now probably
Speaker 1: fall asleep. Don't do that, please. And you haven't anything
Speaker 1: to eat today a bit because you eat one meal
Speaker 1: a day and you've been doing that for years, about
Speaker 1: forty years. Why well, I thought it was when I
Speaker 1: was a lieutenant. I thought I was getting fat. So
Speaker 1: I started this and people think it's some kind of
Speaker 1: zen thing. Now it's just a habit. Yeah, you're kind
Speaker 1: of in right now. What I do? Yeah, my wife
Speaker 1: eats like seven meals a day, so we balanced out.
Speaker 1: I'm like your wife. Um, I want to talk a
Speaker 1: bunch about a bunch of things. And I think what
Speaker 1: I wanted to do is I just pulled off a
Speaker 1: couple of stories off of Bloomberg today and I just
Speaker 1: wondered how people lead in this environment. Um. The president
Speaker 1: tweeting this, this is our normal routine. We start with
Speaker 1: the presidential tweets. He blasted Mario draggy. Uh. He blasted
Speaker 1: the China for weak currencies. We had that going on.
Speaker 1: He also is calling the attacks the ship attacks in
Speaker 1: the Persian Gulf as minor. But in the meantime, the
Speaker 1: US is adding troops in the Middle East. We have
Speaker 1: investors saying we haven't been this barish since the two
Speaker 1: thousand eight financial crisis. Uh. And the world's top bike
Speaker 1: maker saying the era of made in China is over. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there's Facebook wanting to put out a currency.
Speaker 1: It's on cryptocurrency to rival the US dollar. We have
Speaker 1: so many things being thrown at us from so many
Speaker 1: different angles. You've had to witness that. You know, your
Speaker 1: many years in Afghanistan, and you get word from Washington,
Speaker 1: you get word from your front line and your troops, um,
Speaker 1: your peers. How do you do it? How do you know?
Speaker 1: And these guys are dealing with lots of different things. Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. When I was a very young officer, you
Speaker 1: didn't get much intelligence. So you'd be in a command
Speaker 1: center and everybody be waiting for intelligence reports come in
Speaker 1: and they'd grab them and it's spent time. Then the
Speaker 1: opposite occurred about two thirds of the way through my
Speaker 1: career with information technology, and then it came in and floods,
Speaker 1: and then you said, well, how do you figure out
Speaker 1: how to curate that? What's important? Who prioritizes it for
Speaker 1: the leader? I don't think we've ever completely figured that out.
Speaker 1: What what we went to as I was a senior
Speaker 1: leader was I didn't operate in a private office. I
Speaker 1: operated in what we call the situation awareness room, and
Speaker 1: I kind of marinated in the information. I didn't stop
Speaker 1: and just get a set of briefings. You marinated it
Speaker 1: because your situational awareness is critical. You have to have context.
Speaker 1: Every decision you make has to have context. So you
Speaker 1: start to develop the ability to make sure information flows
Speaker 1: constantly to as many people as possible, and then when
Speaker 1: decisions come up, you start with a general understanding and
Speaker 1: the key thing is not to try to induce more
Speaker 1: uncertainty into that, particularly with false information. Well, it's interesting
Speaker 1: and technology plays into this big time. And you know,
Speaker 1: I watched um some of your TED talks online and
Speaker 1: I recommend everybody do it because it was really fascinating.
Speaker 1: You talked a lot about technology and this need for
Speaker 1: more and more and more. This is the world we
Speaker 1: live in and to be more and more connected. But
Speaker 1: there's something you said your take on technology. Number one,
Speaker 1: you were enamored with it. Number two, it seduced you,
Speaker 1: and number three you were bound by it. That's not good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's but it's important to understand that when I describe
Speaker 1: our situational werness room, we had tend to twelve flat
Speaker 1: panel screens, and on a given evening when we're doing
Speaker 1: a lot of ops, there's a separate actual operation occurring
Speaker 1: in all of those times. Helicopters landing, people doing raids,
Speaker 1: things like that, and there's this temptation to look at
Speaker 1: that and have a two dimensional picture of what's happening
Speaker 1: on the ground. And we actually have the technology where
Speaker 1: you could listen to their radio talks internal to the
Speaker 1: raid force, and you could talk to them if you
Speaker 1: wanted to. But I never once did that, because there's
Speaker 1: this deception that you know what's going on because from
Speaker 1: ten thousand feet you have this high definition view of it.
Speaker 1: In reality, you don't. You don't know how cold it is,
Speaker 1: you don't hear the crack of the bullets, you're not tired.
Speaker 1: The person on the ground has to do that. However,
Speaker 1: what you can do is you can understand the broader situation.
Speaker 1: You can posture yourself so that as that force on
Speaker 1: the ground, you start to see things happen. Instead of
Speaker 1: telling them what to do, you tell them what's happening.
Speaker 1: You position reinforcements, you position medical evacuation, you position fire support,
Speaker 1: and then you offer it to them, you say this
Speaker 1: is available, this is so and so, and but you
Speaker 1: can't take over because one, you're not in the right
Speaker 1: place to make the decision. You're not the right person
Speaker 1: to make the decision. And you've got to understand that
Speaker 1: it's deception to pretend that you are omniscient. So trust
Speaker 1: the folks that are on the ground. You have to
Speaker 1: so staying with technology for a moment, though, I think
Speaker 1: you also talk a lot about this whole idea of
Speaker 1: feeling like you're connected and then really having connected relationships,
Speaker 1: and you have to be very careful. And we've seen
Speaker 1: us all the time that we're emailing the person sitting
Speaker 1: next to me. How crazy is that? And there's something
Speaker 1: different texting versus picking up the phone and talking to somebody.
Speaker 1: Talk to us about the importance of leadership and having
Speaker 1: those connected relationships well connected. Yeah, if you think about it,
Speaker 1: you were in an era where you also create these
Speaker 1: false friendships, whether it's on Facebook or wherever we've used
Speaker 1: the term Twitter followers. Don't love me there, Okay. I've
Speaker 1: got a friend of mine who's got a saying and
Speaker 1: he calls at the four Club, and four is the
Speaker 1: belt way around Washington, d C. And he says, there's
Speaker 1: a group of people that if they call me in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night and tell me to go
Speaker 1: stand on the side of four in a loincloth, golf
Speaker 1: shoes and a light coat of oil, I will go
Speaker 1: do it. I want to ask questions. Now he says
Speaker 1: it's a small group, but the reality is when you
Speaker 1: talk about friendships, those are the people who you really
Speaker 1: have a connection. In the military, we used to say
Speaker 1: that on the radio in a firefight is not the
Speaker 1: time to establish a relationship. So you've got to understand
Speaker 1: that the sinews of a relationship actually come from other things.
Speaker 1: When we're geographically dispersed, that takes work. I usually believe
Speaker 1: that there has to be some face to face interaction
Speaker 1: and you've got to be intentional about what you're doing.
Speaker 1: You can then follow that with email and phone calls,
Speaker 1: but the reality is a relationship built at long distance
Speaker 1: without more. I'm a great believer than video conferencing is
Speaker 1: far more effective than a phone call, which is far
Speaker 1: more effective than an email. And so there's this hierarchy
Speaker 1: and being able to see responses. If you and I
Speaker 1: had a scream between us, now we have a completely
Speaker 1: different conversation than the fact that you can see me
Speaker 1: and I can see you. There is something about a
Speaker 1: visual or being face to face exactly. Um. It's interesting too,
Speaker 1: because you do say you need to have people in
Speaker 1: your life that you can call early in the morning
Speaker 1: or late at night. And that's true for people who
Speaker 1: are running things or running companies. You have to have
Speaker 1: those people. You need it more than ever because as
Speaker 1: we know the loan the military talks about the loneliness
Speaker 1: of command, but the reality is leaders and companies can't
Speaker 1: make all your subordinates your friends. You can be friendly
Speaker 1: with them, but it's unfair to make them your friend
Speaker 1: because when your friend, you come and you pour your
Speaker 1: heart out, you tell your problems. If you do that
Speaker 1: to a subordinate one moment, they take that information in
Speaker 1: they try to figure out how they should respond. Then
Speaker 1: the next day you're very direct, give or you're critical,
Speaker 1: and you put them in this incredibly confusing position, which
Speaker 1: is not fair to them, right, And so it takes
Speaker 1: us the discipline not to pollute that relationship unfairly, which
Speaker 1: means we need somebody. So I understand that I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about something that Liz said last night from Mackenzie and
Speaker 1: this whole idea. I talked about having eight hours of sleep,
Speaker 1: but she just talked about the importance that you really
Speaker 1: need to be rested to function well. But our point
Speaker 1: was when somebody comes in and there crying or angry.
Speaker 1: Just did you get sleep? So where is that line
Speaker 1: between being a manager that cares about its people because
Speaker 1: we all have things going on in our life and
Speaker 1: understanding that, but also understanding that we've got to run
Speaker 1: a company right and we have responsible for the top
Speaker 1: and bottom line. So where's that balance? Where did you
Speaker 1: have the balance between your guys that have to protect
Speaker 1: one another, protect this country, yeah, versus making sure they're okay.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things you have to understand
Speaker 1: is going and rubbing somebody on the back and asking
Speaker 1: them how they feel may not actually be the most
Speaker 1: effective way of showing you really care caring about people.
Speaker 1: Irwin Rommel, the German general WORL War two, said that
Speaker 1: the best form of troop welfare is first class training. First,
Speaker 1: position them for success, take care of them in ways
Speaker 1: that matter in the military. That's food, that's protection, that's training,
Speaker 1: that's leadership. That's what you owe them first. Now, if
Speaker 1: you then have time to go rub them on the
Speaker 1: belly and tell them that you love them, that's great,
Speaker 1: but that's not the key thing. The key thing is
Speaker 1: doing your role to take care of them. Sometimes that
Speaker 1: means kicking them in the butt. Sometimes that means grabbing
Speaker 1: somebody and saying, you know, they feel sorry for themselves,
Speaker 1: and you've got to get in their face and say
Speaker 1: I don't care. And in combat you'll find that people
Speaker 1: will be frightened, they will be exhausted, they will be
Speaker 1: all of these things. And the vast majorities are strong,
Speaker 1: but everybody's weak on occasion, every everybody loses their composure
Speaker 1: or their courage, or their will or their patients. And
Speaker 1: in those moments, somebody's got to grab them. I mean,
Speaker 1: even as a senior leader, I would lose my patients,
Speaker 1: and I had people around me who were confident enough
Speaker 1: to get my face and say stop it, stop it
Speaker 1: right now. And that's Those are the best kinds of
Speaker 1: comrades and friends, and we need that. But it's it's
Speaker 1: not always been bag chairs. And I want to talk
Speaker 1: about time you were kicked in your butt a little bit. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: And I know you've talked about this before, and this
Speaker 1: was after a Rolling Stone article and it talked about
Speaker 1: you in your military strategy in Afghanistan. The title was
Speaker 1: the Runaway Jack General, and it talked about you and
Speaker 1: your staff having mocked some of the civilian government officials.
Speaker 1: You are a well respected leader, powerful, high visibility, and
Speaker 1: now you were part of the twenty four hour news cycle?
Speaker 1: Is that like disorienting? And what had happened? For background,
Speaker 1: this was a freelance writer who wrote a piece for
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone. He came in a couple of times, wasn't
Speaker 1: embedded with us for a long time. We thought it
Speaker 1: was going to be a puff piece. We thought it
Speaker 1: was going to be about the command group at war.
Speaker 1: We've been together for many of us many years. And
Speaker 1: then when the story came out and came out of
Speaker 1: two in the morning, we saw it and it's titled
Speaker 1: The Runaway General. And as soon as you see that,
Speaker 1: you know you don't have to read further. You know
Speaker 1: you've got a problem. And there had been tension between
Speaker 1: Defense Department and the White House. Not personal. I got
Speaker 1: along very well with President Obama, but there was this
Speaker 1: tension over the strategy. So this thing explodes and I'm
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan and as soon as it came out, I
Speaker 1: knew big problem. Made some phone calls, and then I
Speaker 1: was asked to fly back to the United States that
Speaker 1: night to speak to the Secretary Defense of the President.
Speaker 1: And I absolutely know what's going but still. As I
Speaker 1: get on the plane for the seventeen hour flight, my
Speaker 1: eighty six year old father down in Florida. I know
Speaker 1: he's seeing the news cycle every day. People who don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on are opening it in a you know,
Speaker 1: on the media about it. My son in college is
Speaker 1: seeing it, and of course my wife at that point
Speaker 1: of thirty four years is uh is seeing it. As
Speaker 1: we're flying back flight, I get this email from three privates.
Speaker 1: Three privates don't normally write the four star general and you.
Speaker 1: And it was funny because I'd met them. I'd going
Speaker 1: on an operation with him outside of Kandahar combat operation,
Speaker 1: and so we had the special relationship. And they sent
Speaker 1: me this thing and they said, we heard about this
Speaker 1: article and if you let that reporter around it, and
Speaker 1: those things were said, we don't think that was very smart.
Speaker 1: Here I am reading this email, going whoa, And then
Speaker 1: they go, however, General, we know you and we love you.
Speaker 1: So whatever happens, remember that. And you get that from
Speaker 1: three privates, and you land in d C. And you
Speaker 1: go to see the President of United States. He asked,
Speaker 1: what's going on? What happened? And I didn't know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I didn't have the background. At that point, I just
Speaker 1: knew there was this conflagration. Had you read the article
Speaker 1: by this time, yes, And I didn't think the article
Speaker 1: was accurate. I didn't think it depicted it fairly. But
Speaker 1: that didn't matter. The President on his desk has this
Speaker 1: problem that came from my team, and it's my responsibility,
Speaker 1: it's not his. So I had prepared my resignation and
Speaker 1: I offered it to President Obama, and I said, if
Speaker 1: you want me to go back and keep commanding, I'll
Speaker 1: do that. You know, if you want to give me
Speaker 1: a dressing down and do that, I'll do that. If
Speaker 1: you want my resignation, whatever's best for the mission. And
Speaker 1: he took it, and he was an incredible gentleman. He says,
Speaker 1: I'm going to accept it. Boom boom boom, And so
Speaker 1: we had a short conversation. But here's the point. I
Speaker 1: walked out of that room. I've been four years at
Speaker 1: West Point, I've been born in an army hospital. Everything
Speaker 1: in my life had been military. Then i've been thirty
Speaker 1: four years as an officer, and in an instant, it's done,
Speaker 1: it's gone. And I walked out into this other office
Speaker 1: and then I get in a vehicle and drive back
Speaker 1: to Fort McNair, where my wife was living when I
Speaker 1: was in Afghanistan. And literally everything I was about and
Speaker 1: who I was is past. And not only past. My
Speaker 1: wife had grown up in an army family, and so
Speaker 1: she had been connected and loyal to me for all
Speaker 1: these years. And I walked into the house and she
Speaker 1: didn't know what was going to happen. I had flown
Speaker 1: in that night, and you know, we hadn't had a
Speaker 1: chance to talk about it. And she's standing in the
Speaker 1: entrance way to the house and I said, Annie, it's
Speaker 1: over careers ever. And she looked at me and she
Speaker 1: said good. And then she said, We've always been happy
Speaker 1: and will always be happy. You know. It was the
Speaker 1: most amazing thing. It was the best piece of leadership
Speaker 1: I've ever seen in my life. Because if she had
Speaker 1: pulled me aside and said you got screwed, boom boom boom,
Speaker 1: you know, part of me inside wanted to to, you know,
Speaker 1: rage and whatnot. And she goes, ah, will always be happy.
Speaker 1: We made a decision that day. We didn't sit down
Speaker 1: and say it. We just made it unconsciously and then
Speaker 1: lived it. What we decided is to live life facing
Speaker 1: forward because I had screwed that up. I accepted responsibility.
Speaker 1: That was my mistake for that article to come out,
Speaker 1: and I thought that I was disgraced and everybody in
Speaker 1: the world every time I went to where people would
Speaker 1: see across the room and they kind of point and
Speaker 1: whisper to themselves, and you think, either they're talking about
Speaker 1: Wikipedia or any any article. Yeah, it's just that's it.
Speaker 1: It's there, and so you want to scream out and
Speaker 1: say I was wronged, or whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1: And we decided differently. What we decided was we wouldn't
Speaker 1: try to relitigate that. We would just move forward and
Speaker 1: describe it as helped by any because she lives life
Speaker 1: like she drives with no use for the review mirror,
Speaker 1: and so what we let a knock on women driving?
Speaker 1: All right, second, I hope she's not listening. But anyway,
Speaker 1: So what we did was we decided that I would
Speaker 1: conduct myself and she as well, in a way that
Speaker 1: everyone who had never met us before but had read
Speaker 1: the article would say, Wow, that person didn't seem like
Speaker 1: that doesn't make sense, or the people who had believed
Speaker 1: in us before would keep believing, would believe that a.
Speaker 1: I did the right thing to be friends are connected
Speaker 1: with him for so long, and you know, it turned
Speaker 1: out to be the best decision of my life because
Speaker 1: you can go back and fight those kind of battles,
Speaker 1: but nobody cares but you. And second, it's about the future.
Speaker 1: You can't change anything in the past. Everybody in this
Speaker 1: room will probably fail. You'll fail at a marriage, or
Speaker 1: your fail with a kid. You're failing. You're gonna fail
Speaker 1: at something, and then you're going to have to figure
Speaker 1: out how you deal with it. And for me, the
Speaker 1: greatest thing in the world has been focusing forward. Because
Speaker 1: it's now been nine years this month, and every year
Speaker 1: has been better. I mean there were times when I
Speaker 1: still you know, I read something or somebody refers to
Speaker 1: it and I just go and that's not right. But
Speaker 1: I just it gets easier every year, and I just
Speaker 1: think mentally, psychology, you know, all the things has made
Speaker 1: me stronger for the experience. Um, thank you for telling that.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. Thank you. And so I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about everybody listening. I mean, everybody's going to
Speaker 1: go through a crisis at some point, and you know,
Speaker 1: I watched in terms of news coverage VW, how long
Speaker 1: they thought it or hit it or whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: just different companies they deal some of them get out.
Speaker 1: You know the college admission scandals. Companies got right ahead
Speaker 1: of it if they had an employee who was involved.
Speaker 1: You know, what's your advice to some folks, to our
Speaker 1: breakaway members that they're gonna have some kind of crisis,
Speaker 1: how do you? How do you deal it? Because you
Speaker 1: could have done and said, you know what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do some research and find out exactly what
Speaker 1: happened blah blah and dragged it on. You could have
Speaker 1: done that. You didn't, and it wouldn't have been right
Speaker 1: for the mission there. You would have put this paul
Speaker 1: over the mission for a long time. And even if
Speaker 1: the president had then fired me and put me out,
Speaker 1: it would have still put this question mark when don't
Speaker 1: need that? Um. There are two things I'd say. Is
Speaker 1: first is when you have something where you make a mistake,
Speaker 1: just get out and known it. It's it's it's easier
Speaker 1: for you to the second thing is if the organization
Speaker 1: makes a mistake the same thing. The hard part is
Speaker 1: going to be where there will be a perception of
Speaker 1: a mistake, and your first advice you get is cut
Speaker 1: off the disease limb to move on. But the disease
Speaker 1: limb maybe some of your people, and they may not guilty,
Speaker 1: they may not actually be wrong. And so there's a
Speaker 1: tendency sometimes to say, well, you know, I've got to
Speaker 1: get in front of this, so I gotta fire these
Speaker 1: people to to create a firebreak, and then you run
Speaker 1: into a real This is where it gets hard difficult thing. One,
Speaker 1: because you have loyalty to them, maybe they don't deserve it,
Speaker 1: even though the press is calling for their heads. And second,
Speaker 1: everyone else in the organization is watching because they will
Speaker 1: extrapolate how you treat them to how you're going to
Speaker 1: treat them when it happens. And so the idea of
Speaker 1: balancing loyalty and balancing taking care of people were doing
Speaker 1: something that protects your organization. This is where it's hard,
Speaker 1: and this is where it takes leadership to explain it.
Speaker 1: It takes leadership to get to the bottom of things
Speaker 1: as you go forward. What do you make of leadership today?
Speaker 1: Where it's also you know, we have a commander in
Speaker 1: chief who leads often by tweets. We have CEO as
Speaker 1: a company. He's like Ellen Musk maybe on Twitter. I
Speaker 1: don't know today where he is right now, but you know,
Speaker 1: this is how we do. It tends to be provocative,
Speaker 1: it tends to kind of shake things up. Um. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying everybody does that, but we are in a
Speaker 1: new world order. It feels like when it comes to
Speaker 1: leadership and what's what's allowed. I see some extraordinary leadership
Speaker 1: in companies and organizations. I mean, just calm, focused, caring leadership.
Speaker 1: There anybody in particular that you are admired. I'm a
Speaker 1: great friend of Keith Cratch of Docu Sign he's now
Speaker 1: just joined in the United States government, Brad Smith into it.
Speaker 1: People I've worked with closely that I've gotten to know,
Speaker 1: uh Andy c Mary Lynch. These are people I've gotten
Speaker 1: up close and watched them lead, and I'm deeply impressed
Speaker 1: by it. But a lot of people are confusing celebrity
Speaker 1: for leadership and the idea that you can say a
Speaker 1: lot or go out and create this persona and that's leadership.
Speaker 1: And to a degree you may influence people. You may
Speaker 1: actually if you if you do that, you may get
Speaker 1: people to think certain things. But I don't think that's
Speaker 1: where you get the kind of loyalty to where you're
Speaker 1: going that's going to bring people along for the long term.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's building the team for the long term.
Speaker 1: You look at really good football coaches. If you look
Speaker 1: at the life cycle of them, they typically come in
Speaker 1: and it's hard in the first years, and they're not
Speaker 1: popular because they're putting in some things that may be painful,
Speaker 1: they may be inconvenient for people, they may be demanding.
Speaker 1: Then when they build up over time a track record
Speaker 1: and people know this is really for the best of
Speaker 1: the people in the organism, is talking about legally different
Speaker 1: and so I think that's the kind of leadership that
Speaker 1: is durable. That's a kind of leadership that I want
Speaker 1: to see in every organization in my nation. You've got
Speaker 1: a book out. You've got you've written several books, but
Speaker 1: this one is called leaders Myth and Reality. You've you've
Speaker 1: come on Bloomberg Air and talk to us about it. Um,
Speaker 1: what are some of the myths when it comes to
Speaker 1: good leaders Yeah, we really brought it down. This is
Speaker 1: a fun book too, because you talk about all kinds
Speaker 1: of leaders. What we profile thirteen leaders to include Coco
Speaker 1: Chanel and the truth, I didn't know it was a
Speaker 1: person when we started the book. I I did no clue,
Speaker 1: and so we did this very broad range, but we
Speaker 1: came up with these three big myths. And the first
Speaker 1: is the formulaic myth, and that's the idea that as
Speaker 1: a leader, there is a series of behaviors or things
Speaker 1: you can do, and if you do those, you're going
Speaker 1: to be effective. And the reality is when you look
Speaker 1: at the data, people who do all those fail quite often,
Speaker 1: and people who do very few of them succeed. And
Speaker 1: so there's not this formula you can follow. There's not
Speaker 1: ex habits of effective leaders that that's going to guarantee
Speaker 1: your success. The second was the attribution myth, and that's
Speaker 1: the idea that the leader is responsible for the organization
Speaker 1: succeeding and failing, and if you get the right CEO
Speaker 1: or the right president, you're good. History doesn't bear that
Speaker 1: at either. In fact, what we find is context of
Speaker 1: the moment, and the followers are just as important as
Speaker 1: the leader. And yet we because we have a history
Speaker 1: of biography, we tend to put the spotlight on the
Speaker 1: key person, and when you follow that person around, they
Speaker 1: tend to be the center of the stage and everybody
Speaker 1: else is slightly in the shadows. In reality, those other
Speaker 1: factors are just as big in the outcome. So the
Speaker 1: leader is not the beginning and end of the story,
Speaker 1: and the last is the result Smith And that is
Speaker 1: that we as followers, or we as shareholders or anything,
Speaker 1: are demanding and that we demand results from our leaders.
Speaker 1: The reality is we select, promote, and follow leaders routinely
Speaker 1: who are absolutely ineffective, get terrible results, and yet we
Speaker 1: stick with them. It's extraordinary. Adolph Hitler was still popular
Speaker 1: in the spring of n after twelve years of taking
Speaker 1: Germany into absolute defeat. You think that the German population
Speaker 1: would have hated him by now by then, absolutely the opposite.
Speaker 1: We leadership fills not an objective requirement, were not nearly
Speaker 1: as objective as we think. We're much more subjective and
Speaker 1: emotional in our connection to leaders. Leaders fill some needs,
Speaker 1: they feel the idea that the future will be better,
Speaker 1: and so really that that punchline of the book is
Speaker 1: leadership is far more complex than we think it is.
Speaker 1: It's not all about this great woman or a great man.
Speaker 1: It's about this ecosystem, and we as followers have far
Speaker 1: greater responsibility or agency than we sometimes admit. We tend
Speaker 1: to say, well, we'll wait till a great leader comes along.
Speaker 1: When they do, will make them show us their tricks
Speaker 1: and will follow up. And the reality is that's not
Speaker 1: the way it has to work. We own it, we
Speaker 1: as participants, because followers probably not the right word. Um.
Speaker 1: One thing I wanted to ask you about his diversity.
Speaker 1: This was something i'd breakaway. We talked about a lot
Speaker 1: last year, and certainly me too has put it front
Speaker 1: and send her. Um. The military has not been great,
Speaker 1: Corporate America hasn't been great in terms of diversity, despite
Speaker 1: years and years of studies that talk about how things
Speaker 1: will do better. How many times have we had that
Speaker 1: conversation here? Yeah, what's what's the problem. What's the responsibility?
Speaker 1: How do we get leaders to do it right and
Speaker 1: make more diverse workforces all the way up the chain? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It is systemic. And the reason I say it systemic
Speaker 1: is I think of the United States Army. When I
Speaker 1: grew up as a child, I remember going to Foreben
Speaker 1: in Georgia and there was a on one street there
Speaker 1: was a movie theater, pretty nice, and then about a
Speaker 1: block and a half down there was another movie theater
Speaker 1: and I said, well, this is great. You know you've
Speaker 1: got choice. Well, they were created back in the nineteen
Speaker 1: twenties when one was for white soldier and one was
Speaker 1: for African American soldiers. And my grandfather was a company
Speaker 1: commander there. And remember my father telling me this story.
Speaker 1: If you go to the Pentagon today, you'll notice there
Speaker 1: are plenty of bathrooms, more bathrooms and most buildings and
Speaker 1: with the big population, that's very handy. It's because they
Speaker 1: built twice as many as you needed because you couldn't
Speaker 1: have African Americans and whites. And it was built in
Speaker 1: wasn't built in eighteen forty one, and so we create
Speaker 1: systems when the when the U. S. Army was ordered
Speaker 1: to integrate, it had had African American soldiers in a
Speaker 1: different ranks before, but the reality was you needed to
Speaker 1: create forcing functions to cause that to happen. You needed
Speaker 1: It took about six or eight years before the military
Speaker 1: actually went through with integrating all units and whatnot. And
Speaker 1: then my experience with females in military. They started to
Speaker 1: come in officers, but then female officers would be given
Speaker 1: jobs like the protocol officer. They'd be given things, and
Speaker 1: they were good at it, and they were professional. But
Speaker 1: then when it came time to pick people to be
Speaker 1: brigade commanders and then general officers, as you looked at records,
Speaker 1: their records were not as strong in terms of the
Speaker 1: jobs they'd had as the mail officers. And so the
Speaker 1: board gets together and the board is told to pick
Speaker 1: the best qualified people. And the board can look at
Speaker 1: this and they can justify themselves. Well, the reality is
Speaker 1: the male officers have had better experience, and therefore the
Speaker 1: mail officers are more qualified. Therefore we will select them.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't a bunch of mail and getting together
Speaker 1: saying keep out women. It was. There was probably some
Speaker 1: unconscious bias there, but nobody ever said it openly. But
Speaker 1: it was the best qualified thing. The problem is you
Speaker 1: have to fix the system from the bottom to the top,
Speaker 1: which can take two generations. My belief now is you've
Speaker 1: got to start. One of my close friends is and
Speaker 1: Donewood is. She was the first female four star. Her
Speaker 1: grandfather and father were both West pointerers. She couldn't go
Speaker 1: to West Point because she was female. She was one
Speaker 1: year older than me, so it was before feelings. We
Speaker 1: were battalion commanders together and and I have been friends
Speaker 1: for thirty years. She didn't have the same opportunity now
Speaker 1: she through it because she just performed her way through it.
Speaker 1: But the reality is, I think you've got to take
Speaker 1: the system and the term I know is affirmative action,
Speaker 1: and you've got to make that work. And you've got
Speaker 1: to You've got to put senior females and and other
Speaker 1: minorities or anything that you want represented. You've got to
Speaker 1: put them in senior enough roles where they can mentor
Speaker 1: the junior And when I talk about diversity, I do
Speaker 1: mean everything. Absolutely. You've you've got to create that opportunity.
Speaker 1: And it's very easy to say when we're here, but
Speaker 1: if you're in a company and you've got key roles
Speaker 1: in your company and you're having a tough time finding
Speaker 1: a CFO or a CEO or key roles, and you
Speaker 1: can't find people who adverse or you know people who
Speaker 1: are like you, and therefore you say I got it.
Speaker 1: I'm all about diversity. But I need Frank to do
Speaker 1: this job because I know, Frank, that's tough. I mean,
Speaker 1: it really is looking at tech company boards and whatnot.
Speaker 1: So but I think if we don't start sometimes, Well,
Speaker 1: that's it. I think affirmative action is where you've got
Speaker 1: to go, even though people don't like the term anymore.
Speaker 1: Can anybody be a leader? Anyone? People come up all
Speaker 1: the time and ask you that, don't they they do? Um? Yes,
Speaker 1: Leadership is mostly about self discipline. If I asked everybody
Speaker 1: here to write a list of what a leader doesn't
Speaker 1: doesn't do, our lists wouldn't be vastly different. Now, what
Speaker 1: we do or don't do is vastly different based upon
Speaker 1: how much self discipline we have to do it. Think
Speaker 1: of how many times at work you know what you
Speaker 1: ought to do and either because it's in communion or
Speaker 1: tiring or frightening, or something you don't. I mean, how
Speaker 1: many times a day do I find something I go wow,
Speaker 1: I should have done that I didn't. And so I
Speaker 1: think leadership is more about self discipline than anything. Ever.
Speaker 1: That was retired General Stanley McCrystal. You've been listening to
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week Extra be sorted to did to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week Radio Live Monday through Friday at GPM, Wall
Speaker 1: Street Time. I'm Carol Master and I'm Jason Kelly. This
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg three